A Pound of Flesh (A Pound of Flesh #1)(109)

“You just seem, I don’t know, nervous?”

Carter laughed a strange, strangled type of sound. “Nah, I’m good.”

She looked at him askance, but didn’t push.

The rain eased. They took off their jackets and sat down on them. Carter took a moment to glance over at the Alice in Wonderland statue. It was hauntingly beautiful.

“Here.”

The air in Carter’s chest exploded out of him when Peaches slammed a book hard against him. “What the—”

“I haven’t heard you read for a week,” she said with a hand on her hip. “So read.”

[page]Recognizing the copy of A Farewell to Arms, he laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”


While he found the page they’d reached during their last session together, Peaches got herself comfortable by leaning against his side with her head on his shoulder, and her arm resting on his thigh. Emboldened, Carter put his arm around her waist and held her close. As Hemingway’s words rolled off his tongue, she snuggled closer, relaxing and melting into him. She was warm against the chill of the air. He put his cheek against her hair while rubbing his palm along her arm.

“I love hearing you read,” she whispered when he came to the end of the chapter. “Your voice is …”

Carter laid the book down on the damp grass. “What?”

“It’s familiar to me, like I know it better than my own.”

Carter’s heart stuttered. Of course she knew his voice. It was all he had thought to use to keep her calm the night her father had died. “And that’s a good thing?”

“Yeah. It’s a good thing.”

Her smile was wide and honest. Carter allowed his arms to encircle her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder, breathing her scent.

“Will you tell me more about the statue and your parents?”

Carter shifted and exhaled a grumbled, uncertain noise. “I, um, I don’t—”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to,” she said. “I was just curious.”

Carter glanced at the statue again. He wanted to share with her. The only way they could possibly move forward with whatever the hell was happening between them would be if they knew things about each other. Hell, his family would be a good place to start.

He kept his eyes on hers, anxiety creeping up his spine, but all he saw was encouragement and affection. There was no judgment, no condescension, no trickery.

“My dad met my mom when they were eighteen,” he said through a long exhalation. “They were young, stupid, and from different sides of the tracks. My mom was from a very wealthy family. Her father—my grandfather, William Ford—owned one of the first communication companies in the country, WCS. James Carter, my father, on the other hand, had barely two cents to rub together and made what money he did have from playing music at clubs and painting.”

Carter rolled his eyes at the romance of it all. “That’s how he met my mother. She heard him playing piano one night and approached him.” He clicked his fingers. “That was that.”

Peaches played absentmindedly with the edge of his T-shirt; her silence encouraged him to tell her more, to tell her everything.

“To my mother’s family, my dad was never good enough. He was trouble, a bum, worthless, but my mother rebelled, and they stayed together. They got a cheap, crappy apartment after my grandfather cut off my mother’s money, and, within a year, she was pregnant with me.” Carter clasped the bridge of his nose, easing the tension headache that teased behind his eyes. “She hid the pregnancy for a long time.” Carter laughed without humor. He dropped his hand. “She hid me.”