Better (Stark Ink Book 2)

by Dahlia West

  She perched on the edge of the bed and smoothed a wrinkled t-shirt on her lap. “None of this is the way it was supposed to be. He was supposed to be kind, thoughtful. I mean, he was at first. And… I’d needed it for so long.” She looked at him guiltily before turning away.

  Dalton moved further into the room. He didn’t go to her, even though he wanted to so badly. Instead he leaned against the wall. “It’s okay. You can say it. You can tell the truth, Zoey.”

  She chewed her lower lip. “He didn’t need to be perfect. I never asked for that. He just… he just wasn’t…”

  “Wasn’t supposed to turn out like me.”

  Zoey’s breath caught in her throat.

  For a moment, Dalton thought she was going to cry again, but she held it together.

  Her voice came out breathy and quiet. “I don’t know how I let this happen.”

  Dalton snorted. “Don’t you? You ignored everything about me for so long. You just kept turning a blind eye.”

  She looked up at him with a pained expression. “I was hoping you’d get better.”

  “I taught you to hide the truth, or at least living with me did.” He sighed and turned his gaze to the bedroom ceiling. “I drove you to him and I fucked you up so badly that you went through hell all over again.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Dalton’s head jerked back down. “Why? Why are you sorry? Zoey, I just said it was me. It was my fault.”

  She shook her head. “But I shouldn’t have come here. And I definitely shouldn’t have stayed. You don’t need my mess and I—” She looked away and stood up.

  You don’t need mine, thought Dalton. He nodded. The last thing he wanted was to complicate her life. If she didn’t feel like she needed him, he wouldn’t push her. Some people were the people, but it was never the right time. He watched as she finished gathering her things and re-packed her bag. His chest ached, but he made no move to stop her.

  “I should go to my parents’ house. I have to face them sometime.”

  Dalton pushed off the wall. “I’ll drive you. We’ll take your car. I’ll get a cab back.”

  She paused with her fingers on the zipper of her bag. “You don’t have to. I can— ”

  His eyes narrowed. “It’s not about what you can do, Zoey. I can do that much. I owe you that, at least.” He moved forward, finished zipping her overnight bag, and slung it onto his shoulder. She was ready to go, so she had to go and there was no point or use in trying to stop her. He held the front door for her and then placed her bag in the back seat of her car. He took his time adjusting the driver’s seat to fit his large frame, though. Pathetic, but just a few more minutes was better than nothing.

  He turned the mirrors, played with the heat, checked to make sure she was warm enough. He told himself he was getting used to the idea of her leaving, sitting with it a while until it was no longer a pain but just another errand. Finally, when he couldn’t stall any longer, he pulled away from the curb.

  Chapter Eleven

  For all his pep talks and posturing, the closer they got to her parents’ place the more uneasy he felt. It seemed that letting Zoey go this time would be a bit harder to do than he wanted to admit. He told himself he was concerned for her, which was mostly true, but surely her parents, for all their faults, could keep her safe.

  He pulled up to their large, two-story house and parked out front. Despite the circumstances, he chuckled to himself as he walked around the front of the Mercedes to get Zoey. He shouldn’t stay long. Not that the Connors would want him to. He helped Zoey to the door and carried her backpack for her. She knocked and her long-suffering mother finally answered. Dalton knew she was long-suffering not because she looked it, but because if you spent any amount of time with the woman she’d tell you all about it. He knew more than he wanted to know about Home Owners’ Associations and shady landscaping services.

  Elaine’s relief at seeing her daughter was tempered in no small part by the fact that Dalton was standing next to her. She seemed so bewildered by his presence that she didn’t even immediately invite Zoey in, finally opening the door wide and stepping back when the initial shock wore off.

  Dalton followed her inside, cautiously. Elaine was too polite to actually slam the door in his face, but he steered clear of the swinging barrier all the same. She obviously wasn’t happy about his presence. Dalton didn’t bother to acknowledge this, having years ago resigned himself to it.

  It was no secret how the Connors felt about Dalton. They may have tolerated the Starks on the whole, seeing as how they went to the same church, but Elaine and Lyle had made it clear to Zoey that Dalton was out of his league. They hadn’t really laid it on thick at first, a comment here, a snide remark there. So long as they had only been casually dating, and not very often at that, Dalton suspected that the Connors were chalking him up to Zoey’s little walk on the wild side before she settled down.

  When she ended up moving in with him, though, they changed their tactics and began an all-out full-court press to get rid of him. In the end, only Dalton had been able to get rid of Zoey and though the Connors were probably very, very happy about that, Dalton had a feeling that they were both more than a little miffed that they hadn’t been the ones to make her see the light.

  “Zoey, honey. Patrick’s been calling and calling. He’s just worried sick. And here you are... with him!”

  “More like he’s worried he’s going to jail,” Dalton replied.

  Elaine narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you mean? And why are you here? Isn’t it enough that you ruined your own relationship with Zoey? You have to break up her marriage, too? Honestly,” Elaine said as she shook her head. “What would Miriam say?”

  Zoey gasped. “Mom!”

  Dalton probably would have managed to keep his cool if Zoey’s mother hadn’t taken such a cheap shot. “What would she say? I don’t know, Elaine. I think she’d want to know where you were when Zoey’s husband was smacking her around!”

  Elaine’s jaw dropped. “Well… that’s just an awful thing to say. And you can’t just go around making accusations like that about-”

  “It’s true, Mom,” Zoey replied.

  Elaine turned from Dalton to Zoey. “Well… maybe… maybe it was a mistake.”

  “A mistake?” Dalton asked. “Like he took a swing and Zoey accidentally ran into his fist?”

  She glared at him. “There’s probably an explanation.” She turned to Zoey. “It can’t be as serious as you’re making it. It’s him,” she ground out. “He’s putting ideas in your head.”

  Dalton sighed heavily. It was true Zoey had done a hell of a job with the makeup, which may not have turned out to be a good thing. This coupled with her reluctance to tell them how her marriage had really been going all this time was leaving Zoey in a tough situation. He couldn’t help but feel that keeping her parents in the dark about the reality of her situation was directly contributing to their inability to grasp the seriousness of it now. Unfair, but there it was. Zoey’s choice to try and save them the pain had only heaped more of it onto herself. She hadn’t sought the help she needed and now that she wanted it, it wasn’t there.

  “No, Mom,” Zoey argued. “None of this is Dalton’s fault. He didn’t even know. I… we ran into each other last night and I told him. He’s the one worried about me.”

  Elaine scoffed. “Well, this is all just ridiculous, but no surprise now that we know who’s behind it all. You’ll stay here tonight, Zoey. We’ll call Patrick and in the morning he’ll come and get you and the two of you can sort all this out.”

  Zoey shook her head. “No. Absolutely not, Mom.”

  “He’s your husband, Zoey. You have to deal with this.”

  “I am dealing with it.”

  “By staying with him?” Elaine demanded. “Honestly, Zoey. What on Earth are you thinking?! That’s unacceptable!”

  Elaine glared at Dalton again, but he didn’t care. He was just as furious. The time to try
and spare Zoey the drama was long past. He glared right back at her mother.

  “You’re married!” Elaine hissed at Zoey.

  “It didn’t feel like it when he hit me,” Zoey replied quietly. “In fact, I haven’t felt married for a long time, Mom.”

  “That’s no excuse. You just need some space and some time to think about things.”

  Zoey opened her mouth to argue, but Dalton cut her off. “Are you hearing her? Are you even listening? Patrick hit her last night and it wasn’t the first time. There’s no excuse for that, Elaine!”

  Zoey’s mother smirked at him. “You’re no better.”

  “Mom!” Zoey cried.

  Dalton shook his head. “I made mistakes, but I never, ever, laid a hand on her. Come on, Zoey. We’re leaving.”

  “She can stay here,” Elaine insisted.

  Dalton scoffed. “So you can work on her some more? Tell her she needs to go back to him? Tell her she has to choose between one Hell and another? No. No way.”

  “You are not a member of this family, Dalton Stark, and I thank God every day that you never were! You don’t speak for my daughter and I think you’ve overstayed your welcome in my home.”

  “Like I was ever welcome,” he muttered. To Zoey, he said, “You can’t stay here. You know you don’t want to hear this bullshit.” He paused. As much as he hated to admit it, Elaine was right about one thing. He didn’t speak for Zoey and he couldn’t force her to make the choice he wanted. “If you want to go somewhere else, I’ll take you,” he conceded quietly. “A friend, a hotel. Wherever. But you shouldn’t stay here. This is not what you need, Zoey.”

  He closed his mouth firmly because it was so tempting to keep talking, keep trying to convince her. For the first time Dalton desperately wanted to be what she needed, the only thing she needed, but that wasn’t fair to either of them.

  Zoey picked up her coat and her borrowed backpack. “You’re right,” she declared. “I can’t deal with this.” To her parents she said, “I’ll call you later. Maybe in a few days to check in. Maybe… things will be different.”

  “You can’t go,” Elaine cried. “Not… now. Not with him.”

  Zoey ignored her mother, heading past her toward the front door.

  “Zoey,” said Elaine, stepping in front of her. “I told you once before that he wasn’t good enough for you and I was right, wasn’t I? If you walk out this door with him, you are going to ruin your life.”

  Zoey sighed heavily. “Mother-”

  “It’s a sin, Zoey! A mortal sin! Think of the baby.”

  That seemed to cut Zoey to bone, worse than anything else they’d said up to this point. “I am thinking of the baby, Mom. Patrick… Patrick doesn’t want the baby.”

  Elaine rolled her eyes. “You’re exaggerating. New babies are stressful, especially first babies. I remember when your father-”

  “Demanded you get an abortion?” Zoey interrupted. “You remember when Daddy stood over your while you made the appointment to make sure it was done? And when you couldn’t go through with it, you remember when he kicked you in the belly?”

  Elaine’s face turned white and for the first time since they’d arrived she seemed to be struck speechless. She looked from Zoey to Dalton and back again and Dalton could practically hear all the gears in her head grinding to a standstill. For the first time in probably her entire life, Elaine Cooper realized that there was someone on this Earth who was worse for Zoey than he was, someone they’d pushed her to marry without really getting to know, someone they might now have a lot of trouble trying to untangle themselves from.

  Chapter Twelve

  The cold hit him hard, but he barely felt it. Angry as he was, though, he held onto Zoey’s arm as she made her way back to the car. He couldn’t have her slipping and falling on the slush under their feet. He did slam the passenger door, though, once he’d gotten her in. He wasn’t a saint, after all. The car rocked a little on its frame from the force of it. Once Dalton was inside he turned the ignition and started the heater, mostly in deference to Zoey. He was far too angry to drive at this point and he found he actually preferred the cold. It seemed to balance him in some odd way.

  “He kicked you.”

  Zoey paused as she warmed her hands at the vents, not responding.

  “He. Kicked. You.”

  “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know what you’d do.”

  “Lies.”

  Zoey stayed silent in the face of the truth. She hadn’t told him how bad it was because she knew exactly what he’d do. They wouldn’t be here now if she’d spoken up. He’d be sitting in a jail cell somewhere. Who knew where she would be?

  “Dalton-”

  “Not right now,” he snapped. He didn’t mean to be so harsh with her, but his hands were shaking a little and his mind felt like it had been set ablaze.

  He worked through every scenario that came into his mind. Confronting Grant, kicking his ass, letting him live or maybe driving him out to the Badlands to finish the job. They all seemed plausible and they all ended with Dalton wearing cuffs.

  “I need you,” she whispered.

  He put the truck in drive and pulled away from the curb. “I know.”

  They drove for a while in silence, past houses decorated with thousands of lights. He remembered she liked to do that sometimes and slowed down for the nice ones. A year ago while Zoey had been looking at Christmas decorations, Dalton had been looking at the houses themselves: one-story Ranches, two-story Victorians, and the split-levels that were so common in the area. A basement for himself, a home office for Zoey, attic storage space. Not here, he’d decided one night, but out past the city limits, with space and a view of the hills. As he drove now, he looked toward the edge of town, smaller lights shimmered way off in the distance. It seemed like another world entirely. Somewhere out there was the life he and Zoey should’ve had. Somewhere out there his hand was just fine, their house was warmed by the fireplace he’d built, their baby— his baby— was filling her belly.

  If she didn’t have it with Dalton, why didn’t she have it with somebody else?

  “Why’d you marry him? I mean, him of all people?”

  Zoey traced the drops of mist on the window with her finger. “My parents liked him.”

  “Liked his money, you mean.”

  Dalton had never met Grant, never heard of him, knew virtually nothing about the man, but he didn’t need to. If Elaine and Lyle liked him, that meant he had money, and for the Connors that was all that was important. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t value other traits, for surely they did. Dalton had at least spent enough time with them to know that while their rigid ideas about class were both wrong and annoying, they weren’t necessarily bad people. They simply thought that money gave you manners, that money somehow made you a better person instead just a richer person. But Dalton understood at least one thing that Zoey’s parents didn’t: if money couldn’t buy happiness, it sure as hell couldn’t buy a conscience either. Patrick Grant clearly didn’t have one and the Connors, who did— even if it was often misguided— didn’t know what to do about that or even how to accept it.

  Zoey understood, though. She’d looked at Dalton and, in the beginning at least, had seen a good man if not one flush with cash. Zoey didn’t care about money and certainly didn’t place as much importance on it as her parents did. Dalton knew that once Grant had tried to hurt the baby, that was it for her. No amount of money could make that okay.

  “Fucking rich people,” he said shaking his head slowly. “I mean, I’m sorry Zoey. I know they’re your parents, but Jesus. What the fuck?” He turned to look at her fully. “How did you ever manage to escape being like them?” he wondered aloud.

  “I had you.”

  Neither of them was ready to discuss that further, so they both turned away from each other at the same moment.

  “I’m sorry about your mom,” she told him quietly. “I heard she was sick and I thought about calling you, but then
she was gone so fast… Was it horrible? Did she… was she in a lot of pain?”

  Dalton stared at the road, trying to think about how to answer. Adam had cared for her, for the most part, and, while his older brother never talked about it, Dalton suspected that Mom had suffered quite a bit in the end.

  “She didn’t linger,” he finally replied, not putting too fine a point on it. Mom had died relatively quickly, he supposed, but then again, Dalton’s three days in the white-walled detox room had been both agonizing and seemingly endless. He was pretty sure that was only a fraction of what Mom had gone through in the end.

  Adam had spared all of them from seeing the worst of it, it was the least Dalton could do now to spare Zoey from hearing about it.

  “It was quick,” he lied.

  She smiled sadly. “Well, thank God for that.”

  “Yeah.”

  Dalton didn’t say that he wasn’t sure how much God had to do with it. If He did, He was taking Saints and Sinners alike these days. Worse, actually, since He’d spared Dalton for some reason but not Mom.

  “Still,” Zoey said. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to the funeral.”

  “It’s okay,” he told her. “I’m not sure I would have remembered it if you had.”

  “I’m tired,” she said.

  He nodded. “Me, too.”

  He finally headed home and pulled into his driveway. He didn’t have any Christmas lights up, he realized. He was pretty busy these days and there was no one around to care. He frowned at his bare front porch as he walked Zoey inside.

  He fixed her another cup of tea and even remembered the sugar this time. She headed off to bed and he made his way, somberly, to his. Tired as he was though, he couldn’t fall asleep. He lay sprawled on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Zoey wasn’t thinking clearly and that’s all there was to it. She was halfway there, at least. After all, she’d decided to stay with him instead of anywhere else, stay where he could protect her. But she needed this man out of her life entirely and she refused to pull the trigger on it, for whatever reason. Maybe she was afraid of angering him further, or maybe some of Dalton— the old Dalton— had rubbed off on her and she was just ignoring it, hoping it would go away on its own. Dalton wasn’t willing to wait it out, though.