Rev It Up (Black Knights Inc. #3)(85)
“Never doubted it for an instant, chère,” Rock winked.
“No?” She slowly pushed up from the lumpy love seat and softly padded across the room, backing Rock out into the hall so their conversation wouldn’t disturb the small amount of sleep Jake was able to snatch between doctor’s visits. With a concussion, he was prodded awake and bombarded with questions to check his cognition every hour on the hour. “You didn’t even doubt it when he did a swan dive into my kitchen floor?”
Lord knows she’d suffered a moment of uncertainty. Especially when it seemed to take for-freakin’-ever for the ambulance to arrive, and all the while Jake’s breathing was rapid and shallow, his pulse thready. Holding his ravaged head in her lap, applying pressure to that gruesome wound, she’d made a deal with God.
Let Jake live, and she wouldn’t fight him over the joint custody of Franklin.
It was a deal she planned to keep even though doing so was going to kill a little part of her…
“Non, not even then,” Rock said, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. They were silent for a while before Rock spoke again. “I’m, uh,” he scratched his ear and grimaced. “I’m sorry about your nanny. If Vanessa and I had found out about Johnny earlier, we could’ve—”
“No,” she stopped him, shaking her head as her heart bled with remorse. Lisa Brown had been a sweet, beautiful woman with a bright future, and Michelle didn’t think there was a level of hell nasty enough for the likes of Johnny Vitiglioni after what he’d done to her. Every time she thought of it, she wanted to slit Johnny’s throat all over again. And she’d learned from the investigating officers that they’d found a dozen blue roses in Lisa’s apartment. Those goddamned blue roses. Michelle never wanted to see another one in her entire life. “You can’t blame yourself. Johnny was a monster. And we have to take comfort, small as it may be, in the knowledge that he’s dead. That he’ll never do to another woman what he did to Lisa.”
“Oui,” Rock sighed, and once again they fell into silence, each lost in their own thoughts, their own grief. Then Rock cocked his head, letting his eyes run over her face.
“What’s that look for?” she asked. “Do I look as bad as I feel?” When this was all over, when everything was finally said and done, she was going to sleep for a week. Maybe two weeks…
“Ya know you’re always beautiful to me, Shell. No matter what.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes, not buying Rock’s whole charming-southern-gentleman act for an instant. She hadn’t looked in a mirror, but she was pretty sure she could pass for an extra in The Walking Dead. “Okay,” she crossed her own arms, mirroring his stance, “so then what’s with the look?”
“You’ve been keeping secrets, ma petite soeur.”
And yep, the Black Knights grapevine had obviously been hard at work.
She sighed with resignation. “And you’re one to talk?”
“You’ve got me there,” he slung an arm around her shoulders, pulling her back until she leaned against the wall beside him. “So what are you guys going to do?” he whispered in her ear after a long pause, hugging her close to his side.
And suddenly the need to cry was overwhelming. She’d held everything together all night, but now that the adrenaline had worn off, she was teetering precariously close to the edge of an emotional breakdown.
A well-deserved emotional breakdown, as far as she was concerned.
“We’re going to split custody.” Just saying the words out loud felt like a punch in the gut. “Jake says Frank offered him a job, so he’s moving here to Chicago. It’ll be a struggle, no doubt, given the nature of the work you guys do and how inconsistent his schedule will be, but we’ll figure it out.”
Rock turned toward her, his brow furrowed. “You mean ya’ll aren’t gonna try to make it work?”
A hard stone of remorse settled in the pit of her stomach, making her nauseated on top of her nearly overwhelming grief. “It’s impossible,” she shook her head. “He’ll never forgive me.”
“Are ya sure about that?”
She searched Rock’s hazel eyes, her own hot with unshed tears. There was so much she could cry about, so much she should cry about, but she was afraid to start. Because once she did, she might never stop. “How could he? I kept his son from him and I—”
“You thought you had your reasons,” he interrupted.
“I thought I did,” she hiccupped, unable to stop the tear that spilled onto her cheek. “But I was wrong. So wrong. He’s nothing like my father, Rock. Because my father was an incredibly thoughtless man who only ever really cared about one thing, himself. But Jake,” she shook her head, “Jake cares so much about all of us that he took himself away from everything and everyone he knew and loved in order to—” She choked on her tears, unable to go on now that she was admitting the truth to herself. The awful, horrible truth…
Rock pulled her into his embrace, and she wished she could find comfort there. Unfortunately, she feared she’d never be comforted again.
“Now don’t go making a martyr outta him, ma belle,” Rock crooned. “He made his share of mistakes, too.”
She shook her head against his shoulder. “But they’re nothing compared to—”