by Dani Collins
“You told me your brother had died, but I didn’t realize he’d been sick all his life.” He looked at her with new eyes, amazed by how effervescent she often was after everything her small family must have endured. “What was it?”
“A congenital heart defect, but there were other things that came along with it.”
“Was it...” He could see her shutting down. “You don’t want to talk about it. Too painful?” Of course it was.
She nod-shrugged. “I don’t mind talking about him, but his illness was my whole life for so long... That sounds awful.” She shrugged jerkily. “As if I resent him, and I don’t. But my entire childhood revolved around his appointments and surgeries and recoveries and lack of a future. Everything that needed to be said about his condition was said while he was alive. The only important piece now is that I loved him.”
She stroked his image, her smile brave and crooked, causing something to shift in his chest. It hurt and made him reach out, drawing her in so he could soothe.
“Oh, Nat,” he murmured, setting a hand on her silky hair, tucking her crown under his chin in an unfamiliar need to comfort. “And then you lost your mom.”
“She was tired,” Natalie said on a breath of sorrow, dropping her hand onto his waist, not quite accepting his embrace, but he thought it might be more about fighting her own emotions. Her voice wasn’t steady. “She fought for Gareth every day. Urged him to keep fighting, and took on the system that didn’t expect him to make it past two or three years old. If there was a treatment or surgery we hadn’t tried, she made it happen. Then he was gone and I was married, and I think she thought she could rest. She didn’t have to worry about either of us. I went away with Heath just after Zoey was born, up to his mother’s farm, and Mom got the flu.”
Natalie drew away, brushing fingertips under her eyes where her makeup was threatening to run. “She’d had enough of hospitals.” She closed Gareth’s book and set it aside, as though she was trying to set aside her grief. “She wouldn’t even go to the doctor. I came home and got her admitted, but she had pneumonia by then and it killed her.”
And Natalie’s husband hadn’t come to the funeral.
“I’m so sorry, Natalie.”
She gave a muted shrug. “She’s with Gareth now. We should go, shouldn’t we?”
Her defenseless expression bordered on persecuted. She needed time to regroup the way he had after talking about Nic.
He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to hold her again. Touching her had felt good. Right.
They were both raw from delving into things that he was still shocked he’d revealed, though. And getting physical right now would be less about the kind of escape he longed for and could take the intimacy of their conversation to an unforgettably deep level. Something he couldn’t come back from.
“Probably a good idea,” he agreed, following her to the front door and watching her zip into shiny black spiked-heel boots that hugged her calves and cocked her curves into a sassy posture when she straightened. That backside of hers never quit. Shame to cover it, but he held her coat and drank in the scent of creamy vanilla in her hair, so familiar he forgot for a moment where he was. Things in him that had been wound tight relaxed. A smile touched his lips as he thought about brushing aside her blond tresses and setting his lips on her nape.
She went still, and he glanced up to see they faced a mirror. He stood behind her and to the right, not unlike the photo of her grandparents. Whether she’d seen his expression of desire, or saw the similarity to the longtime couple’s pose, he didn’t know, but he found himself taking a mental snapshot of the two of them looking at each other so nakedly, his hands on her shoulders, her expression still shadowed by emotion, his own filled with tender affection.
It struck him that you didn’t get to fifty years by staying detached. You shared the things next to your soul. In his previous life, he wouldn’t have encouraged her to give him the details of her most terrible heartaches. But it hurt him to see her suffer. He wanted to hear what pained her so he could carry some of the burden for her.
Disturbed, he looked away, feeling her pull away from his light touch at the same time.
Natalie was changing him. He didn’t understand why or how, but he’d felt it after their breakup, sitting in New York unable to stop thinking about her.
In the car, he studied what he could see of her profile in the dark silence, trying to work it out, wondering if there was a Freudian element to it.
“Did you have to look after your brother a lot?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said simply, adding, “when Mom went to work, which was three nights a week and every weekend. Someone had to make sure he took his meds or monitor his temperature and pulse if he was recovering from surgery. Mom was spread so thin, I did a lot of the housekeeping and cooking, too. Then I had Heath and Zoey to look after. I still have to remind Heath to pay his rent,” she said with a little tsk. “I’ve never not felt responsible for someone. That’s why, well, it’s what I was taking a vacation from,” she admitted in a small voice. “In France.”
He could help her carry some of that load.
“How old were you when it started? When you had to be a little mom to your brother?” he asked.
“I don’t know. After Dad left, I guess. Seven? Gareth would have been three.”
He rubbed his thigh, confiding family secrets before he lost his nerve. “Adara was younger than that when she started looking after me. Five or six.”
Natalie turned her head, voice colored with surprise when she said, “Really? Where was your mom? Working?”
“Passed out.” He could still see the unresponsive shape in her bed. When Theo had called him to tell him she was gone, he’d had to catch back a tasteless, “Are we sure this time?” because he’d thought her dead so many times as a child.
“She liked to wash down her pills with vodka. Dad liked to drink, too,” he stated flatly. Then he closed his eyes and walked through the door he’d only peeked through that day by the pool with Theo. “He got violent when he’d had enough of it. If Adara didn’t keep me quiet, she got smacked. If Theo failed, he caught Dad’s belt.”
“Oh, my God.” Natalie caught her gasp with her cupped hand, understandably speechless. Her eyes glowed white at the edges, not that he was able to meet her gaze for long.
Why had he been so cavalier that day with Theo? It had been cruel, and he didn’t blame his brother for not returning the one call he’d placed to try to make amends. The truth was he didn’t understand why his brother hadn’t rejected him the moment it had happened.
Demitri never looked back on his childhood. Ever. But he made himself remember that incident now. Made himself feel the guilt. He’d left his room, even though Theo had tried to stop him, but Demitri had been determined to find Adara. Not their mother. His sister. Because Adara had been the one he relied on. She’d been the closest thing to a mother he’d had while theirs had been a slurring mess who’d rarely left her bedroom.
And Theo had taken the punishment for Demitri’s transgression.
Who did that to a little kid? Why hadn’t someone called child services?
Why hadn’t he been the one to catch hell?
Fierce, angry tears came into his eyes so hard and fast he had to avert his face to the window and remind himself he’d been three years younger than Theo’s eight. He hadn’t really known what he’d been doing. He had barely understood what had been happening when Theo had screamed in their father’s den. It was only later, when Adara had pleaded with him, “You have to be good, Demitri,” that he’d begun to comprehend that Theo’s injuries, the stripes on his back that were visible to this day, had been his fault.
And despite Adara’s pleading, he’d never been good. He didn’t think he ever would be.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“AND YOU?” NATALIE ASKED with trepidation, lowering her hand, needing to know, to understand him, but certain she wouldn’t be able to withstand whatever she he
ard.
Demitri shook his head, expression impossible to read.
“He loved me.” He made a quick noise of negation, clarifying in a bitter tone, “I mean, he loved to throw me at Adara and Theo in ugly little ways. ‘Demitri got a trophy today, Theo. What did you get?’ ‘Have you fed your brother today, Adara? Why are you eating if he hasn’t?’”
Natalie couldn’t move. A cry of denial that anyone could put children through such mental and physical torture locked her throat.
“That’s really horrible,” she managed.
“It’s sick,” he hissed, revealing a pressure of anger she suspected had been bottled tight for years. “I tried to make him hit me. I dented his car and drank his booze, skipped school and broke the front window. He was the only one home that day, half a bottle in him. It wasn’t even lunch. Winter. Snow was blowing in. You know what he said? ‘Call Theo. Tell him to come home and fix it.’ That’s crazy, right? Like, legitimately not sane?”
Finally he looked at her, and while his brow was an anguished line, his eyes were glazed with wrath. The devil-may-care veneer was cracked wide-open, revealing that the man inside did care about things. He cared a lot.
“Demitri, I’m so sorry,” she could only say, while the back of her throat stung.
The car stopped.
He seemed to shake himself out of his past. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”
She reached out to cover his hand, folding her fingers over his stiff ones. “It’s okay.” She got the feeling he’d never told anyone. “Did no one ever report him?”
He shook his head, turning his face forward, but his hand shifted in hers so he could pinch her fingers in a tight grip. It was as though he was holding on to a lifeline so he wouldn’t be sucked under and drowned.
“We had money. The privilege of the rich extends to not having your actions questioned. I’ve learned that. Even when you’re leaving marks on your kids, you can get away with it. I remember waiting for Adara at school one day. Her teacher told her she could stay in class as long as she wanted, but Adara told her it was better if she got me home on time. The teachers knew. They didn’t do anything.”
“You never thought about making a call yourself?”
The corner of his mouth twisted. “By the time I realized I could, I’d developed my own way of dealing with it. The old man would be reaching for Adara and I’d spill my milk. Instead of shaking her, he’d tell her to mop it up. Then we all grew into teenagers and Theo was big enough that Dad kept most of his bullying to verbal. Even at that, it never stopped. And they took it! It made me so crazy.” His hand worked hers with hard agitation, but she ignored the discomfort, sensing this was a much-needed bleeding out of poison. “I’d say, ‘Just tell him no,’ and Theo wouldn’t even hear me. He’d just keep doing whatever he’d been told to do. He took accounting! The man should be engineering fighter jets.”
Natalie could hardly take in all she was hearing. She had grown up sad and frustrated with her brother’s illness, but aside from resentment over her father leaving, their house had been loving. So loving.
She didn’t know how anyone could live with something so twisted and painful. No wonder the Makricostas were standoffish and hard to read.
“And they never hated me, no matter how bad it got for them. No matter what I did. I slept with Theo’s fiancée, for God’s sake!” He glared at her, half his face lit by the slant of neon glow from the street, making him look satanic as he practically insisted she revile him for his actions.
“With Jaya?” Her mind started to explode, but he quickly dismissed that.
“No. Long before her. Someone Dad arranged.” His grip on her hand eased. “I knew Theo didn’t want to go through with it and asked him why he didn’t just leave. He was in his twenties. I couldn’t understand why he was still letting Dad run his life, and Theo said, ‘If I don’t get married, Adara will have to.’ We’d seen the kind of Neanderthals Dad was trying to fix her up with. She was trying so hard, even that late in the day, to make us look like a nuclear family, never acknowledging that it was radioactive. I could see why Theo was willing to make the sacrifice, but I couldn’t let him go through with it. So I slept with his fiancée and that broke them up. Then Adara married Gideon and I honestly don’t know why Theo stuck around after that. To make sure Gideon was good to her, maybe.”
“You could try asking him,” she suggested gently.
He snorted. “I told you. They’re not talking to me.”
He rapped a knuckle on the window and the chauffeur opened his door. Demitri reached back to help her out, then hugged her into his side as he walked her into the restaurant.
They were both shivering, and she wasn’t sure how much was cold and how much was reaction. Never in her wildest imaginings had she seen such a history on him. It explained a lot, but raised more questions, most pressingly: Where were they going?
Not for their date, of course. She could see he’d brought her to Old Montreal. They entered a converted industrial building where they were ushered through a trendy lounge to an elevator. It opened into an elegant space of velvet chairs and crystal chandeliers, where a table had been reserved against the windows overlooking the St. Laurence.
But where were they going as a couple?
As they were seated she saw far too many similarities to their first meal. The waiter set her napkin in her lap and Demitri ordered wine and a mixed plate of seafood hors d’oeuvres for them to share.
Of course, she’d told him in Paris that she liked lobster and shellfish, and this place had a reputation for offering the finest of both. Perhaps he was being less high-handed and more thoughtful than she gave him credit for?
Linking her fingers together, she touched her knuckles to her lips, elbows braced on the table, and regarded him through the tangle of her lashes, intrigued by the dance of light and shadow from the candle flame against the carved angles of his handsome face.
“What are you thinking?” he prompted.
“Honestly? I doubt you’ve ever told anyone what you’ve told me tonight. I’m wondering, why me?”
His lip curled in self-contempt. “If you only knew how many times I’ve listened to some rejected pop diva or a humiliated politician going through a divorce. ‘Thanks for listening,’ they always say, while I shake my head at their bizarre desire to share their personal garbage. I have no idea, Natalie. I felt like I could tell you, I suppose.”
She smiled wistfully, not entirely surprised. “I’m easy to talk to because I’m used to having the hard conversations. I never had the luxury of radio silence with my brother.”
He looked up sharply.
“I didn’t mean that to sound superior,” she said with an apologetic quirk of her mouth. “I can see why your family would avoid talking about your childhood, but...” She leaned forward. “What if something happened, Demitri? Do you really want this animosity sitting unresolved between you forever?”
His face spasmed briefly and he looked to the window.
After a long minute, after she’d retreated into her chair and tucked her hands in her lap, he said, “No. Of course not.”
He shifted, gave his jaw a brief skim with his hand.
“That first day we met? Gideon accosted me right after you’d spoken to him. He was pressing me to come to Adara’s birthday party. I was annoyed and took it out on you. I don’t want to go. Nic will be there.” He grimaced. “But I keep thinking I should. It would mean a lot to her.”
“You really don’t remember him? I find that so strange. How is he even...? Did your father have an affair?”
“How sexist of you, Natalie,” Demitri scolded. “My mother had the affair. My parents had broken their engagement and she had a fling with Nic’s dad, from what I’ve been told. Then she got back together with our father and passed off the baby as his. Maybe she even believed it. She was pregnant with me when Dad realized Nic wasn’t his. They sent him to boarding school. I guess we saw him a handful of times after th
at, but the closest thing I have to a memory of him is asking Dad, ‘Who’s Nic?’ I don’t know why it came up or who else was in the room. I just remember the look on his face and being scared. I was sure I was going to get it. Then he slapped me on the back and laughed.”
“Your father punished them for remembering him,” she said on a wisp of stunned disbelief. “But not you, because you didn’t.”
His face fell in shock. Obviously it hadn’t occurred to him.
“That’s really cruel, Demitri,” she said, numb with incredulity. “You’re entitled to feel confused and angry. All of you are. I can’t believe anyone would act that way toward their own children.”
“I always had a kind of survivor’s guilt, because they suffered and I didn’t.” He frowned at the table. “I always thought I should have been punished the way they were. I looked for the line. I pushed and pushed to find it. And I always figured they should hate me because I wasn’t catching hell the way they were. Now they do hate me, and even though I deserve it—”
The sommelier arrived with their wine, giving them both time to regain their composure.
“You should go to her party,” she told him when they were alone again. “You don’t have to get into all of this, but at least turn up.”
He only gave her a disgruntled look, as though he knew she was right but was reluctant to admit it. Then his attention on her sharpened. He narrowed his eyes, holding her gaze with that willpower of his that was so implacable.
“Come with me.”
“What? No,” she said decisively, and then had to ask, “Why would you even suggest it?”
“Because we’re seeing each other.”
“No, we’re not! We’re having dinner,” she insisted. “Once. Tonight. So I can tell you we’re not doing this again.”
Demitri sat back, face icing into hard angles. “Because you’re afraid I’ll turn out like my old man?”
“What? No!” The protest came out unreservedly. He was as capable as anyone of saying something awful, obviously, and far too used to getting his own way, but the times she’d seen him angry, he’d been tightly controlled, not one to resort to violence.