We stare each other down, unblinking, furious, until Easton breaks contact first—
And laughs.
I stumble back, nearly tripping on the bedding. “You think this is funny?”
He drops his chin, glances sideways at me and says, still chuckling, “Are we really fighting by flinging positive traits at each other?”
“I—” The corners of my lips pull, but I force them flat. “That doesn’t negate the point. My point.”
Easton closes the space between us and cups my face. I gasp at the contact. The heat.
“Okay,” he says in surrender. “We’ve established that we understand more about each other than we let on. I care about you, Taryn. More than I ever should. Yet, here I am.” He searches my eyes. “And now that I’ve had you, I don’t want to let you go. But I do want to kick the everlasting shit out of whoever left those marks on you.”
I hold his wrists, attempting to pull him away, but he remains firm. “I’m handling it.”
He continues searching my face, then comes to a conclusion. “I believe you. You’ve handled your shit singlehandedly for a long time. But I’ll make you a deal. I’ll let you try to teach me how you and Jamie listen and learn music without using hearing. I’ll even let you refresh my sign language ability. If you let me in on what you’re hiding. I’m here for you, Taryn. I know I walked away initially, but that was a mistake. You’re not alone anymore—”
I cut Easton off, searching him. “You’d tell your band the truth? If I explain to you my past, you’ll return to Nocturne Court with open honesty?”
Easton hesitates. “If I can grasp music competently, if I can come back to them strong, then yeah. I’ll tell them. But not as this. Not while I’m weak and unsure and a fucking baby learning “Frère Jacques” again.”
I lean back, and he lets me study every part of him for a lie. When I’m satisfied, I lift my sheet-dress and say, “We should get clothes on for this. And we’ll need a drink. It’s going to be a long night.”
And I pray I can get through it.
27
Easton
“I got married really young. When I was eighteen.”
My brows shoot skyward at that, but only for a millisecond. I don’t want to spook Taryn, so I very nonchalantly say, “Oh?”
She reclines in her seat, gripping her wine glass so tight I’m afraid she’ll shatter it. We’re seated at my high-top table, a two-seater I propped near the sliding doors to my poor excuse for a balcony. I’m on the fifth floor, there’s not really a view, but the fact my landlord can say “small terrace” on the lease gives him great arm-wrestle advantage.
The view that matters is directly in front of me, disheveled, sexy, and vulnerable. Back when we were in bed and Taryn threw her hair to the side, her shoulders bare, right after sex, I controlled the urge to pounce. Every part of her begs to be tasted, yet here we are. Instead of having sex again, she’s telling me she has an ex-husband.
My cock, understandably, is unamused.
“He was older,” Taryn continues, laying the rim of the wine glass against her lips, but not sipping. She stares out the clear sliding door instead. “Fifteen years older, actually.”
I nearly choke on my beer. “Holy shit. He was sleeping with a seventeen-year-old?”
“Eighteen,” she corrects firmly. “I was eighteen when I started seeing him and got pregnant.”
“And nineteen when you had Jamie. So, you were barely eighteen when a thirty-three year old started banging you.”
Her gaze cuts to me.
“Sorry,” I say. I’ll get nowhere with her if I swerve into the anger zone. “I’ll be good. Please go on.”
“I don’t tell people for this exact reason. The judgment. The stares. Yes, I’ve been married before. Yes, it was a quick engagement. So fucking what?”
I snag what’s important. “How long were you together?”
“When Jamie was five, almost six, I left Bryan. We were together about five years.”
“Have you dated anyone since?”
If Taryn’s put off by my digging, she doesn’t show it. “Yes. No. Not really. The few men I’ve tried haven’t worked out. I’ve never introduced anyone to Jamie. There almost was one, once. Sort of. But as soon as he found out I’d been married before and had a child at home, well … he’s not here, so you see where that went.”
“Those men aren’t men if they can’t handle some baggage,” I say after swallowing a big, cold gulp of beer.
She responds with a sad smile and sips her wine. “Thanks for that.”
“It’s true. Show me one dude who hasn’t fucked up and made mistakes in his past, and I’ll show you a virgin with a golden pussy who tastes like top shelf whiskey.”
Taryn laughs into her drink.
“Uh—sorry again. Guess you don’t need vulgar right now, either.”
“It’s refreshing, actually.” She sets down her drink and makes that throat noise signaling nervousness. “And the marriage was perfect, at first. He was older, yes, but that meant he was established. Settled. Mature, intelligent. I was fresh out of high school with no money and had strict parents who didn’t let me date or get a job until I was eighteen.”
“How’d you meet him?”
“Uh.” She looks to the ceiling and scrunches her brows. “He was the uncle of one of my friends in high school.”
Choking commenced. I really need to learn not to suck anything back after I ask her an open-ended question.
“Holy fucking Christ,” I say once I get my throat under control.
“Not what you expected, huh?”
“Can’t say I saw any of this coming, no.”
Her expression turns solemn. “Do you want me to stop? I understand if—”
“No. Absolutely not. This is your truth, and I want to know it. It doesn’t affect how I feel about you. Shocks the fuck out of me, sure, but it doesn’t gross me out. I mean, hell.” I gesture over at her. “Look at you now. And look at me. There’s a clear winner.”
She gives a closed-mouth smile in response, and I sense she’s still suspicious and unsure how I’ll react once her full story’s out. I don’t want her to feel that way, so I reach over and rub her forearm with my thumb. My attention’s drawn to the purple-red flaw on her soft skin, and it’s a harsh reminder of why we’re having this conversation. I grow serious.
“I won’t interrupt anymore,” I say.
She stares down at my hand. “He treated me like I was precious, and God, I can’t tell you how good that made me feel. At first, we met in secret. He didn’t want anyone to know, understandably. But the truth always has a way of revealing itself.” Taryn sighs. “My friend found out first. Bryan and I … we were making out in his car in his driveway and she was stopping by for help with her Economics homework. She couldn’t forgive me after that … I…” Taryn puts a hand to her forehead, and I squeeze her arm in encouragement.
“And then I got pregnant. After telling Bryan, we agreed we had to let my parents know, then his family. They ostracized us. My mom, she couldn’t believe it. I grew up in a very religious home, and this, well, it hurt her deeply. Despite it being her grandchild, she didn’t want anything to do with it. Me. Him. Dad was furious he couldn’t press charges against Bryan since I was a legal adult.” Taryn meets my eyes. “It was a mess. It was a goddamned mess, and I was a kid with no idea what I was getting into, other than that I was in love.”
“Happens to the best of us,” I murmur.
“Bryan had money, a home, the ability to take care of me, so the answer, back then, was clear. We’d get married, I’d move out of state with him to Massachusetts for a while—I’d gotten a full scholarship to Harvard, and he said he’d go with me, and we’d move there. That I didn’t have to drop out of college even though I was pregnant—we’d make it work. That’s how perfect he made it sound. We’d live happily ever after with our new baby.”
“You’re not an idiot for thinking that,” I say. “We all
have crazy dreams at eighteen. I wanted to be a famous rockstar. Wanna guess how well my parents took that little tidbit?”
It’s becoming harder for Taryn to smile, the deeper she delves, and my brows come down in concern. I don’t want to let go of her, so I keep my hand where it is.
“It was as I imagined, for a while. Bryan scored a great job in finance. I was able to enroll in Harvard. But then, our baby was born. I struggled to keep up with my classes, but I somehow made it work. We hired a nanny so I could keep up. But then she started saying things about Jamie. That he wasn’t responding normally, and with her twenty years’ experience with newborns, I grew concerned. We took him to the pediatrician where he had a boatload of tests. Including a hearing screening. Which he initially passed. Everything was normal when we brought Jamie back home. Tiring, brutal, and crazy with a newborn, but normal. Until I started noticing that Jamie wasn’t responding to things correctly, too. Like, there was a time Bryan accidentally set off the fire alarm when Jamie was two months old, and he didn’t jump or startle. At three months, he should’ve recognized my voice, yet he never looked at me when I started talking. Only when I got his attention. We took him back to the doctor and … yeah … Jamie was diagnosed with congenital hearing loss. It was devastating for us. I remember clutching Jamie and clutching Bryan and wishing it weren’t true.” Taryn blinks herself out of the memory. “Anyway, I was determined to be strong for Jamie. Learn what I needed to, buy what we had to in order for him to be comfortable and happy. He wasn’t a candidate for the implant, so I resolved myself to learn sign language—understanding that my son would be completely deaf. I refused to love him any less. I tried to do all that. I had to do the best that I…” her voice cracks.
“You have, Mama.” I squeeze her fingers and lean forward. “Jamie’s a fantastic kid.”
She nods and wipes away a stray tear. “He’s a little shit.”
I bark out a laugh. “That’s the best compliment you can give to a ten-year-old.”
“Bryan was on board,” Taryn says. “He swore he’d be there for us. I took a semester off and really concentrated on my baby. But Bryan started to change. Small things, at first. Like saying he’d learn sign language later, when Jamie could actually understand it. Or putting Jamie in front of the TV and turning the sound up as loud as possible, thinking that was the best way to entertain a deaf baby.”
It takes a whole lotta self-control not to sneer at the idiocy of the man.
“And Bryan kept talking to Jamie, like normal,” Taryn says. “I didn’t think anything of that—I mean, Jamie’s diagnosis …incurable—was hard to absorb. If Bryan wanted to take his time adjusting to our new normal, I wasn’t about to argue. But he kept doing it. Even when Jamie got older and started communicating with his hands, Bryan would respond with his voice. When Jamie couldn’t understand his dad, Bryan would either get frustrated, angry or both. So, he started ignoring Jamie.” Taryn shakes her head and covers her face in her hands. She says through her fingers, “Just … looking over Jamie’s head whenever Jamie tried to communicate with him or staying late at work and coming home long after Jamie was in bed. And, God—” Taryn reaches over and takes a long swallow of her wine. “One story I remember crystal clear. Bryan enrolled Jamie in T-ball when Jamie was four, and didn’t tell the coaches about Jamie’s deafness. He threw our little boy out in the field and expected to him to just know, and I went to the try-outs, thinking everyone was prepared for our boy. I let Bryan take the lead, since he seemed so excited to enroll Jamie. I thought, finally, Bryan’s connecting with his son through sports. This is great. A true father and son moment. They’re going to bond.” Taryn closes her eyes. She continues softly, “Jamie was terrified. All he saw was mouths moving at him, angry expressions, and balls and bats flying in his direction. Hurting him. He went into complete sensory overload and curled up into a ball at the pitcher’s mound, covering his head and swaying. Screaming. I’ve never heard him cry out like that before. Never. Never.” She swallows. “And I never expected Bryan to be on the sidelines, shouting at Jamie like everyone else.”
I lean back. “Jesus.”
“That was only the beginning,” Taryn whispers. “I began to resent that man. My husband. Jamie’s father. For doing nothing to protect our son. For acting like Jamie was a troubled kid, not a boy who only wanted his father to notice him. I’d decided to put Jamie to bed earlier, so there was less chance of Bryan and Jamie crossing paths, since it always led to Jamie’s tears. Or Bryan’s hands, balling into fists.”
I don’t like where this is going.
“He never hit Jamie,” Taryn says quickly, meeting my eyes. “I got Bryan to direct his anger somewhere else.”
My mouth forms the word, but I don’t speak it. No.
With an awful shimmer to her eyes, she nods. “There came a point I couldn’t take it anymore. He went too far. Hit my face, and I had to see Jamie’s nanny that morning and explain it, which I’d never had to do before. Bryan always left his marks in places I could hide. It was the T-ball that did it.”
“The day he threw Jamie to the wolves?”
“Essentially. That was the end of the line for me. I lost it—screamed at him once we were home and Jamie was calmed down and napping. Our marriage was at a breaking point long before this, we weren’t really talking, or having sex, or … anything but living parallel lives in the same home, really. But despite the growing distance, I remained the same: a passive, willing co-conspirator to the destruction of my son.”
I grab hold of her hands across the table. “You can’t say that about yourself.”
“I can, because it was true. That afternoon on the baseball diamond … it was brutally clear. If I continued down this path, all the while holding Jamie’s hand, he would be chipped away at until there was nothing left of him but the certainty he wasn’t good enough.” Taryn shows her teeth. “And that is what led me to yell at my husband. To shove him. Tell him the truth—that he was a coward, an ignorant bastard, and he’d never know the true gift of having a family, because I was going to leave him. Right then and there.”
I exhale. “And he … “
“Told me in no uncertain terms that if I left, I’d be the one destroyed. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be graduating Harvard. I’d be working in some shit job barely making ends meet if he hadn’t taken me in. If he hadn’t moved to another state for me. There was no mention that he had to leave our town, too. That he was vilified for seducing a teenager and looked upon with disgust by his family. I was to be pitied, not him. I was pathetic and unqualified, not him. He hurled these things at me like weapons.”
Taryn wipes the growing pools underneath her eyes. “And to prove his point, he broke my jaw.”
“Jes—fuck.” I stand, my chair ricocheting against the floorboards with radical sound.
Taryn jumps, and I come around, folding her into my chest. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to startle you. I—I was the one startled. I can’t believe—that fucker. That ultimate fuckwad. I’m going to find him, Taryn. I’m gonna track him down and—”
“No.” She lets me hold her but shakes her denial against my chest. “It’s in the past and I need to keep it there. I got away, Easton. I’m here now, with Jamie, and we’ve been living our best life for six years.”
“But.” Gently, I extricate her hand from the folds of my shirt and hold it up, showcasing the bruise. “He’s back.”
Taryn remains loosely in my embrace, but she doesn’t tilt her chin up to speak to me. “Bryan’s always been very political. Once I was in the hospital being treated, he … he realized the despicable position he’d put himself in. But he’s the ultimate negotiator and told me, if I agreed never to speak of this again—never to bring charges—he’d give me full custody of Jamie.”
Taryn breathes against me, deep and trembling. I rub between her shoulder blades, cup her head, and kiss her hair.
“You did what you had to in the moment,” I murmur.
“I took the coward’s way out,” she says, and I hold her tighter. “But I’m okay with that. He’d let me leave, so long as I sewed my mouth shut. I could take Jamie away before Bryan ever turned his fists on him, and that was enough for me.”
“He was biding his time,” I surmise, staring darkly out the window. “Because now he needs you again. Right? Or wants Jamie back?”
“I have a feeling he’s running for some kind of office and needs to showcase the perfect family.”
“And use a son with special needs to sway the public in his favor. Yeah, he’s a douchewad. What can we do?” I pull her gently away so we can face each other. “What can I do to help?”
Her brows pinch, and if it weren’t for depths of despair in her expression, layer after layer of torment, I’d smooth it over with my thumb, then kiss her fears into the galaxy.
“You want to stick around, after all this?” she asks.
“I have my own fucked up reasons for existing, too, you know. Nobody’s perfect. And anyone who appears flawless is hiding some kind of kink, I assure you.”
Taryn attempts a smile, but it falls right before the lift. “You’re a good man, Easton. I came here this afternoon to tell you that. I … we got distracted, and maybe I needed to lose myself for a while. I don’t regret what happened between us, but—you don’t want to get involved with me. With this. I promise you that.”
I cock my head as I stare down at her. “This is my fault. I haven’t shown you enough. I’ve spun you around, spit you out, and I didn’t give us the decency of time, which we could’ve had. So, all we got now is my word. And my words to you, Taryn Maddox, are that I’m gonna fucking stick around.”
Players to Lovers (4 Book Collection) Page 95
