Beyond Love (The Hutton Family Book 2)

by Abby Brooks

  “Second,” I said, smiling.

  Brooke tilted her head and scrunched up her nose. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s the second good thing that ever happened to me. You are the first.” I drew my friend in for a hug while her words danced through my mind.

  She was right, of course.

  Wyatt was worth standing up to my Mom.

  He was worth fighting for.

  He was worth putting my heart on the line because God only knew how many times he had put himself on the line for me.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Wyatt

  The second time I went to see my mom after Madeline’s visit, I didn’t call to make an appointment. I simply showed up—overflowing with accusations and questions—barged into the office, and sat down. Mom regarded me from Dad’s chair, dwarfed by the size of the thing. Sun fell through the window, casting shadows across her face and I wondered which was winning, the darkness or the light. She greeted me with an edge to her voice, a feature that seemed to come with the chair. I took the seat across from her and returned the greeting.

  “How are you?” she asked, searching my face as if she could read the answer in the set of my eyes and the curl of my lip. I recognized what she was doing because I had done it for years, trying to read my father’s mood as we faced off across the desk.

  There wasn’t a good way to start this conversation, so I dove right in. “I know about Harlow.”

  Mom scrunched up her brows, tilting her head as her lips parted. “About Harlow? What do you mean, you know about Harlow?”

  “I know she’s not Dad’s.” Mom’s eyebrows hit her hairline, but I held up my hands and continued. “And I’m not judging you. I’d have to be a certain kind of asshole to stand where I’m standing and look down at you for trying to cover up a mistake.” I offered a weak smile.

  “Harlow is your father’s child.” Mom dropped her head into her hands. “How in the world did you hear this?” A moment later, she looked up, guilt softening her eyes. “Did you hear it from him? Have you been holding on to this secret all this time as well?”

  Her response wrapped a tight hand around my heart. “I heard it from Kara. Dad never said a word about it to me.” A cloud covered the sun and darkness descended on the room. I fought the urge to turn and see if he was looming in the doorway. He was gone. He had been for months, but in this moment it still felt like he was everywhere.

  “Why would Burke tell her? God, that man…I should have left when things got bad. I could have saved Harlow from his spite. Caleb from his condescension. I could have saved you from having to deal with this giant mess.” Mom trailed off, her eyes so unbelievably sad. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. Of all my children, you have the biggest heart. To know he took advantage of it the way he did…”

  Her grief unsettled me, but I needed to know the whole story. My father was the source of so much sickness in our family, but if the poison ran deeper, I needed to know. “What happened, Mom? What happened with Harlow?”

  Love was a funny thing, sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrible. It blinded you to faults and smeared lines you thought were indelible. It brought out the best and worst of a person, oftentimes in the same moment. I watched Mom’s love for her daughter boil to the surface, churning with whatever it was she felt for her husband. She placed both hands in her lap and let out a sigh.

  “After Eli was born,” she began, her voice low and thick, as if these words weren’t meant to be spoken, “your dad and I struggled. With four children and a rapidly growing business, our plates were full and our relationship was suffering. We fought at first. Awful fights filled with dreadful things. When the rage boiled away, there was nothing left. We agreed to stay together for you boys, but to live as separately as we could, but Harlow happened anyway, and your father refused to believe she was his. I had been working closely with one of the contractors and Burke swore I was sleeping with him. Somehow, it was easier for him to believe I cheated than to look at that little girl and see all the ways she looked just like him. All he saw was white-blonde hair and pale blue eyes, so much like the rest of you, except in her it was treacherous instead of beautiful.”

  I imagined the fights they must have had, the heat of betrayal followed by layers and layers of ice, built into a wall so high, so insurmountable, neither would ever be the same. Questions flipped through my mind, one after the other, acrobats fighting for my attention.

  Why, why, why?

  Why would he do that?

  Why would he look at his little girl and choose to believe she didn’t belong?

  Maybe it was easier for him to deal with his resentment of her if he didn’t believe she was his. Maybe he truly believed Mom had an affair. Maybe he himself had been cheating and it was easier to blame his wife for their failing marriage. Maybe he needed an excuse to let himself fall into his alcoholic abyss.

  Maybe that particular why didn’t matter.

  Maybe there was a more important why.

  One that I had wanted an answer to for most of my life.

  “Why did you stay?”

  The question hung in the air between us, swollen after all the years it spent on the tip of my tongue. My brothers and I would whisper it to each other after Dad went on one of his rampages. My sister would sob it into my shoulder while she sat at the edge of the dock.

  Why?

  Why would a woman so strong, so intelligent and compassionate and kind…

  Why would she stay with a husband who became a monster?

  “For you kids,” she replied as she always had, but the answer wasn’t enough. Not this time.

  “But couldn’t you see he was killing us? He was toxic, Mom, and all of us, all of us, are covered in the scars he left behind.”

  She sat back in her chair and regarded me with deep sadness. It tugged at her mouth. The corners of her eyes. It perched on her shoulders and pressed on her chest. Something told me I was seeing all of her for the first time.

  “Imagine what a man like that would do if he was threatened. Would he turn his back and walk away from his home? His business? Or would he systematically destroy everything? Imagine the custody battle. Would he have wanted anything to do with Harlow? What would that have done to her if he fought for you boys, but left her behind? And for that matter, what about you and your brothers? Look at what he was capable of when he had everything he wanted and ask yourself what terrible ways he might have warped your minds if I put up a fight. I was stuck between awful choices and made the one I thought would keep my children the safest.” She lifted her hands, a tiny movement. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “He was wonderful, once,” she continued, her gaze faraway, watching memories of a past so distant it barely existed. “When we first fell in love, when this place was little more than a dream. He was the kind of man who deserved devotion. I see that in you, too.”

  I lifted an eyebrow, waiting for the killing blow. Any comparison between me and Dad lifted my hackles, even when the comparison was kind.

  Pride burned through the sorrow on Mom’s face. “You stepped into a leadership position in this family as if you were born for it. You helped Caleb start his business. Helped Eli with school. You were there for Harlow when no one else could even get through to her. You were the father figure they deserved.”

  I ran a hand over my face as I processed the information. Me? A father figure? If that were true, even a little bit, then I needed to start being the kind of man that belonged at the head of this family. I needed to stop wallowing in confusion and regret and start finding the best way to move us forward and bring us back together. As a family, we were stronger when we were together, fighting for a unified goal.

  Mom offered a weak smile. “It’s obvious you and that…girl…care for each other.” It wasn’t lost on me that she couldn’t bring herself to say Kara’s name.

  “I think, in any other situation, you would like her.”

  “I like her in
this situation, and that’s saying a lot.”

  I stood, sensing a natural end to the conversation. “I’m sorry, Mom. For…” You having to watch the love of your life disintegrate into a horrible man. For the impossibility of trying to decide what was best for your children. For years of stress and strain and struggle. “…everything.”

  “I know, son. I know.” And with that, she stood and wrapped me in a hug. I bent to bury my face in her hair, breathing in the scent that had been my rock since I was a little boy.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Kara

  I needed as much personal power as I could muster to confront Madeline Lockhart, and that meant I needed to be on home ground. Even though I had never once invited her to visit my apartment, she acted put out when I called and asked her to come by. Mom sauntered through the front door forty-five minutes late, scowling at the pictures on the wall and preening in the mirror.

  “This place is so you,” she said as she perched on the edge of my couch.

  She didn’t mean it as a compliment, but I took it as one anyway. While she liked lush fabrics that screamed ‘rich with money,’ I preferred clean lines and simple patterns. I found beauty in pops of color rather than her bold approach, and loved the way I had decorated, especially because she didn’t.

  “Why haven’t I been here yet?” The question was another weapon, one designed to poison me with guilt over not inviting her sooner. Or self-doubt because she never asked for an invitation. Or—most likely—some deadly combination of the two.

  It wouldn’t work. Not today. Not ever again. “Because you don’t care about things that don’t have anything to do with you.”

  Mom scowled at my answer, confused not to have gotten the reaction she wanted. “Well that’s just silly, Poopsie. Of course I care.” She licked her lips. “Have you heard anything from Wyatt?”

  It only made sense for her to jump right to that particular topic. Her nails were chipped and her roots were showing, which could only mean one thing. Mom was running low on money. She would pay her rent late in order to keep a spa appointment.

  “I’ve heard plenty from Wyatt.” I gave her a look that told her everything I wanted her to know.

  “Oh, don’t look so mad.” Mom rolled her eyes and adjusted her skirt, before dropping onto my couch with a grimace at the fabric choice. “You know you’ve wanted that man since the day you saw him. Don’t hate me because I gave him the shove you needed.”

  Because the only thing that ever got my mother’s attention was shock and awe, I went in for the kill. “Believe me, I have plenty of other reasons to hate you.”

  “Kara Madeline Lockhart!” She dropped her jaw. “I am your mother and a guest in your home. I deserve your respect.” She gave me a withering look. “I raised you better than that.”

  She actually hadn’t raised me at all. I raised myself and it was time she took a hard look at who I turned out to be. “You are a narcissist and a parasite. You have done nothing but ruin every good thing that ever happened to me, then somehow made me think it was my fault.”

  “It’s not my fault that you’re an expert at self-sabotage. You can’t blame your failings on me.”

  “Not all of them. I’ve made my fair share of mistakes. But if anyone was doing any sabotaging, you were the one pulling the strings and pushing the buttons.” I unleashed the story of my life with her, from my perspective. She blinked in shock at my words, at all the awful things she ever said or did lined up and presented for her evaluation.

  “I had no idea you saw me that way…I mean…wow…” She frowned, trying to look sad—even managed a tear or two—but I saw it all for the act it was.

  “Of course you didn’t. You’d have to take an honest look at yourself for that to happen.”

  “Wow…” Mom sat back, already in the process of erasing everything she just heard. If she didn’t remember, she didn’t have to take any of it to heart. I could go on being her disaster of a daughter and she could keep being the hero of her story.

  It was time for me to become my own hero. I had leaned on Brooke and Wyatt for too long. It was time to cut this woman out of my life, to cut out the cancer before it could grow big enough to eat me up from the inside out. As I stood in front of her, saying all the things I had bottled up for far too long, strength poured into me. I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t ruined. I would rise from these ashes and become whatever the hell I wanted to be.

  “I just thought you should know,” I said. “If you say one thing to the press about the Huttons, about those lies you made up about Wyatt and me, I will come out with my own story.” I stood taller, emboldened as truth poured out of me. “I will drag your name through the mud, and I won’t even have to lie to make you look bad.”

  “So?” Mom scoffed, frowning. “Why do I care what the press thinks of me? I don’t have a business that will crumble under the scrutiny.”

  But she did. Her lifestyle was nothing but a business transaction and it said a lot that she didn’t realize what she really was.

  I folded my arms over my chest. “If your face and this story end up smeared all over the news, if the whole world knows you’re a gold digger and a blackmailer, think about how hard it would be to find another rich boyfriend willing to take a chance on you. You’re not exactly getting any younger.”

  “Kara…” Mom stood, looking more rattled than I had ever seen her, and risked a glance in the mirror, her fingers fluttering to the nest of wrinkles at her eyes. “What do you expect me to do? They’re going to kick me out of the condo if I don’t pay them.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe actually get a job and earn your lifestyle for yourself instead of using your daughter and blackmailing good people?”

  She dropped back to the couch. “God,” she said, covering her face with her hands. “I miss Burke so much.”

  I didn’t know what to do with that statement and barked a laugh. “You mean you miss his money.”

  “No.” She looked at me, her face open and raw. “I miss him. We loved each other, in our way. He never wanted me to be anything other than what I was. And all I wanted from him was…”

  “His money.”

  “No. That wasn’t all I wanted from him. Yes, he supported us. Us, Kara. Don’t you forget that. But he made me laugh. He made me feel beautiful. He made me feel like I mattered. Your own father ran away the moment he heard about you. But Burke? He smiled when he learned I had a little girl and I swear, the way he loved you made me love him even more. That man stared at you like the sun rose and set in your eyes. It broke my heart that you never had that before. Then I saw the way Wyatt looked at you, and it was the same.”

  Such a display of emotion from this woman should have had my radar going crazy, except this time, nothing about my mother seemed faked or forced. Her words seemed genuine, and I didn’t know what to do with that.

  “If that’s true,” I said cautiously, “if you think Wyatt loves me, then why are you doing everything in your power to ruin us? Can’t you see how hard it will be for him to trust me after what you did? How hard it is for me to trust him?” I was in dangerous territory. Talking to her like she was a rational person never ended well. The only thing to expect from crazy, was more crazy.

  Mom lifted her head from her hands, genuinely upset. “I did what I did because Burke told me to. He told me it was clear you two were falling in love and I should do everything I could to make sure you ended up together.”

  I clutched at a chair for support as the revelation weakened my knees. “Are you kidding me? Burke told you to threaten his own family to make his son marry me?” I had never heard anything so…so…hateful.

  “Well, no. Not exactly.” Mom dabbed her fingers under her eyes, wiping away tears. “Burke told me to make sure you two ended up together, that you were good for each other. I’m sure he wanted you guys to do it on your own, but this was the best way to make sure it happened. It was the least I could do, to follow through on the last thing he ever asked m
e.”

  And there it was. The craziness I knew to expect. “Don’t you see how messed up this is? Don’t you see that this isn’t how you build a relationship? How do you expect us to ever trust each other if the whole thing is built on deceit and betrayal?”

  A deeper part of me wondered if this story was still another lie. Did Burke really want Wyatt and me to end up together? Did Mom really think she was following through on his wishes? Or was this one last ploy to get at his money?

  Mom scowled at me, lifting her chin and covering up that brief flash of true emotion. “I don’t know, Kara. From where I’m sitting, it looks like you have Wyatt right where you want him. No matter what happens, whether he loves you or not, you’re going to get him and end up with a very comfortable life. And isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”

  It wasn’t what I had always wanted. In fact, it was the very opposite of what the way I set out to live. Leave it to Mom to transfer her own life goals onto me, as if I never existed as a separate entity from her.

  I always knew my mom was crazy. That she wasn’t like other moms. But right then, with her standing in my living room, I finally saw how deep her sickness ran. The sooner she was out of my life completely, the better.

  Wyatt

  I paused by Kara’s front door as raised voices sounded from inside. I heard Kara, and though her voice was too muffled for me to make out, she sounded upset. I lifted my fist to knock, but the response caught me off guard.

  Madeline’s voice, low and too calm. “I don’t know, Kara. From where I’m sitting, it looks like you have Wyatt right where you want him. No matter what happens, whether he loves you or not, you’re going to get him and end up with a very comfortable life. And isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”

  My stomach dropped at the words.