Mistake’s Melody: Unquiet Mind Book Four

by Malcom, Anne

He paused. “Fuck. I’m not used to an Emma who doesn’t argue.”

  I raised my brow. “You prefer it?”

  He smirked. “Fuck no. The fact you can never just agree with me is one of the things I love most about you.”

  My previously even heart stuttered and then thundered at the word he used.

  He didn’t make me have to respond to that because he was out of the car and opening my door for me in a flash. And then I was assaulted with the reality of what I was facing, so my freak-out at Wyatt’s casual statement was put on pause.

  His hand was dry and warm in mine walking into the funeral home, I was firmly holding onto it, and that fantasy that I had been so certain I’d abandoned with all of my childhood innocence.

  But then my mother did what she did best, she shattered fantasies.

  She looked good. It didn’t make sense. Someone so rotten, so wrong on the inside, shouldn’t look like she did pushing her late fifties. Especially a person who’d lived a hard life like my mother had.

  The alcohol she drunk should’ve made her age prematurely, should’ve made her gain weight, dulled her skin, thinned her hair—or killed her like it had my father. The drugs she did should’ve wreaked havoc to her health, to her comprehension.

  Life wasn’t for should’ve. If it was, then I wouldn’t be standing here.

  I definitely wouldn’t be related to the woman who I’d stopped in front of.

  She wasn’t wearing black. She was wearing leopard print, the dress tight enough to push her tits almost to her chin. Her legs were bare, despite the chill in the air, and her platforms were scuffed and dirty. She was wearing a lot of makeup, but it didn’t sink into the few lines around her eyes. Her blonde hair was teased and curled within an inch of its life.

  It looked like she was ready for a night out in Vegas, not her husband’s funeral.

  Her thin brow arched as I approached. “I didn’t expect you to come, didn’t want you to come,” she said as an opening. That was the greeting to the daughter she hadn’t seen or spoken to in almost a decade at her father’s funeral.

  Her eyes went down to my stomach, visible under my black lace dress, not skin-tight, but not exactly funeral appropriate either. I had restrained myself from wearing a fucking celebratory tee for the occasion. Her eyes lingered on the bump for a moment, hard and calculating before they moved to Wyatt, who was all but plastered to my side.

  “See you’ve made the mistake of getting yourself knocked up,” she continued, sipping the glass I hadn’t realized she was holding. Maybe because I’d always seen my mother with a glass in her hand, the unusual thing would’ve been if she hadn’t been holding one. “You’re gonna regret that.” She nodded to my stomach.

  Then she screwed up her face and regarded Wyatt, who’d turned to marble at her greeting. My mother was not an educated woman, having dropped out of high school when she was pregnant with me, and working in minimum wage jobs on the off chance she was actually working, but she excelled at reading people. Usually at finding weaknesses, ways to inflict pain, but also to measure up wealth. Because wealth meant opportunity, a target, a con.

  And though Wyatt was only dressed in black jeans, a black shirt, and a leather jacket, she was taking note of the quality of his clothes, the fact the silver jewelry he was wearing was authentic and full of diamonds. And surely she recognized him since she loved trashy TV more than she loved tormenting me. She would usually combine the two by telling me that I wasn’t as pretty as this starlet, or that I would never be as thin as this one, or I’d never get a man like that rock star.

  I had a sick satisfaction at turning up with Wyatt’s hand in mine, even if she had been right, I hadn’t ‘gotten’ Wyatt more than I’d unwittingly trapped him.

  My mother grinned. It was not a smile full of happiness, I didn’t think I’d ever seen my mother happy. It was an upturned sneer more than anything else. “Ah, maybe you haven’t made as big of a mistake as I thought,” she said. “At least you’re having the kid for a good reason. It’ll be worth the misery it gives you if you can live in luxury. Only thing that would’ve been worth having you for would’ve been if your father had money.” She scowled in the direction of the funeral parlor. “He promised me he would, which was why I kept you instead of taking care of you like I wanted. But he didn’t keep his promises, so I was left poor and with a baby I didn’t want. You might not do much right, but opening your legs to this one was a good choice.” She nodded to Wyatt.

  I was used to the words, having heard almost all of them, or a version at least, for the first eighteen years of my life. They shouldn’t have cut me. But my emotional skin tore open, her words a hot knife. I struggled for the bitchy retort I was known for. I didn’t take anyone’s shit, was always quick to stand up for myself and never shied away from a fight.

  But here I was, in front of a woman who deserved not only a fight but a football field’s worth of karma, and I had nothing. I was the little girl locked in her room, hungry and broken all over again.

  “Right,” Wyatt hissed, voice shaking with fury I’d never heard contained in it before. “We’re fucking leaving.”

  “You sure?” Mom asked, sipping from her glass. “We haven’t even gotten to know each other properly. And it’ll be such a shame to have to embellish things I’ve just gotten to know when the reporters want to talk to me about being a grandma.”

  I wanted to snort at the idea of this creature being a grandmother. She couldn’t be since it would’ve required her being a mother in the first place. I felt a strange stab of pain at the thought of my daughter not having something like that. Wyatt was yet to mention breaking the news to his parents or mention his parents at all since I’d brutally shut him down that day.

  I felt sick with the idea that my daughter would grow up without a grandma to love her, bake her cookies, teach her how to sew, or whatever the fuck grandmothers did.

  But then I thought of Ava, who’d done all those things with Lexie and me, even though neither of us were her blood. Of Steve, who slipped money into my backpack when I wasn’t looking and taught me how to throw a punch.

  Blood didn’t mean family. And the universe provided family for those who deserved it.

  Mia wouldn’t bake cookies with my daughter, nor could she sew, but she’d show her love and laughter. Something sorely lacking from the woman in front of me.

  Wyatt’s grip tightened around my hand as his entire body changed. He’d always been strong, dangerous, but in a more low-key way than someone like Killian who wore it on his skin. But I didn’t think I’d even seen Killian call up a fury like Wyatt was wearing right now.

  “Try it,” he hissed. “You know how many tacky whores have tried to sell shit to reporters over the years? I know how to deal with you because you’re all the same. Pathetic and disgusting, and unoriginal as fuck.”

  I was sure my mother had some kind of reaction to a world-famous rock star speaking to her like that at her husband’s funeral, and I was sure such a look would’ve been one that would’ve made me happier than anything else, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off Wyatt. I was also trying not to climb him like a tree, my need to grab his face and French him in front of my mother at my father’s funeral damn near overwhelming.

  I loved him. So much in that moment. For his fury. For the fact he didn’t hesitate to stand up for me, to fight for me. For the way he’d held my hand for hours, didn’t speak to me because he knew I needed silence. For the fact that he’d dropped everything else in his life to fly to Washington with me. For holding me as I fell asleep into a tub of ice cream. For buying me and the baby five-thousand-dollar cribs, for crying at the ultrasound and for everything else in between.

  Mostly for not walking away when I asked him to, when I pushed him with ugly words and lies.

  I would’ve kissed him, jumped on him in that moment if he didn’t choose to tighten his grip on my hand, and then turn and walk off, dragging me with him.

  I didn’t even look back fo
r one last glimpse of my absent, abusive and evil mother. No, I didn’t look back at my past. Not with Wyatt in front of me pulling me toward an expensive, obnoxious SUV and some semblance of a future.

  He opened the door for me, turning to run his gaze over my body as if he were checking me over for injuries. “Em.” He brushed his hand over my jaw. “You okay?”

  “Did you call my mother a whore at my father’s funeral, seconds after meeting her?” I asked, in somewhat of a daze.

  “Speaking the truth, a kind one at that.” He didn’t apologize for it, and it made my heart smile

  “I love you.”

  I didn’t plan on saying the words then. I didn’t actually plan on saying them ever, because I knew what damage those three words would do to Wyatt. To me. Left unsaid, we could work around them, I could lie and make sure he wasn’t tangled up in my fucked-up life any more than he needed to be.

  But it was my fucked-up life—and probably a healthy dose of hormones—that made me say the words I’d promised myself I’d never say to Wyatt.

  He froze, his hand still mid-air, inches away from my jaw.

  “Did you just say three words I’ve been waiting for what seems like my whole fucking life because I called your mom a whore at your dad’s funeral?” he asked, his voice thick.

  I swallowed, my kneejerk reaction was to say something sharp and cut through the moment with a lie about how I didn’t mean it. But I couldn’t. I physically couldn’t. “No,” I whispered. “I love you because you called me to wish me luck on my job interview.”

  He didn’t question the strange reasoning, didn’t speak at all. No, he grabbed the back of my head and yanked my mouth to his, kissing me with a ferocity that tore through my soul.

  “I love you,” he murmured against my mouth. “Now, get in the car so I can take you back where I’m going to hear you say those three words when I’m inside you.”

  And me, who hated Wyatt ordering me around, did exactly as I was told.

  And Wyatt did exactly as promised.

  * * *

  We were lying in bed, my body aching beautifully in all the right places. My heart aching painfully at what had just happened. What had just changed.

  Everything.

  Fear clutched at my throat making it hard to breathe.

  I was in the city that offered me nothing but pain, the graveyard of my hopes and dreams and whatever person I might’ve been had I had a childhood that wasn’t completely fucked up.

  I was here with a baby in my belly, with a world-famous rock star, in a mansion he’d rented for us because he didn’t want to risk anyone seeing us in a hotel. He wanted to protect me from his life at the same time I was trying to keep him from the reality of mine.

  We hadn’t spoken since we’d gotten into the house and he’d ordered me to take off all my clothes.

  So he could “fucking marvel at me.”

  And I did.

  There wasn’t much more speaking after that, apart from Wyatt demanding that I repeat the three words I’d blurted and had yet to regret.

  And he repeated them to me.

  I never considered myself to be a woman that would feel complete from three meaningless words uttered by a man. Even if that man was Wyatt. Especially if that man was Wyatt.

  But lying in his arms, after being faced with the woman whose love I never received and who was the one person meant to be biologically programmed to love me, the woman who convinced me I wasn’t worth loving—I was complete.

  Wyatt’s hand was resting protectively on my naked belly, rubbing back and forth.

  I had been feeling self-conscious of how big I was getting, but Wyatt made sure to show me just how beautiful he considered my ever increasing mass.

  “Can’t believe you came from that,” he said finally, his voice more than a whisper.

  I laughed without humor as my light thoughts were weighed down by my ugly past. “Of course you can, just look at me.”

  He snatched my chin, forcing my face to meet his. “I am looking at you. Have looked at you for almost a decade. And not once have I seen a shred, a fucking ounce of what that bitch has in spades.” He paused. “You really think you’re like her? Anything like her?”

  I shrugged. “I know I’m not like her. But I came from her. That’s got to mean something.”

  He stroked my bottom lip, face still tight. “It means that I’ve got one thing to thank that bitch for, and one thing only. She pushed you out, but that’s where her part in your life stopped. Everything you lived through, everything you are is in spite of her and your father. You came from you, Emma. She gave birth to you, but you created yourself.”

  His words caressed me the same way that his hand was caressing my stomach, warming me up.

  “Would you be with me if it wasn’t for the fact I was pregnant?” I finally voiced the thought that had burrowed its way into my mind like a worm does an apple, rotting it from the inside out. I didn’t know why I chose this beautiful moment to ruin, but I was unable to continue to lie here and listen to beautiful words unless the ugly truth was out.

  He stared at me, not giving me the immediate lie that most men would with such a question. Usually they had a kneejerk response to such things, like the answer to “does this make me look fat?” is always “no” and “am I prettier than her?” is always “hell fucking yes.”

  But Wyatt and I lived honestly. Even if that honesty was painful. Especially if it was. That’s what got us here, after all.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally, the three words chipping away at layers of my heart.

  Though I prided myself on the fact I lived honestly, I longed for the comfort of a lie, if only to save myself from more pain.

  “That’s not because I don’t want you,” he continued, voice firm. “Or because you’re anything less than magnificent. It’s more because...” He trailed off, brows furrowed as he searched for the words.

  I tried to be patient, tried not to rip myself from his arms and run away before he could reject me.

  “You remember after Lexie was shot, I tried to make it more, and you said you would rather stay strangers in that sense than have to go through the process of making heartbreak turn us into strangers?” he said finally.

  I nodded slowly.

  “Yeah, I think it was that. I was terrified of making something wonderful with you, terrified of one or both of us fucking it up and having to go from something like that to nothing at all. I guessed I would rather have you in my life and want you with all that I was, than have had you, and then only have the memory of you.” His eyes went to my stomach. “So when I got over myself, stopped being a fucking asshole, realized how amazing it was that you were having my baby, I realized that I would have a tie to you forever. That it was impossible for us to be strangers from then on.”

  Every word he spoke flayed at more of the protective and calcified layers I’d covered my heart with to avoid the pain I’d grown up with.

  It was too uncomfortable, his words, this feeling.

  I longed for numbness, for escape in the form of a little white pill. Because they made me feel numb when I was in too much pain, I didn’t realize that I’d also need them to insulate me against happiness that was more dangerous than any kind of misery heartbreak offered me.

  Wyatt’s grip on my chin tightened. “Something’s tickin’ in your mind. No, something’s scraping at your mind, you’re torturing yourself.”

  I blinked at him. “How do you know that?”

  “Know what you look like when you’re in pain, Emma,” he said, taking my hands. “Because I was the reason for it in the not so distant past. I’ve made myself score that image onto my brain, so I never forget it, never cause it and figure out a way to make it go away.”

  My breath left me in a whoosh. I blinked rapidly at the strange prickling sensation behind my eyes.

  Wyatt brushed away a tear that I’d failed to hold back, he regarded the wetness on his thumb. “I’ve never seen you cr
y, Em.”

  “It’s the hormones,” I snapped, unable to get a sufficient bite to my voice. “I cry at everything. Therefore you can’t say things like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know what.”

  “I won’t say things like that if you tell me what’s hurtin’ you.”

  “The human being crushing my internal organs and stretching my womb,” I said immediately.

  “Nice try.”

  “You’re putting me on a pedestal, Wyatt,” I said after a long silence. “You’re saying all these nice things to me, thinking that I’m worth it—”

  “You are worth it,” he interrupted, voice hard.

  “You think that because you think you know me,” I said. “The me I’ve projected onto the world, onto you, so you wouldn’t see how fucking damaged I am and run a mile. I’m so damaged I can’t even handle myself,” I whispered. “Before I got pregnant, I was on anti-depressants.”

  Wyatt’s face changed. But he didn’t speak. He seemed to sense I needed to continue.

  “I can’t handle the world,” I said, not meeting his eyes. “That’s why I got those fucking pills in the first place.”

  “No, babe,” he said, forcing me to meet his eyes. I braced myself for seeing pity there, but there was only the same expression he wore before I uttered something I hadn’t told anyone else. Love. Respect. “It’s the fact that you can handle the world, you got them. Because most people don’t even try. ‘Cause the world’s too fucked up and ugly and they shove their heads in the sand and pretend that it’s not the way it is. You don’t live for bullshit and you’re the most stubborn person I know. You’re determined to live your life real and honest. And because you’ve convinced yourself you don’t deserve beautiful, you’ve forced yourself only to see the ugliness of the world that most people are blind to. No fucking way is you finding a way to deal with the world weak.”

  Tears were streaming down my cheeks now. “Fuck,” I hissed. “I’ve never cried in my life and sweet words from a rock star and I’m turning into fucking Sam whenever he watches The Notebook.”

  He grinned, kissing my nose. “Babe, no way am I sweet. It’s just the most beautiful, extraordinary and bitter woman who brings out my sweet, ‘cause she needs it.”