Finding Glory
Page 3
He hadn’t expected this from her—hell, he didn’t know what he expected. Reed supposed that if he didn’t believe she’d gotten out of the cycle, why should she believe that he had? The balls on this woman: to sue him for child support and then imply she could somehow mandate the terms of his visitation.
There was a part of him that raged at her for daring to speak of it, for digging underneath his skin and tearing at old scars and still prescient fears. That he’d never be anything more than a junkie kid from Whispering Woods.
But he was. He was so much more than that now. He was a man in control of himself and his destiny. He could buy the Bullhorn and fire her, if he chose.
“Don’t push me too hard, Gina. You’ve already shown you can’t take care of her on your own. That’s why you’re suing me for child support. I’ll go for full custody.” He kept his tone low and quiet so only Gina could hear him.
“You’d take her away from me, from the only stability she’s ever known, because you’re afraid of the truth? You’re still just like Crys. Maybe you have some nice suits and you got your teeth fixed, but underneath all of that, you’re still who you’ve always been. The high more important than anything else,” she hissed back, her voice at the same low pitch to keep Amanda Jane from hearing them.
“You don’t know anything about me.” For one horrible moment, he was afraid she was right.
Gina paused and pursed her lips. “You’re right. I don’t. Which is exactly why I don’t want you anywhere near my niece.”
He saw her hands curl into fists and then splay by her side.
“You want my money.” He dared her to deny it.
“I don’t know why I thought you’d be different. I guess those rose-colored glasses were just the remnants of my childhood.”
“Really?” he snorted. “You thought that you could just throw me away when I wasn’t any use to you and now that I’ve made something of myself, it’s convenient to tell me that I might be a father?”
“What I thought was that you might have given a damn. But you didn’t. So no, I don’t want anything from you but a check.” She braced her hands on the table. “That should make you happy. Then you don’t have to do anything but put your name on the dotted line or have your shark lawyer do it for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Maybe you were too blazed out of your mind when Crys told you to remember. But she told you the night she OD’d and she even called your case manager when Amanda Jane was born.”
Her words affected him like a physical blow. “Gina, the day I got served with this suit was the first time I’d heard anything about a child.”
The fire in her eyes simmered to an ember and she studied him hard.
“There’s a part of me that wants to believe you.” She looked away. “Part of me that actually does believe you.” Her voice dropped an octave; it was almost a whisper.
He felt like the world’s biggest asshole. For all her fire, she was still sweet little Gina. And he’d come in here looking for a fight. A place to put all of his pain, his doubt, and a focus for his anger. Anywhere besides himself.
“There’s a part of me that wants to believe you, too.” He inhaled deeply before making his confession. “And there’s this other part of me that thinks you’re like everyone else who wants to take everything I’ve done away from me.”
Because he didn’t deserve it. He was poor white trash from the wrong side of the tracks and no amount of imported cologne could wipe off the stench, or erase the scars on his arms. He didn’t want to believe that, and for a long time, he’d convinced himself that he didn’t. Then he found out he was a father. He found out Gina didn’t want him. Crystal hadn’t wanted him. The people he’d thought were safe weren’t.
He shouldn’t have confessed that to her, shouldn’t have given her anything she could use against him.
Gina sank down in the chair next to him, her shoulders slumped. “I don’t want anything that’s yours. Just what’s hers. If you look at the numbers, I’m not asking for anything extravagant.”
That was a glimpse of the person he’d still hoped she was. In truth, she really hadn’t asked for that much. She was most likely entitled to ten times that given his income. But he’d wondered if it was just because she didn’t know how much to ask for. Except with Amanda Jane’s little face looking over at him, he found that thought to be foreign and cruel. If she really was his daughter, she was entitled to his support.
“No, you’re not.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“Reed, I’m doing the best I can.”
He wondered what her best was and sure as hell hoped it was better than what they had growing up. Reed was almost afraid to ask, but he had to know. “You’re not still living in Whispering Woods, are you?” He mentioned the trailer park community where they’d grown up.
“No. I’ve got a little house out in the country. Highway 5. You remember the one with the hills that we used to take really fast?”
“Hanging out someone’s sunroof? You remember that time you swallowed a moth?”
She turned to look at him. “I thought I was going to die. It was the nastiest thing.”
“It’s not like you could taste it.”
“No, but I had nightmares about what it was doing in there.”
He laughed. This...this was what he’d wanted from her—hoped for. Why couldn’t he have just spoken to her like this from the beginning? If he was really a better man than he’d once been, he wouldn’t need to be so defensive.
Wouldn’t need to try to put her down or show her how easily he could defeat her.
Again, he couldn’t help but think that he was an asshole. But just like he didn’t have to be an addict, he didn’t have to be this person, either. He could own his actions and he could choose them.
“I’m sorry, Gina.”
It took a long time for her to look up at him and meet his gaze. For a moment, he wasn’t sure she would. When she did, he saw something there he couldn’t name. All he knew was that it cut him.
“For what?” She cocked her head to the side.
“For being an asshole.”
Gina shook her head. “I knew this wouldn’t be easy.” She laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. “When I knew you’d been served, I kind of wanted to throw up. I knew you’d be angry with me. I just... Crys said she told you and you didn’t want anything to do with us. I never thought she’d lie about that. If I thought for one second that you didn’t know about Amanda Jane, I might have gone about it differently.”
“You still can.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to be a part-time father. I want you to consider what the judge offered.” At the sudden look of fear on her face, he held up his hands as if to ward it off. “Not like that. If we’re in the same household, I can see her whenever I want and so can you.”
She looked as though he’d just punched her. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“Hear me out.”
“It would put us at your mercy, right under your thumb.” She shook her head. “You just told me that I didn’t know you and you’re right. I haven’t seen you in seven years.”
“Which is exactly why you should marry me. Don’t you think it would be traumatic for her to suddenly be left with a stranger?”
The fear on her face was back and so was the guilty chill slithering down his spine.
“I can’t talk about this with you.”
He exhaled, sensing that the earlier door to their childhood memories had been slammed in his face.
She stood. “I have to get back to work.”
“Gina?”
She turned back to face him. “What?”
He found everything he thought he wanted to say died on the tip of
his tongue and it was nothing but charcoal and memory.
“Me, too, Reed.” She answered the unspoken questions, regrets and hopes with all of her own. All the things he couldn’t seem to tell her, it was as if she knew them all and had them herself.
Perhaps he’d been wrong. Maybe Gina did know him, after all. She seemed to sense everything he wanted to say but couldn’t.
He wondered why it was so easy to say all the wrong things, but the right ones were practically impossible.
As he watched her walk away, he wondered what the hell he’d been thinking, asking her to marry him. That was pure insanity.
He wasn’t ready to be a father. He could barely manage himself. What was he thinking?
Just looking at facts, if he didn’t know that it was his own case he was judging, he wouldn’t give a child to a man like him. Even with all of his money, all the years between himself and his addiction, all the things he’d accomplished, Reed could only assume he’d blow it and Amanda Jane would be better off anywhere, but with him.
Why he thought he could do a better job than his own absent father—he’d always vowed if he ever had children they’d never know a childhood like his own. It wasn’t all horrible; he’d had Gina and Crystal, other friends, but he never had stability or comfort and he was always left with this horrible ache in his chest, this want of things that weren’t for him.
A hunger.
And he’d tried to fill it with pleasure—with sex, with drugs, with anything that would make that feeling stop.
He didn’t want any child to know that feeling, let alone his own.
He wondered what life had been like for her. If she knew enough now to want what she couldn’t have, if it gnawed at her the same way it affected him.
Gina went over to where Amanda Jane was sitting, took the girl’s hand and led her back toward the kitchen—away from him. He couldn’t blame her.
Maybe she was right to just want a check and his absence.
He closed his eyes as if that could somehow guard him against the sharp blades of that thought. It sliced into him, into every single defense he had.
Part of him wanted to escape, and still another part of him wanted to stay at the Bullhorn just a little bit longer, hoping to catch another glimpse of the woman and child that were the embodiment of a future he’d been afraid to want.
He stayed there in the corner long after he knew she wasn’t coming back to his table.
CHAPTER THREE
SEEING REED AGAIN up close and personal had gone better and worse than Gina had hoped. Better because after his initial anger, he seemed willing. Worse, because...
Because he still made her heart flutter like a stupid butterfly and she couldn’t stop thinking about him. She wanted to stop. Gina wanted to push him and all of her stupid hopes and resurrected teen desires out of her head. Two days had passed, and she still couldn’t stop. Maybe she was the addict.
She almost hadn’t recognized him at first. His thin features had filled in and it was obvious he was taking much better care of his body. He was bigger, stronger, a hunger inside him striving to get out and obvious in his every action. He looked like the GQ model version of Reed Hollingsworth with perfect hair, a perfect suit, but his eyes were the same. In those depths was the familiar hopeful kid she’d known.
Once upon a time, she’d wished it had been her that he wanted and while good sense told her that it was just the leftovers of a high school infatuation, her body didn’t know the difference. The hard planes of his powerful body in that suit that had been tailor-made for him, the determined set to his jaw and the ferocity of his expression conveyed that now, there was nothing he wanted that he couldn’t have. Gina found that kind of confidence and power titillating, as much as she hated to admit it.
But he wasn’t a fairy-tale prince on a valiant steed. He was an addict. That didn’t change. He could manage his addiction, but there was no magic cure to free him from the curse. And if there was, it certainly wasn’t her. He’d picked Crystal, not Gina. No, he was no hero.
Though she realized he wasn’t the villain she’d thought he’d become, either.
She knew that she’d agree to whatever Reed wanted if it meant that she could keep Amanda Jane. And she would never just let her go with a stranger. When it was distilled down to its most basic, Reed was a stranger to them both. Amanda Jane played on the floor with a myriad of secondhand toys. She had a doll in an evening gown riding a fire truck. That was her current obsession. She said she wanted to be a firefighter when she grew up and apparently, she planned on doing it in sparkles.
Which was just fine with Gina. Gina made it a point to tell her that with enough hard work, she could do anything—be anything.
Amanda Jane sang a little song to herself quietly and rather than distract Gina from her studies, it soothed her.
No, what distracted her was seeing Reed Hollingsworth.
Gina had always wondered what happened to Reed. If he’d taken the same path that Crystal had, he’d have been in prison or dead. Then her economics class had been assigned an article about rags-to-riches businessman Reed Hollingsworth.
And the article had pissed her off.
How dare he sit there on his velvet throne looking down on the rest of them while she struggled to feed and clothe his daughter? Crystal may have been fine with no help from Reed, but Gina wasn’t. He had a responsibility to his daughter. If he didn’t want to physically parent, fine. But he could contribute financially. It was the least he could do. The man made millions of dollars a year. Twelve grand a year plus a college education for his daughter wasn’t going to beggar him.
Gina was torn between anger, regret and betrayal. These washed over her all at once and she imagined if the emotions had colors, they’d look like a mess of spilled ink after they’d roiled around inside of her. At the end of the day, there was no discernible difference between them.
She was so tired. She’d just come off a twenty-four-hour shift and she had to study for a test the next day, but she needed to spend some time with Amanda Jane, too. The girl was just getting over the latest bout of bronchitis. Amanda Jane had a weak immune system, but they were lucky that was her only problem considering Crystal’s mistreatment of herself while she was pregnant.
Gina sighed and put her head down on the table. She wished she could learn by osmosis, then maybe banging her head against things would actually serve a purpose.
“Are you tired, Gina-bee?” Amanda Jane asked her in a small, scratchy voice.
She smiled. Crystal had called her Gina-bee when she was tiny. It reminded her of the person her sister had been and the hope she had for the person and mother she hoped she could be again. “Yes, darling.”
“Maybe it’s nap time.”
“But you don’t like naps.”
“No.” Amanda shook her head earnestly. “But you like them. So, maybe we should have one.”
“I’m fine, honey. I have to study for this test.”
“Tests are dumb.”
Tests made Gina feel dumb sometimes. She smiled again. “No, they’re good. This test means I can go to my next class and then I can be Doctor Gina.”
“And Doctor Gina means no more EMT Gina,” Amanda Jane recited with her.
“You got it, kiddo.” She stared back down at the paper, trying to make sense of the words as they danced over the page, but she didn’t see any of them. All she could see was Reed’s thin face.
Maybe because Amanda Jane looked so much like him. Or as he had as a boy, before things had gotten so bad.
He’d been so beautiful to her then, so tragic. With a face like an angel and a heart so full of hope, even after it had been crushed again and again. She’d waited for him to notice her as something other than Crystal’s sister.
It was ironic, really.
And now, she supposed she had fallen in love, but with Amanda Jane. That girl was her heart and soul, and Gina would do anything she had to do to provide a good life for her. Anything.
Gina had a feeling that the universe was going to test her mettle with that statement, but she didn’t care. There was nothing more important to her than giving Amanda Jane the life she deserved.
She knew that meant seeing Reed again and she also knew it meant that she couldn’t let her softer feelings for the boy he’d been get in the way. He wasn’t that boy anymore. He was a grown man who’d had no problem playing hardball.
But neither would Gina.
She just couldn’t reconcile that with the boy he’d been.
Gina looked back down at Amanda Jane’s serious blue eyes and found another smile. “Hey, you want to help me study for this test?”
Amanda Jane put down her doll and her small fingers reached for the flash cards. She was probably the only six-year-old who knew the names of all the bones in the human body. She’d been tested as gifted, and Gina wasn’t sure if it was because she included Amanda Jane in her studies as a means to double task spending time with her as well as test prep, or if it was because she was wired much like Gina herself.
Either way, it both warmed and broke her heart at the same time. She never wanted Amanda Jane to feel the way that she did growing up. She never wanted her to be the dirty kid who had to eat free lunch, who was the hope in teachers’ eyes. That someday, they knew she’d be the story they told to their class about how if Gina Townsend could do it, they could do it, too.