Needing Her (From Ashes #1.5)(36)

“Maci, don’t start this—”

She shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. But it wasn’t a defensive stance, it looked like she was curling in on herself. “No, Connor, don’t tell me what to do or not to do. You didn’t like that I kept waiting for you to hurt me, that I acted like I didn’t care about you. Why is it okay for you to get frustrated when I lie because I’m shielding myself from being hurt by you, but it’s not okay for me to get upset when you lie to me?”

“I won’t hurt you.” My body felt hot and cold at once as I remembered making her bleed last night, and the nightmare I’d just repressed came flooding back.

“You keep saying that. I know. But you’re keeping something from me.”

Shaking the disturbing images from my head, I flung my arms out to the side, and tried to remember what we were talking about. “I don’t understand why you’re getting this worked up over my sister.”

“Don’t say it like that. You know why I’m upset. You freeze up whenever anyone mentions her, and you did it with me just now. If you want me to keep being open and honest with you, you need to be honest with me. I know you’re hiding something, Connor.”

“No, you think—”

“Save it. Have a good day.”

“Maci!”

She didn’t respond, and I didn’t go after her. Because she was right . . . I just couldn’t tell her. Sharing my past with Cassidy—and people who could benefit from my story—was one thing. Telling Maci was another. She’d had no idea that Amy and I were even adopted. And if I told her about my past, I’d have to tell her about my fears of the future. I wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t ready to lose her.

Once I heard both our doors open and shut, I slowly got out of the bed and went about straightening it up before picking up the broken pieces of my lamp. I tried to stop the thought that by keeping Maci in the dark . . . and keeping her . . . I’d actually just lost her.

Letting our night together flood my mind instead, I took a shower, dressed, and headed over to Amy’s to spend time with her and my nephew.

AMY HAD SPENT most of the last two hours watching me carefully, and I’d hated that she was doing it. I knew what she was doing. She was about to go all mom mode on me, and she’d see right through my bullshit.

With a sigh, I sat up with Ben in my arms and focused on her. “Just say it. Let’s get it over with.”

Her lips pulled up on one side in a sympathetic smile. “What happened between you and Maci? You were so happy when I saw you last week.”

Knowing it was pointless to lie, I told her about this morning, and waited for five agonizing minutes as she studied me.

“You still haven’t told her about us?”

“Still?” I asked, a little confused. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘still.’ We’ve only been seeing each other for a week and a half.”

“You told Cassidy and you weren’t even seeing her,” she said, accusation coating her voice.

“Cassidy was different and you know that. She had a past worse than ours, she understood.”

“But you weren’t in love with her.”

I sat there, waiting for her to correct herself . . . or maybe for myself to realize I’d heard her wrong. But the way her eyes speared me, I knew I’d heard her correctly. “I’m sorry . . . but I’m not in love with Maci either.”

“Maybe not yet, but she’s different for you. You can’t deny that.”

Ben started squirming in my arms, so I let him go to crawl around the floor between us. “It doesn’t matter if she is or not, nothing can come of it and you know it.”

“Why not, Connor? What is so wrong with marrying Maci Price? You’re fearless, her brothers can’t scare you that bad.”

I looked at her, horrified. “I can’t marry her.”

“You would have married Cassidy.”

“She would have understood, Amy! She would have understood everything!” I tried to calm down as I waited for her to respond. But she just sat there shaking her head at me. “What?”

“Kevin didn’t have our past: was it wrong for me to marry him? Was it wrong for me to have Ben?”

“Amy”—I sighed and ran my hands through my hair—“you don’t have problems with your anger like I do.”

“You don’t have a problem with your anger. You’re afraid of getting angry, period. There’s a difference. You can’t always be afraid to turn into him, Connor. We don’t have his genes, who knows what either of our biological fathers were like? Mom sold herself so she could get coke. What you should have been afraid of all this time was developing a drug problem, because our fathers probably had one too. The man you’re afraid of turning into just took his anger with our mother out on us. You need to get that through your mind.”

I sat there staring at the floor and chewing on the inside of my cheek, trying to stop myself from saying what I so badly wanted to. But, in the end, it still came out. “When we were adopted, you were terrified of new men. Anytime you saw a man that was older, you would start shaking. It took you years of being asked out by guys at school before you finally said yes, and then you came home crying because you were afraid he would turn out just. Like. Him. Until Kevin came along, the only man you ever trusted was Dad. I have nightmares of me being the one to beat my future family. I never once judged you or said a word; I was just there for you. So don’t start judging me because of this.”