Then Dallas had happened.
Dallas and his amazing ability to reach me without words.
I’d clung to him like he’d been my lifeline, because that was exactly what he was. What he’d always be.
I felt Dallas shift behind me and then his lips pressed against the back of my neck. I slowly turned over so I was facing him. As soon as I did, his arms went around me and he tugged me forward until our bodies were touching practically everywhere. I tucked my arms under his and held on for a while, absorbing his strength.
As out of it as I’d been this past week, I’d never lost sight of the fact that Dallas had stayed with me. He’d been there at every turn, and even when I’d mentally and physically pushed him away, he’d stayed.
“Who’s watching the animals?” I asked.
He held me for a moment longer, then shifted so he could get his phone off the nightstand.
Sawyer Brower.
“The vet?” I asked in surprise.
He nodded, then his jaw tightened.
“What?” I asked as I brushed my fingers over his cheek. “Did something happen?”
I’ll tell you later.
I leaned back enough so he could see me. “I’m okay now, Dallas. Because of you. I’m back.”
He nodded, then typed, Maddox was helping him.
“He was helping Sawyer?”
Another nod.
“Did you know he was back in town?”
He shook his head. Don’t know why he’s back. Don’t care.
I suspected he knew more than he was saying, but it was something I’d talk to him about later when things had settled down a bit. I snuggled against his chest. “Dallas, is it just me, or did my mother bitch-slap Jimmy Cornell yesterday during my father’s wake?”
I felt a slight rumble in Dallas’s chest, then he nodded against me.
“Good,” I murmured. “It would have sucked if that had just been a dream.”
I felt him laugh again, then he pulled me in tighter. I felt his mouth moving against my ear. I knew what he was telling me.
“I love you too,” I said softly, and I held onto him until the alarm reminded us it was time to face another day.
My body was still tingling in satisfaction when I walked into the kitchen half an hour later. After getting out of bed and telling Dallas to sleep for a few more minutes, I’d gotten into the shower. I’d barely managed to even get my hair wet before Dallas had been opening the door and climbing into the small stall with me. Things had started off with him just washing my hair, then my body, but it hadn’t taken long for the near-constant desire simmering between us to explode into a white-hot inferno of need.
By the time Dallas had snagged a condom and lube from his shaving bag, I’d been begging him for relief. He’d given me only the minimal prep necessary before he’d pinned me face-first against the wall and worked himself deep inside of me. He’d fucked me hard and fast, a sign that we’d gone way too long without one another. As I’d come, Dallas had been forced to cover my mouth with his hand to muffle my cries of relief. My knees had been so weak, he’d had to hold me up for several minutes. When we’d started to clean each other up, our bodies had begun to respond to one another again and Dallas had promptly pushed me out of the shower stall with a shake of his head. I doubted he would have had the same response if we hadn’t had his doctor’s appointment to go to this morning.
I was surprised to see my mother sitting at the kitchen table. Over the past week, she hadn’t left her room much – the guest room. I wasn’t sure when she’d return to her own room, if she ever did.
“Morning,” I said. Awkwardness washed over me as I remembered how I’d clung to her the day before. Even after we’d gotten to my room, I hadn’t been able to let her go. It was like the dam that Jimmy’s act of cruelty had burst open had refused to be stemmed until every drop of water had found its way through. I still had no clue how long I’d cried on her shoulder for, or at what point she’d left the room. All I remembered was her soft words in my ear telling me it was going to be okay and then waking up in Dallas’s arms.
“Morning, dear,” she said softly. I felt her eyes on me as I went to get some coffee. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Um, good,” I murmured. “I’m, um, going with Dallas to his doctor’s appointment this morning. Will you be all right by yourself for a little while?”
“Of course.”
She sounded like her old self and part of me was actually disappointed by that, but I refused to dwell on the reason why.
I grabbed a second cup of coffee to take back to the room with me for Dallas, but when I turned, my eyes fell on the photo album my mom was slowly flipping through.
And on one picture in particular.
Of my father holding a baby.
Me.
Of him holding me.
I could only classify his expression in the picture as one of…awe.
“You’ve never seen these pictures before, have you?” I heard my mother ask.
I shook my head. I knew I should get moving, but I was stuck in place. I watched as my mother removed the picture and slid it across the table toward me.
“He was so happy that day.”
I swallowed hard and lifted my eyes to meet hers. But I couldn’t give voice to the question I wanted to ask.
What did I do to make him hate me so much?
My mother slid another picture across the table. It was of a family I didn’t recognize. There was a stern-looking older man, a petite woman, and three small children. No one in the picture was smiling.
“He didn’t know I kept this picture,” she murmured.
“Who are they?” I asked as I let my eyes fall over the three young children.
“That’s your father’s family,” she explained. “He’s in the middle, his sister Jeannette is on the left, and his brother Andrew is on the right.”
I slowly sank into the chair in front of me and set the coffee mugs down. I let my fingers skim over my father’s image. “I have an aunt and an uncle?”
“No.”
I looked up at her in surprise. “Andrew died when he was ten. His father…your grandfather…beat him to death.”
I felt tears sting the backs of my eyes.
“Jeannette killed herself a couple of years later.”
“What?” I whispered.
“Your father was a hard man, Nolan. But he did love you.”
I shook my head, but found it impossible to speak.
“It’s true that neither of us were expecting you. We…we never wanted kids.”
I nodded because I’d figured as much.
“Life for your father was very hard growing up. His father hurt him almost every day of his life, Nolan. For no other reason than he was a bad man. Your father was convinced that whatever it was that made his father hurt him was also in his blood. One of the first things he told me when we met was that he didn’t want kids…he didn’t want to risk becoming like his father and hurting his child.”
“What happened to him? His father, I mean.”
“He went to prison for killing Andrew. Died a few years later of cancer. Jeannette became involved with someone just like him when she was eighteen. She jumped off a bridge a year later when she found out she was pregnant.”
I choked back my tears as I turned the picture over so I wouldn’t have to look at the doomed family.
“What about you?” I asked. “Why didn’t you want to have kids?”
“I grew up in a completely different kind of household. It was just me, my mother, and my father. They believed kids should be seen, not heard. Emotions were frowned upon, obedience was rewarded. There were no hugs or tears or laughter growing up. I didn’t want to bring a child into the world that I couldn’t share those things with.”
“But you kept me.”
“We did. We knew you were a gift from God and we loved you from the moment you were born, Nolan. You have to believe that,” she said sadly.
“We tried, we really did. But for us, we were fighting so much more than just the normal fear that comes with being new parents. Your father was obsessed he might end up hurting you, and I had no idea how to be a mother. Yes, I fed you and changed your diaper, but I didn’t know how to do any of the rest of it. I’m not saying this to excuse anything,” she said, then shook her head. “He wasn’t a bad person, your father. He just didn’t know how to relate to you. As you got older, you started to like some of the things Andrew liked when he was a little boy. The reading, the music…it just scared your father, and it was easier for him to pull away.”
I hated the tear that managed to escape my eye. “You had to know what people were saying about me…what they were doing to me. Jimmy, his friends,” I whispered. “You never tried to stop it.”
It was my mother’s turn to stifle a sob. “I know,” she nodded. “We thought it would force you to act differently.”
“You mean more like a real boy,” I murmured.
“We were wrong, Nolan. Just like we were wrong not to encourage you to pursue your music.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.
“Because none of it was your fault, Nolan. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t do anything that made us not love you. You were a kind-hearted, sweet, beautiful little boy who deserved so much more than you got.”
I could feel myself shutting down as the emotions became too much. “It doesn’t matter,” I murmured.
I was about to get up when she slid another picture across the table. I swallowed hard when I recognized it. It was from two years earlier when I’d played at the Kennedy Center. Another picture followed, this one of me performing in London.
More photos appeared in my vision.
New York.
Berlin.
Paris.
San Francisco.
“What are these?” I asked.
“We…we couldn’t afford the really close seats,” she said softly.
I lifted my eyes. “You were there?” I whispered.
“The first time we heard you play was in Minneapolis. We didn’t have the camera with us, though. You were amazing, Nolan. You just blew us away. We began watching for when your orchestra was scheduled to perform in Minneapolis again, but then you joined the one in San Francisco and they weren’t coming to Minneapolis. So we went to you.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “That must have cost you a fortune-” My words dropped off and I looked down at the pictures again. “Oh my God.”
“We knew it wasn’t the most responsible thing to do, but we knew it was the only chance we’d get to see you again. We had enough money saved up for the trips, but then some stuff started happening with the house. The furnace blew last year. Then the roof needed to be replaced. We just…we got in over our heads.”
“Why didn’t you just call me?” I asked.
“And what, Nolan? Ask you to come home? After all we’d done to drive you away? We didn’t have the right. You’d found this amazing new life – the life you always deserved. Pelican Bay was always going to be too small for you. If I hadn’t needed help with your father…”
I didn’t need her to finish the statement. I wasn’t sure how I felt about knowing they’d been forced to call me. I wanted to believe what she was saying was true – that she’d known how hard it would be for me to come back here, but I just couldn’t make it work in my mind.
“These past few weeks after Dad…after his stroke. You had a chance to try and fix things. But you couldn’t even…” My voice cracked and I had to pull in a deep breath. “You couldn’t even be bothered to treat me any better than when I’d been a kid.”
I saw my mother’s eyes fill with tears as she nodded. “Wanting to change isn’t the same thing as being able to change,” she said softly. “I know that doesn’t make it right-”
“The violin,” I interjected, not wanting to hear the rest of her statement. Maybe because I might be tempted to accept it. “You believed what the police told you about me taking that damn violin.”
“They were very convincing,” was all she said.
Pain unlike anything I’d ever known ripped through me. It felt like my entire life had been a lie.
“I need to go,” I bit out as I staggered to my feet. I was heading for the doorway to leave the kitchen when my mother called my name. I stumbled to a stop, but didn’t turn.
“The Kent boy, Dallas, he loves you.”
I wasn’t sure if she was telling me or asking me, so I just said, “He does.”
“Good,” she whispered. “Good.”
My head felt like it was going to explode. I rounded the corner, intent on going to find Dallas so we could get out of there, and nearly ran right into him. I could tell by the pained expression on his face that he’d heard everything. When he opened his arms, I walked right into them. He held onto me for several long minutes as I tried to get control of myself.
“Can we get out of here?” I croaked. I felt like I couldn’t fucking breathe.
I felt him nod, then he was taking my hand in his and leading me from the house. I didn’t spare my mother a glance as we walked past the kitchen.
I couldn’t.
I didn’t want to go home after Dallas’s doctor’s appointment, but he convinced me that we needed to spend one more night with my mother to make sure she was okay. As angry as I was at her for all the shit she’d dumped on me this morning, I knew he was right. I’d been too preoccupied with what the doctor had been explaining about the surgery he wanted to schedule for Dallas within the next week to really dwell on what my mother had said. But as we made our way back to her house, I couldn’t not think about it.
The things she’d told me about my father’s childhood and his fears made sense, and I held a certain amount of pity for both him and my mother. But I couldn’t just dismiss their ineptitude as parents completely. They’d had too many opportunities to get at least some of it right. The fact that they’d come to some of my performances was like salt in an already gaping wound. If they’d just fucking told me they were proud of me…
“Dallas,” I said softly before looking at him.
He glanced over at me from behind the wheel. He must have seen something in my eyes because a moment later, he was pulling the truck over to the curb. He held out his hand to me. The console was between us, so I couldn’t move against him the way I wanted, but the contact was enough.
“Would you forgive them?” I asked. “Your parents? Would you forgive them if you had the chance to talk to them again?”
He grabbed his phone and released my hand long enough so he could type.
I think I already have.
“How is that possible?” I asked. “After everything they did to you…how does any of it become okay?”
Not okay. But hating them won’t undo any of what happened. Neither will forgiving them.
“So why do it?”
Because I think carrying that anger around is harder than just accepting that people make mistakes. No one’s guaranteed perfect parents, just like no one’s guaranteed the perfect life, no matter how much they plan for it.
“I’m angry, Dallas. I’m so very angry,” I admitted.
Be angry, Nolan. Just don’t let it change who you are. If you do, they win.
I nodded and mulled over his words as I sat back in the seat and stared out the windshield. Dallas got the truck moving, but didn’t release my hand until we arrived back at the house. As soon as we were out of the vehicle, Dallas snatched up my hand again, then pulled me to his side. I loved that even though we were in public, he wasn’t hiding what we were to one another. Our relationship may have been forced out into the open by circumstances, but the people of Pelican Bay were just going to have to deal with it.
As we reached the door leading to the kitchen, I steeled myself for the next encounter with my mother, since her car was sitting in the driveway. She was once again sitting at th
e kitchen table, but she wasn’t alone.
The man sitting opposite her turned to face me when my mother said, “Nolan, you have a visitor.”
I recognized him as one of the police officers who’d questioned me in San Francisco repeatedly after the Stradivarius had gone missing. Fear went through me and I automatically sought out Dallas’s hand.
“Officer Cohen,” I said with a nod.
I felt Dallas pull me to his side as soon as I said the name. I’d told him about how I’d been questioned by the cops and the threats they’d thrown my way, even after they’d admitted they couldn’t press charges against me.
Had he found something he could use to arrest me?
“Mr. Grainger,” he said. “I’m sorry to just stop by like this, but I wanted to tell you in person rather than over the phone.”
“Tell me what?” I asked, finding it incredibly difficult to swallow.
“We found the violin.”
“You did? Where?”
“In Mr. Lancaster’s possession.”
“What? Trey had it?” I asked, completely confused.
“We found it at his house in Pacific Heights after receiving an anonymous tip to look there. We also received a digital file of a recording between Mr. Lancaster and another person outlining his plan to frame you for stealing the violin. He was going to sell it on the black market after collecting the insurance policy on it. He also admits on the tape to stealing the money he was supposed to have invested for you.”
“What…what does this mean?” I asked. I could feel Dallas’s heat at my back as his fingers massaged up and down my spine, probably to try and soothe me.
It was working.
“It means he’ll face charges. He’s already hired an attorney and it’s doubtful he’ll face much prison time, but he won’t get away scot-free. Whoever sent us the tape also leaked it online. The truth has already started to hit the papers. You should be completely vindicated by dinner time, Mr. Grainger. And I would recommend you hire an attorney. Even if Mr. Lancaster’s attorneys manage to plead him down to a lesser criminal charge, he’s got no case in civil court. The district attorney said the punitive damages alone could be worth ten times what that violin is valued at.”
Locked in Silence_Pelican Bay [Book 1] Page 20
