When We Met (Fool's Gold #13)(46)

“He didn’t hit me much,” she continued, switching her attention to the ground. That was better, she thought. Safer. Dirt and old leaves, a few branches. “At least not at first. But when I was ten, she left. I came home from school and she was gone.”

Taryn remembered the shock of going through their small house and seeing all her mother’s things were missing. It was as if she’d never been there at all. She’d been crying when her father had walked in the door. She’d gone to him, expecting comfort.

“That was the first night he beat me,” she said quietly. “I was terrified. I knew what he was capable of. I knew what was going to happen next.”

“How often?” Angel asked.

She kept her attention on the dirt below. “A couple times a month. Mostly he bruised me, but every now and then it was worse and I had to go to the emergency room. As I got older, it was easier. If the doctor guessed I hadn’t fallen down the stairs, I said it was my boyfriend.”

She swallowed, remembering the pain, the humiliation. Trying to disguise how much she was hurting.

“I ran away when I was fifteen. He found me in a day and dragged me back home. Then he beat me until I couldn’t walk and tied me to my bed for nearly a week. He said if I ran away again, he’d find me and kill me. I believed him.”

There were so many other things to say, she thought. How her father was well liked by the neighbors. How he wasn’t one of those crazy men who went ballistic over unwashed dishes in the sink. That he’d never sexually abused her and didn’t keep track of whether or not she’d done her homework. That when he didn’t drink he watched sports and mowed the lawn and went to church. But when he went on a binge, he turned into the devil.

“When I was nearly seventeen, he was up on the roof, repairing some shingles. He asked me to bring him a box of nails.” She remembered that she’d felt safe because she didn’t think he was drinking. It was still early on a Saturday morning. He had plans with his friends to go to a Dodgers game later. So she knew everything was going to be all right.

She’d climbed the ladder with the nails. But as she’d reached the top, she’d seen the beer bottles next to her father. The fear had been instinctive. She hadn’t known what to do and her indecision had made her start to slip.

She remembered screaming. She remembered trying to stay on the ladder, and she remembered reaching out her hand to her father. So he could catch her.

He’d reached out, but instead of grabbing her hand or her wrist, he’d picked up his beer bottle and taken a long drink. Then she’d fallen to the ground and had landed hard on her arm. She’d both felt and heard the break.

Their neighbor across the street had seen the fall and had insisted on taking Taryn to the hospital. The woman, older and a widow, had stayed with her, claiming to be an aunt. Later, when Taryn’s arm had been put in a cast, the woman—Lena—had given Taryn five hundred dollars in cash.

This is your chance, Lena had told her. Disappear, child. Disappear before he kills you.

Taryn had stared at her. You know?

We all know. But we’re as afraid of him as you are. Go while you can. Go and never come back.

Taryn returned to the present and gave Angel the bare facts of that final day.

“I did what she said. I disappeared. I hitchhiked to San Francisco and got a series of low-paying jobs that barely supported me. Every week, I went to the library and read the paper. One day there was an article about a man who’d shot himself in the head. He was my father.”

The rest of the story was easier to tell. How she’d returned to Los Angeles and gotten her GED. How she’d worked her way through college. That money had been tight and every couple of semesters she’d had to take off to save up enough to pay for her tuition. How she’d made do with tattered books other students had thrown away.

She finally looked at him and was grateful to see that his expression was just as unreadable as it had been when she’d started.

“No one knows,” she admitted. “Not Jack, not anyone. I just say my parents are dead. I don’t know if that’s true about my mom. I never tried to find her. Why would I? She left me alone with a monster when I was ten. She knew what was going to happen and she left me.”

She paused to push down the emotion that threatened. Because she’d learned there were some places she could never go. Not if she wanted to be strong. If she let herself think about the past, ask too many questions, she was never going to make it.

So she’d ignored her past and had only looked forward. She’d gotten tough and learned to survive on her own. Until one day when a handsome football player had found her eating leftover sandwiches as if they were the only food she’d had in three days.

She drew in a breath. “That’s why I didn’t reach out my hand. I couldn’t. Not because of you, but because of him.”

Angel stared at her. “I understand,” he said at last.

He walked toward her. When he reached her, he put his arms around her and hauled her against him. He held her so tight she couldn’t breathe, but that was okay. She wanted to be close. She wanted to be held. And when the tears came, she didn’t try to stop them.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TARYN WASN’T SURE how long she stood in Angel’s strong embrace. The steady beat of his heart comforted her. He was warm and solid and she knew in her gut he would never hit anyone weaker than himself. He wasn’t like her dad. Few men were. But the scars ran deep.