Above The Surface

by Akeroyd, Serena

  “I love my people, love our community, and I’m proud to be Romanichal, but it’s wicked what our men can do to us. We’ve nowhere to go, no one to talk to, not even other women. We can’t talk about these things. It brings shame on us. Not them.

  “That last year, you started returning with bruises too. A busted lip was the worst of it. I looked at you when you rolled in through those very gates, and I looked at Genny, and I didn’t see on her face what I so often saw in mine when I looked in the mirror.”

  “What do you mean?” I whispered, utterly transfixed by what she was saying, her southern twang soothing me even as her story riled me up.

  “I mean, I felt hopeless. Because they were things I knew every woman here endured.” She closed her eyes. “I didn’t see hopelessness, didn’t even see resignation on your mother’s face, child, no, I saw an anger that was slowly building.

  “The best thing for Leggy was her husband passing on. She had a freedom that few of us get, and with the insurance and her healing, she was quite well looked after.

  “But that meant Genny wasn’t raised like my Allegria was. She didn’t know what it was to be beaten by a man. She’d only been a young ‘un when her pa died, and when she met Nicodemus, the stars in her eyes more than outshone this.” She spread out her hands, encompassing the mobile home park. “But she wasn’t raised to accept a man’s law, something he upheld with his fists. She wasn’t made for it, so when the news came, it didn’t surprise me.”

  “What happened?”

  “She stabbed him.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Over seventeen times.” Her mouth worked, and I could hear the tears in her voice. “When Child Services brought you down here, we saw why.”

  “Why?”

  “Busted lip, bruised cheek. You even had a little sore on the crest of your cheek from where his ring caught.” She worried at her bottom lip. “Genny had had enough—”

  “It was self-defense. She was protecting herself and me!” I burst out, hating my father with a passion that I hadn’t known I was capable of. I stormed to my feet, my body throbbing with outrage. The cake and the dish it sat on, along with my fork, clattered to the floor, but I didn’t see it, didn’t even hear it.

  Lavinia stared at me, sadness in her tone and eyes as she whispered, “They gave her leniency. That was why she didn’t get the death penalty. But she’s got another eighteen years in there, minimum.”

  For a second, I contemplated the fact that my mother would remain in a prison cell for as long as I’d been alive. I’d be thirty-six the next time she was free, then I wailed, “She was protecting me.”

  “That she was. Not much recourse for women like us, child. But then, you’re not one of us, are you?” I flinched at that, but she tutted. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way. Our blood courses through your veins, making you special, but you’ve been with Gadže since Leggy died?”

  I dipped my chin.

  “They look after you?”

  “No. But they didn’t beat me. I just didn’t always eat well.” I sucked in a breath. “The family I’m with now, they adopted me.” I didn’t tell her that the circumstances were fucked up.

  Christ.

  Was nothing about my life normal?

  I stood there, quivering with emotion. I was too angry to cry, but also, I felt like I could explode from all the weird thoughts rattling around my head. I wanted justice for my mother, wanted to rail at my grandmother for withholding the fact Genny wasn’t dead...but what was the point?

  Lavinia eyed me, then she murmured, “Take a seat, child. Finish your tea.”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a command, a tone of voice I remembered well from Nanny.

  I almost toppled the stool over as I sat, reaching blindly down for the dish I’d dropped. It was only luck that kept it in one piece. Allegria bustled out when Vinnie called her to clear up the cake, which she did without even a murmur, even after I apologized for the mess. Then, when we were alone, I choked on the tea and the sandwiches, but as she asked me questions about my life, I was too polite not to answer her.

  She asked about Nanny, about how she’d died, and didn’t show much surprise at the truth. I told her about my experience with healing and how it had gone wrong, and she just said, “I don’t pretend to understand Leggy’s logic, and that isn’t the first time I’ve said that today, but she didn’t teach you for a reason. I can’t blame her. Don’t try to heal again, child. No good comes from it, even if your intentions are pure.”

  When I told her about the fact that I’d just swum in trials that would take me on a path to competing in the Olympics, a small smile played around her lips.

  “What’s so amusing?” I inquired, not offended, just curious. At the moment, I was feeling too battered by my past to be offended about my future.

  “Your father would never have allowed that, you know.” She tapped her chin. “Funny, too, that someday you might be rich enough to fight for your mother’s early release.”

  My eyes widened. “I thought they stopped parole.”

  Lavinia shrugged. “Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. Money talks, doesn’t it?”

  THEA

  Those words resonated with me in ways I didn’t think Lavinia understood.

  Money did talk.

  I knew that.

  Linden had said something similar to me on the day he’d taken me from the hospital and brought me back to the Ramsdens’ home.

  Money.

  I needed it.

  A lot of it.

  On the taxi ride back, all I could think about was my momma, how she was locked up for protecting me, for defending herself, the injustice of it, and I wanted to scream.

  The journey to the hotel couldn’t have been more different than the journey to Blanche Settlement.

  The gnawing ache in my soul had been filled with a savage fierceness that left me burning with a need to do something.

  Anything.

  To help my mother.

  Who wasn’t dead.

  I stared blankly ahead at the road, not seeing anything, not seeing the city as it rolled by or the hotel as we approached it. It all passed in a blur as I processed how much I’d lost.

  Nanny had obviously believed she was doing right by me, but had she?

  I’d thought I was alone.

  I wasn’t.

  Momma lived. She breathed. We were alive together.

  God, I wanted to see her. I wanted to visit her so badly. Maybe another kid might be ashamed of their mother’s crime. Might be ashamed she was in prison. But me? I was proud. I hated that she was in there, but hell, she was in there because she was protecting me. Defending herself.

  Saving us.

  I couldn’t help but liken her marriage to my father—never Papa again—like the prison she was in now.

  Was her current situation an improvement?

  The notion made me feel sick to my stomach, but a fire burned in my gut. A fire that threatened to overtake me to the point where I was shaking when the cab pulled up at the hotel.

  “Ma’am?”

  I jerked to awareness when the cabbie’s irritation made itself known to me.

  “S-Sorry?” I asked.

  “You’re here. This is your hotel, ain’t it?”

  I blinked again, looked at the building, and it felt like fucking fate that, as I glanced out the window, in a purgatory that was forged in my parents’ past, he was there.

  His eyes connected with mine, and that link. God help me. It triggered an inferno that I wasn’t able to cope with.

  I shook my head, broke the union because I didn’t have time for that anymore. Didn’t have energy to waste on a man who could never be mine.

  I paid my fare and clambered out of the taxi.

  My limbs felt sluggish, and it had nothing to do with the intense workout I’d had earlier on. Eight races today on the back of four yesterday. The days had been intense in the run-up to the trials, and things were only going to get crazier as I b
egan my path to Olympic glory.

  But the fatigue I was feeling had nothing to do with my training. It was from my soul.

  When I was standing on the sidewalk, I sucked in a breath and forced myself into action. I didn’t look at him, just walked past him like he didn’t exist, but he wasn’t so kind as to pretend we weren’t walking on the same planet.

  He grabbed my arm. “Thea?”

  I dragged my arm from his hold and spat, “Don’t call me that.”

  He jerked back like I’d slapped him, and God, I wanted to. But then I really would be no better than my father, would I?

  Was that kind of violence in my blood? Or was it just because I needed him so fucking much that he inspired it in me?

  Either way, there was no excuse.

  Maybe that kind of bullshit logic was why my father had done what he had to Momma and me.

  I froze, refusing to react, and just stood there like I was a robot.

  “Theodosia,” he rasped. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “I’m the opposite of okay.” I didn’t think I’d ever be okay again.

  “What’s happened? You were good before. Happy. I mean, you won all your races. As usual,” he whispered, sounding miserable when I cut him a disdainful look.

  “Are you disappointed that I won or that I was happy?” I snapped, and it didn’t escape me that for one of the first times in two years, we were alone.

  Maria did a good impression of being an octopus. I’d never seen anyone cling to a man more than she did. Hell, it was a wonder she let him up for air.

  I swear I’d even seen her follow him to the bathroom on the rare occasions we were together at his parents’ house.

  It must kill her, literally kill her, to know I was at the same school as him. That we were on the same team, and traveled the country together, staying in the same hotels, under the same roof… But he’d never tried to talk to me, and I’d never tried to talk to him.

  Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if I should have. If I should have fought for him, but there was no fighting for another woman’s man, was there? He’d sealed his fate when he’d whispered the words, “I do,” to someone who wasn’t me.

  “Thea, I… miss you.”

  “You married her,” I snarled, the violence of my emotions flooding me again. “You don’t have the right to miss me.”

  His mouth tightened, and for a second, I thought he was going to stalk off, but he didn’t.

  Out of nowhere, his hand shot out. I didn’t think to flinch—it was Adam, for fuck’s sake—but it went to the back of my neck, and in seconds, I was hauled into him as he used his grip on my neck to move me closer. Before I knew it, he was pushing me against the wall and his mouth was on mine.

  It wasn’t the first kiss we’d shared, but it was the first real kiss.

  When I thought about how chaste we’d been, I wondered why. Why he’d been so careful with me, never pressuring me, never pushing me into doing something I might not have been ready for.

  We’d had pecks on the lips, hugs. I’d spent hours with one of his arms tucked around me at Hawkvale, knew his scent as well as I knew my own, and had felt his heart thud whenever I moved closer, doing something daring like pressing my lips to his chin or lower—his throat.

  But this kiss was nothing like the ones we’d shared before.

  It was desperate and loaded with feeling, a feeling so full of despair that my eyes burned behind lids I’d closed.

  I should fight him off, shouldn’t allow him to kiss me when he wasn’t mine.

  But he tasted like mine.

  He felt like mine.

  Fuck, he was mine.

  I thrust my tongue against his, years’ worth of anguish and passion fueling a fire I knew would never burn out. A moan escaped me at the same time a deep and throaty groan rumbled from him, making our tongues vibrate, which only powered the kiss all the more.

  His body was hard against mine, so lean and strong from all his training that he felt like heaven in my arms. I couldn’t stop myself from rubbing against him, arching my back to get closer, needing more. Needing to feel all of him.

  His erection didn’t come as a surprise. I knew I’d be wet between my legs, knew it and gloried in it.

  His arousal was mine.

  Just as mine was his.

  My hips thrust against him, his thick length pushing against flesh that had yearned for him for years.

  It was shameful, shameless, but I didn’t care about Maria. I remembered her. She wasn’t a distant memory—she never was. I kissed him despite the fact that he was married. I kissed him knowing it was wicked.

  And I didn’t stop.

  My hands dropped down to his ass, and my nails dug deep into him as I urged him closer to me.

  I felt feverish, like I was going to die in this fire if he didn’t give me what I needed to quench it.

  When he pulled back, I moaned his name, but he didn’t stop either. He couldn’t. I felt his need, knew it was as rabid, if not more so than my own.

  His mouth went to my throat, and he sucked down hard, his tongue lashing against the tender skin.

  “Get a room!”

  The words had both of us halting, panting into each other as we recognized what had just happened, and where.

  I looked over his shoulder, curious as to who’d hollered at us. When I saw it wasn’t someone from the swim team, I let out a breath.

  “They’re strangers,” I muttered.

  He pressed his forehead to mine. “I don’t care.”

  I swallowed. “You have to.”

  “I don’t. I hate her,” he whispered. “I loathe her.”

  “You married her,” I told him, but there was no poison in my words. Not like before.

  He swallowed. “Will you come to my room?”

  “Why?”

  “We need to talk.”

  I rocked my hips, releasing a hissing breath as I felt his dick digging into my belly. “That says otherwise. Talk is the last thing on your mind.”

  “I’m not going to lie. I need you. Fuck, I need you, Thea.” He shuddered. “But we need to talk. I need to tell you—”

  “What you wouldn’t tell me for the past two years?”

  “There was a lot at stake.”

  “What? Our happiness wasn’t worth fighting for?” I demanded bitterly.

  He blew out a breath. “Let me explain.”

  Maybe I was weak, and in the face of what I’d just learned about my mother, maybe that weakness was even more shameful. But when I looked into his eyes, he was my Adam, and he needed me.

  Preferring to think of myself as generous rather than a fool, I muttered, “Okay.”

  He smiled at me, and it was like the sun coming out from behind a flood of storm clouds.

  “Thank you.”

  I dipped my chin, and though I wanted to hold his hand, I didn’t. I moved away from the wall when he did and looked back at the spot where I’d felt my first real brush of passion.

  Shaking my head at the sight, because it wasn’t exactly romantic—a brick wall just off the corner of the hotel which took up most of the block—I followed him into the foyer.

  The glass windows let in so much light that it wasn’t like going indoors, more like going undercover.

  Everything in here stank of money. It couldn’t be much more of a contrast to where I’d spent the afternoon if it tried.

  The receptionist sat behind a glass desk that had a frickin’ waterfall incorporated into it, for God’s sake. Everything was chrome and silver, black leather. Like some monument to a modern art god who really needed to get some taste.

  Beneath my sneaker-clad feet, shiny and squeaky marble floors echoed our path as we headed to the elevators.

  He pressed a button, the doors instantly opened, and we shuffled in.

  I didn’t look at the full-length mirror that graced the back wall of the elevator. I didn’t want to see what he saw. I wasn’t sure if I could deal with the sight of me re
d and hot from his kiss.

  We stayed quiet as the doors opened once more, spitting us out onto his floor. He was just to the left, and within seconds, we were alone in his room.

  Really, truly alone in a way that we hadn’t been for years.

  With the door closed behind us, I felt that like a weight on my being. The pressure of knowing that we were sharing a private space tantalized me like nothing else could.

  I’d moved into the room, which was a mirror image of mine—a bright purple carpet with light lilac waves on the floor, a black marble wall behind the pair of large, queen-sized beds that were covered in white sheets and a pair of silvery, plush comforters.

  To the side, there was a patio door that looked out onto the street, and I stared at that before I turned around to face him and saw him barricading the door.

  My heart didn’t leap up like it might with another man.

  Adam meant my body no harm.

  It was my heart and soul that he could crucify.

  I eyed his position, the whole ‘human barrier’ thing he had going on, and asked, “You think I’ll run?”

  “I would if I was in your shoes.”

  I arched a brow. “Really? Well, you’ve got me here, and we’re alone for the first time in years. What do you want to tell me?”

  He licked his lips, and I watched the move, envying his tongue because I wanted to do that. To taste his mouth, to savor him and sample his flavor.

  Adam groaned, then muttered, “You’re killing me, Thea. Don’t look at me like that.”

  My lips formed a moue, and though I wanted to find comfort in sarcasm, to twist the knife in, I wasn’t like that.

  Not really.

  He might have made me more vindictive than I’d like, but I wasn’t about to prove that to him.

  “Talk, Adam.” I rubbed my forehead where tension was gathering—today had been an explosive day all around. “I need some space to think.”

  He frowned. “About what?”

  That kiss. Fuck, and how it made me feel like two years ago was yesterday. Sighing, I reached up and rubbed my temple again. “I just found out something about my family.” It was a half-truth, and it shamed me that I’d let myself be tempted by him in the face of what I’d learned.