“I will never go back to California.” Her voice turned cold like the air drifting in from the open patio doors. “Clara wants to go back. She’ll take the Cadillac and return because she needs that closure.”
“And what do you need?” I’d give it to her. Without question.
“I need that son of a bitch to rot in hell for the rest of eternity.”
I twisted, forcing her to sit straight, because I had to see her face. “Did he . . .” I gulped, not even able to choke out the words.
“There was a reason he and my mother were estranged. I’ll never know if he did something to her. But . . . it isn’t hard to guess. Not after what he did to me.”
“Tell me,” I gritted out.
She stared at the floor, unblinking. “He took everything. Our house. Our things. Anything of value he sold and kept every dime for himself, pissing it away. And we moved into this shitty trailer where Clara and I shared a bedroom and a bathroom, both with doors that didn’t lock.”
My spine went rigid and my heart pounded. “Aria, I won’t make you go through this. If you don’t want to talk about it—”
“No. You were right. And you should know.”
“Are you sure?”
She gave me a sad smile. “I haven’t told this to anyone. Ever. Only Clara knows.”
They’d survived it together.
“It was fairly miserable for five years. That’s about how long it took Craig to run out of money. He literally just . . . spent it. He gambled. He quit his job. He threw parties while Clara and I hid in our room and prayed no one came in. He was such a loser, but there was always food and he normally left us alone.”
“You were ten.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Old enough to care for ourselves and get to school.”
Meanwhile at ten I’d had a full staff of private teachers at my disposal. And parents and grandparents. Yes, they’d been on the opposite side of the country, but had I called, they would have sent a plane.
“By the time we turned fourteen, things started to get strange. Craig would look at us. He’d lick his lips and there’d be this gleam in his eyes as we started to develop breasts. Girls know when a man is staring. One night, Clara woke up to see him standing over her bed. After that, we hung a can on the door so we’d hear if he came in. After about a year, it became so bad—the looks and long touches—that we started packing.”
“To run away.”
She nodded. “There was this girl who lived in the trailer park, two trailers down. Londyn.”
“Cadillac Londyn?”
“The same. Her parents had been junkies, so she was on her own too. One day she was just gone. We started asking around at school and the pizza parlor where she worked. No one knew she was living in the junkyard, just that she was hanging out there. But we figured that was where she was staying too. And if it was good enough for her, it was good enough for us.”
A junkyard wasn’t good enough for her, but it was better than the alternative.
“We didn’t leave right away,” she said. “We stole some money from Craig and bought the biggest backpacks we could find. Then we filled them to the brim with clothes and food and cash and Tylenol. We’d planned to take twice as much as we actually did but things . . . well, things got out of hand.”
My pulse pounded at my temples, fury coming on before she could explain.
I knew what was next. The question was, just how out of hand had it gotten?
“We waited one night too many,” she whispered. “I was in the kitchen, making dinner. Macaroni and cheese. I didn’t even know he was home, but then I felt him. He came up behind me and . . .”
I took her hand.
She laced her fingers through mine and held tight. “He touched me.”
With her free hand, Aria touched her breast. Then lower.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch the wall and kill a man in Temecula, California. But I sat still and let her squeeze my hand so hard that my fingertips turned white. Tomorrow, I’d take it out on my heavy bag, but tonight I was here for Aria.
“He kept touching me. He ripped my shirt. He got my pants open. I fought, hard, and stomped on his foot. It was enough to squirm away and run to our room. It happened so fast, Clara barely registered what was happening when I came racing down the hall. After that, we barricaded ourselves in the bedroom. We sat against the door, wedging ourselves between it and one of the beds. He beat on that door for hours, until our legs were so weak they shook and the tears had dried on our cheeks.”
At fifteen. Fuck. They had to have been terrified.
“We waited for hours after his footsteps retreated from the door, just in case. Then when we were sure he was gone, we pushed every piece of furniture against the door. By morning, we’d shoved the backpacks and supplies out of the tiny bedroom window, then squeezed out ourselves.”
All these years I’d known Aria. All these years I’d worked with Clara. And I hadn’t really known them at all.
Aria’s strength was humbling.
“Clara and I walked hand in hand to the junkyard, and that was it,” she said. “We found the delivery truck and made it our home. We did what we could for money until we were old enough to get jobs. We stayed far away from the school and the trailer park. If we saw someone we knew, we didn’t tell them where we were living because we were all scared the cops might stumble upon our makeshift home and take us away. By some miracle, it worked. We survived. Together. The six of us leaned on each other. And we survived.”
Aria. Clara. I’d underestimated them both.
Later, when my temper had cooled, I’d find out about the uncle. I’d find out if he was still alive. I wasn’t going to ask if she’d kept tabs on the motherfucker.
“I’m sorry.” I kissed her knuckles. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what else to say.”
“There’s nothing to say. It’s in the past. I want it to stay in the past.”
“Then we won’t talk about it again.”
“Brody . . . the cradle. The nanny. You do it because you want to help. But I need to earn things. I need to know they are mine.”
“They are yours.”
“No, they’re not. They’re gifts.”
“What’s wrong with gifts?”
She stared at me, searching for the right words. When she found them, her gaze softened. “I went for so long wondering what was going to happen. I have spent so long relying only on myself.”
“And now you have me.”
“Brody, I know this seems strange. I know Clara can take a gift and say thank you. I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because tomorrow it might be gone. If I earn it myself, then maybe it won’t disappear.”
In that single sentence, it all made sense. She was protecting herself. She was insulating herself from heartbreak. If she counted on me and I left her . . . “I won’t leave you, Aria.”
“You might.”
“Never.”
Not when I was falling for her.
She closed her eyes and collapsed into my chest.
I wrapped my arms around her and kissed the top of her hair. “I’ll always take care of you. Let me. Please.”