Where I Belong (The Debt Book 2)

by Molly O'Keefe

  “I look at you and I see how I hurt you. I see how Amelia hurt you. I see how everyone has hurt you. You’re bruised, son. And I can see it. Everyone can see it.”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  “I’d give anything to change that. To undo what I did to you.”

  “You can’t,” I snapped. “And it doesn’t matter what you think you see in me. I don’t care.”

  “Please, Tommy—” His blue eyes… my mother’s blue eyes, my fucking blue eyes… “Let me try to explain—”

  “I don’t give a shit about your explanations. Or your reasons. They change nothing. They mean nothing. I grew up without you. Your daughter died without you.”

  He looked away, chin shaking. He wiped a shaking hand over his mouth.

  Good, I thought.

  “She was ill. Your mom. Mentally—”

  “Fuck you.”

  He sighed, hung his head. “We were constantly battling her, and drugs, and men who wanted to hurt her, and friends who wanted to use her. We tried… we tried. Betsey—” His voice broke wide open on a hard sob, and I didn’t care.

  I didn’t.

  “My wife, she tried so hard to keep that girl with us. To keep her in our lives. To keep her safe. But Amelia didn’t care. She was so fun and so bright, but she could be so mean.”

  I had no sympathy for this man who with one stroke of his pen signed my life over to one of dread and stress and fear. None.

  But the woman he was describing. That was my mom.

  I remembered that. Bright and fun but so, so mean.

  She didn’t care about being safe. Didn’t care about me being safe.

  She cared about the man treating her right. And the drugs that made her feel good.

  That part I recognized, and it made me even more pissed. Because I wanted to believe, so hard, so deep in my gut that something this asshole did had caused that in her.

  Nurture not nature.

  “So?” I asked. “What did you do to her? What made her like that?”

  If I’d punched him in his old-man face, I couldn’t have hurt him more. I saw it. For a split second the raw, open wound of his relationship with my mother was there—visible. But he shuttered it fast.

  “I was too hard on her,” he said. “I wasn’t kind when I needed to be kind. I… I think I made her feel like she didn’t ever do anything right. That I wasn’t proud of her.”

  “That doesn’t sound like she was mentally unwell. It sounds like shitty parenting.”

  “She was bipolar. Diagnosed when she was sixteen and she tried to commit suicide—”

  I jerked. Both of us held still in the aftermath of that word.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I was eight when she died. We didn’t get to that conversation.”

  “For a while she was better. Medicated. But she didn’t like the meds. They made her feel flat. That’s the word she used, flat. So she went off them. Started drinking. Drugs. We fought…we fought all the time. And then she came home pregnant. And she was clean again. On her meds again. She was—”

  “Normal?” I snapped, hating the word and knowing he was thinking it.

  “What’s normal? We certainly never tried to be that. We tried to be caring. We tried to give her boundaries.”

  I just stepped away, turning as if to leave, and he put a hand up to stop me.

  “She was happy. We thought. Pregnant with you, we thought she was happy. And then you were born and this house… I swear this house was brand-new. All of us were brand-new with you. You lived with us for six months,” he said in a rush, stepping forward again. “You were the sweetest baby. All eyes and smiles. Tiny.” He held out his hand, his great big palm stretched open. “I could hold you here.” He pointed at his palm with his other hand. “For hours. Right there… and then you were gone.”

  “Yeah, fuck that, asshole.”

  He flinched at the vulgarity and I remembered my mom had a mouth on her and I imagined her screaming that at him in this house.

  Part of me felt small. Part of me, on the other side of being a teenager, felt… bad.

  “When the social worker showed up on our door about you, Betsey was dying. And I couldn’t…”

  “Yeah, I get it. You couldn’t take anything else on. I totally understand. Like a pet, right? Or watering a neighbor’s plants or some shit. I mean, I was just too much.”

  He took my sarcasm on the chin. Like he deserved it, and he did, so I just stared at him.

  “She was dying,” he said. “And it was ugly and it was painful and I wanted to die with her. I’d screwed up with Amelia, and I couldn’t imagine bringing you into our life so I could screw you up too. The social worker said you were in a good house. Your first foster home.”

  I couldn’t remember the timeline. I was just a kid, after all. Maybe I was in a safe place and that was why they signed the paperwork. But it didn’t last.

  Nothing ever does.

  “Those were my reasons,” he said. “They’re… they’re not good. I know that. But that’s why I signed the paper. I thought you were in a safe place. A good place.”

  “I was beaten; did you know that? My back, my ass, the palms of my hands—” I held one out like a sick parody of what he’d done just a few seconds before. He had the good sense to close his hands and tuck them into fists in his pockets.

  “Do you know what happened to us at St. Joke’s? What happened to Beth?”

  The second I said her name, it was like there was a whole new level of betrayal. Like I was standing on a porch thinking, wow, this is such shit, but I wasn’t aware of the giant house made of betrayal behind me.

  “Beth,” I breathed, nearly doubling over with the pain of it all.

  “Tommy,” Peter said, suddenly stern. Suddenly all guard dog.

  “She knew. She… she came and found you when she ran away, didn’t she? Oh my God.” I put my body against the counter because my legs felt too weak to hold me up.

  I’d told her that I had grandparents. Who owned a farm.

  “She came looking for us after she ran away from her mother. But Betsey was long dead and it was only me and she just wanted… I think… to be close to you. Somehow.”

  “She’s been lying to me for days,” I said.

  Lying while I’d been thinking about a life. A love.

  Lying. About this.

  “Don’t be mad at her,” Peter said.

  “Tommy?” It was Beth outside, calling for me.

  And I felt my heart rip right in half.

  10

  Beth

  I woke up to the sound of another series of texts binging through on a phone.

  The satellite again.

  I rolled to the side of the bed and picked up Tommy’s phone from the bedside table, sure it was my assistant with information on meetings. Or the information that no one wanted to have meetings anymore.

  And truthfully, I wasn’t sure which one I wanted.

  But the texts were from a number I didn’t recognize.

  Bates needs proof.

  Proof of Beth being all right.

  Proof her mother means her harm.

  Proof, Tommy, or he’s letting Sammy off his fucking leash.

  How many times did I tell you not to screw this up, Tommy!

  I scrambled fast out of bed, grabbing the phone and shoving my body into clothes, my feet into shoes. I blinked into the sunlight as I took the stairs two at a time.

  Middle of the morning, it looked like. We’d slept half the day away.

  “Tommy!” I yelled, crossing the dirt parking area. I ran around to the patio overlooking the ocean, but he wasn’t there.

  “Beth.” It was Peter saying my name. From inside the house. And there was something in his tone that told a simple story about despair. And loss.

  My stomach turned to ice, and the phone nearly slipped from my suddenly numb hands. I saw them through the sliding glass doors. In the kitchen. That fucking photograph on the fridge be
hind Tommy’s head.

  I pushed open the door, using my body weight because my hands barely worked, and Tommy…Tommy wasn’t even looking at me. He stared at the corner of the counter as if there was something happening there.

  As if he’d rather look at anything but me.

  But the muscle in his jaw was bouncing so hard I knew he was clenching his teeth. Every muscle in his neck stood out against his skin. Pest, in his arms, whimpered.

  He knows.

  He knows who Peter is. Who his mother was.

  He knows I lied to him.

  “Tommy,” I whispered, my voice drenched in apology, and that made him look up at me. And for a moment, I saw it. All the pain I’d caused him. The pain his mother had caused him. His grandparents.

  Every person in his life who never wanted him enough to be honest. To take a risk. To give more of themselves than they asked of him. Because Tommy, I knew with the kind of pain that came from knowing something too well and too late—Tommy would have given all of us… everything.

  For one bright second, his blue eyes swam with tears.

  And I’d never seen him cry. Not once. Not when he got starved and beaten. When his hands were so ruined he couldn’t hold a pencil. Not when he came charging into that room to save me. Not even when he saw me again.

  This made him cry.

  “Tommy,” I whispered again because it was the only word I knew right now. The only word that made sense. His name over and over again, pounding through my body with the beat of my heart.

  “How—” He stopped himself, shook his head. As if arguing with himself. As if telling himself that it didn’t matter. The answers to all the questions he had burning through his brain—they didn’t matter.

  Because all that mattered was the lie. And the rejection. And the pain.

  “I’m sorry,” I managed, my throat sore with the force I was using to hold back my own crying.

  “I’ll bet,” he said with a hard laugh.

  I charged across the room toward him, with the sudden idea that if I could touch him, I could convince him, but he jerked back when I got to the kitchen counter. Jerked back like he didn’t want me to touch him.

  Jerked back like he knew I would hurt him.

  He flinched away from me.

  I stopped in my tracks and looked over at Peter and realized he was in the same position. Frozen, trapped. Wanting to get closer to Tommy but knowing he’d run if we did.

  “How did this even happen?” he finally asked, the tears gone. His eyes bone-dry.

  “After I ran away, I came here. Looking for your family.”

  “How? Like…what did you even have to go on?”

  “It wasn’t easy, but you said that they were farmers south of Santa Barbara.”

  “So you drove by every farm?”

  “No, I searched online. Land taxes and sales...”

  “Oh my God,” he breathed, staring up at the ceiling. “That’s insane.”

  “Not really… the Internet made it pretty easy. Peter made it hard,” I said with a laugh, like any of this was funny. It sounded sharp and awful, a sob gone wrong.

  Tommy looked at Peter and then at me. “Why?”

  “He’s…well, he’s sort of off the grid here. Not so easy to find. Family land and all that.”

  “And you went to all that work?” Tommy asked, and I nodded. “Why?”

  “I had this dream that I’d come up the driveway and I’d knock on some stranger’s door, sure—at least mostly sure—that it was your family’s house, and the door would open and it would be you.”

  “Why the fuck would you think I would be here?” he asked.

  “Because he’s your family and everyone needs someplace to belong.”

  ‘Well, I don’t belong here,” Tommy said. “He made that clear.”

  “I am so sorry,” Peter said, hanging his head. “I thought you’d be better off without me. The social worker said that you’d be cared for.”

  Tommy nodded. “Yeah, that didn’t work out so well for me, Peter.”

  “I know. And I’m…I’m sorrier than I can say.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you are. But it doesn’t matter. Were you just… waiting for me to leave?” he asked. “Like, hoping I wouldn’t come inside and see the pictures and I would leave and you’d never have to tell me who you were?”

  Peter looked over at me, and I felt my guilt like a noose. “It was me,” I whispered. “Peter wanted to tell you.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “No. I did. I just didn’t know how.”

  “Like it’s that fucking hard? You’ve known we were coming here since we left that gas station. You’ve had days to tell me.”

  “Yes. And yes, Tommy, it is that fucking hard because I knew it would hurt you. And you’re right, I put off telling you so I could put off hurting you. And it’s shit, but it’s the truth. This is the only safe place I have. And it’s the place that would hurt you the worst.”

  He hung his head again, and Pest stretched her neck and licked his chin like she knew he needed some help. Some comfort. And my body, my heart, everything in me ached to give him that comfort.

  Slowly I stepped forward, and he lifted his head. Watching me warily, but not moving. So I took another step toward him. Another. Until we were in the kitchen together. Not close enough to touch, no, but close enough to breathe the same air. Close enough that I had some hope. That he knew I’d fucked up but that we could get past this somehow. This was our fresh start.

  He watched me for a long time, totally unreadable, and I had no sense of whether he forgave me or understood. Or if he was just barely managing to hold on to his fury. He was like an electric wire standing in that kitchen. So still. So powerful. Capable of burning this whole place down if he wanted.

  “I’m glad you have a safe place,” he said, his voice quiet and low. Completely Tommy.

  And then he turned to Peter. “Thank you for taking her in. Helping her. She needed that.”

  “You’re welcome,” Peter said, blinking, nearly smiling like he was walking out of a cave into full sunlight. And I wanted to tell him to stop, to not get his hopes up, because Tommy was far from forgiving us. The easiest thing for Tommy was to put other people first. And he was just doing what was easy right now. “And now that you’re here, we can—”

  Tommy didn’t even let him finish. He was past me without touching me. I only felt the current of air in the wake of his body as he left. He was out of the kitchen and out the door, the screen slamming against the wood. A terrible, lonesome, final sound.

  “Goddamn it,” Peter said.

  I gasped, feeling like I was going underwater. “I can fix this. I can.”

  I didn’t know how. Had no idea how. But I was going to try. I followed him out the door, letting the screen bang shut behind me, too. He was walking into the apartment above the garage, and I took the stairs two at a time again, my breath stuck in my throat.

  “Tommy,” I gasped, shutting the apartment door behind us. He had set Pest down on the bed, and she’d burrowed in under the covers, her nose tucked under her tail. “I can explain.”

  “You already did,” he said in a voice so calm and quiet it was chilling. He stepped past me into the bathroom and started to brush his teeth. All without looking at me.

  “You’re angry.”

  He spat into the sink and kept brushing.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He ran water over his toothbrush and then almost put it back in the cup but instead threw it in the little garbage can between the sink and the toilet.

  “Is that my phone?” he asked, pointing at my hand.

  I’d forgotten. Carissa. Bates. The proof he needed.

  I put the phone in my back pocket. “It is. And I’ll give it to you after we talk.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about, Beth,” he said. Finally he looked at me, and his eyes were dead. I was a stranger in front of him, and from the look on his face, one he didn’t much care
for.

  “Don’t, Tommy,” I breathed, tears clawing up my throat. “Don’t do this…”

  He laughed but it wasn’t funny. He laughed, but it hurt. “I haven’t done anything, Beth.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” I said.

  He opened his eyes wide like he was surprised I was taking a swing at him. But I was so desperate, if fighting kept him here, I would fight.

  “Are you talking about kidnapping you, because you know I didn’t really have a choice—”

  “And I didn’t have a choice about bringing you here. It’s not like either one of us has a ton of friends. This was the one place I could think of. And I hated it because I knew it would hurt you.”

  “I didn’t lie to you,” he said.

  “Right. But there are a million ways you didn’t tell the truth.”

  “What?” he cried, his face screwed up, and I knew the next words out of his mouth were going to be fuck you, so I jumped in before we started saying things we didn’t mean.

  “And I didn’t either. We are splitting hairs between each other because that’s what we do. That’s how we stay safe. Even with each other. No one ever believes me when I tell the truth. My mother didn’t; the one person in my life who should have believed me, and instead she taught me how to lie. And I’ve never…I never meant to lie. But I’m trying to figure out how to tell the truth. I lied to you, I did. And I’m so sorry.”

  His jaw went hard again, and his eyes found something interesting on the door frame instead of looking at me.

  “Hardly matters now, does it?” he asked, stepping by me, our bodies touching, electric and sizzling with all this anger. I was losing him and I wanted him all at once.

  “I think it does,” I said. Watching as he grabbed what little stuff he had. The duffel bag and the food for Pest. “I love you, Tommy.”

  “Don’t.” He shook his head, throwing shit in his bag now.

  “I love you.”

  “Stop.”

  “I’ve always loved you.”

  “Goddamn it, Beth!” he cried, not moving but shaking almost. Every muscle rigid. I took a careful step toward him. Tommy would never hurt me, not on purpose, not with his body, but he could tear me apart right now. Pull me to pieces with just a word.