Her brow puckered. “She’s crazy. You should have heard the stuff she was telling me.”
“You didn’t believe her?”
She snorted, and the sound was so down to earth that I stared at her intently for a handful of seconds. Long enough that she turned pink. “No, Nicholas,” she told me softly. “I didn’t. She’s sick, isn’t she?”
“She’s high-functioning, but yes. She’s sick.” Fuck, who was I to judge? Wasn’t I sick in the head too?
“Because of Rosa?” she murmured, and the fact she knew my daughter’s name? Well, it meant that Gina had tried to tell Phoebe I’d killed our baby girl.
It wasn’t the first time she’d pulled that lie. Only the coroner’s report had my mother looking at me with ease. Yeah, Gina had convinced my mother that I’d—
Fuck.
My tongue felt thick in my mouth as I grated out, “She was insane before, but after Rosa died… yeah. It got worse.” I licked my lips. “SIDS,” I whispered. “One day she was there, the next she wasn’t.”
“I’m so sorry, Nicholas.” The bitch of it was, I heard the sincerity in her voice.
She meant it.
Oh, everyone thought they meant it when they said they were sorry for the passing of a loved one. But Phoebe meant it. Each word was imbued with her sincerity.
I released a breath but fell silent, unsure of what to say.
“She said I killed her, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” Simple. No bullshit.
“She likes to blame me for it.”
“SIDS is impossible to protect against. For the first six months, I was terrified for Scottie—”
My throat felt tight. “I went in there that morning. Saw her. It’s something I live with every day.”
“I can’t imagine,” she replied gently, and I heard the soft padding of her bare feet against the raw oak floorboards. I tensed against what was about to happen, but when her hand pressed to my back, it felt good.
Right.
Like my heart could stop racing now that she touched me.
“What scars, Nicholas?”
This time, I turned my face away from her, but when she pulled at my shirt, dragging it from my waistband, I didn’t stop her.
Her hands touched them first, rubbing over the puckered flesh that was uber-sensitive to the touch. That was hard enough. But for her to see them, it made me feel sick.
They were repulsive.
Repugnant.
Just like me.
A true manifestation of my character.
“What happened?” she breathed.
My throat was tight, but I managed to grate out, “I was faithful to Gina, Phoebe.”
She quieted. Didn’t rush to tell me she believed me, didn’t huff and say she didn’t.
This woman, to whom I’d shown my worst side, didn’t condemn or judge me.
She waited for the full story.
I appreciated that, even if my ego didn’t.
“One night, she accused me of cheating on her. It came out of the blue, and I talked her down. Like I said, she’d been more unstable than ever since we lost Rosa, more erratic, but I understood because most days, I felt insane too.” God, that was an understatement. I’d been sure I was losing my mind every fucking hour of the day. “Then, a few days later, she woke me up with—”
“With?” Phoebe prompted me when I fell quiet.
“She had a tea kettle in her hand. Freshly boiled.” Behind me, Phoebe tensed. “She poured it on my stomach—I was lucky. She was aiming for my cock. That was one target she missed.”
“What the fuck?” Phoebe rasped, and suddenly, I was being hauled around, forced to turn so that my back was against the door and she was there.
In front of me.
Her eyes ablaze, her body tense, throbbing furiously with her anger.
“Why?”
“To clean me.” A hard laugh escaped me. “Sterilize me… in two meanings of the word.”
“I wish I’d torn her hair out while I had the chance.”
I blinked, and found my lips were quirking at the thought of Phoebe, who I’d believed was timid, going Amazonian on my ex-wife’s ass. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because I don’t have the right to—”
“Be possessive of me?” My eyelids felt heavy. “What if I wanted you to?”
She swallowed. “Nicholas, I—”
“You, what?” My skin tingled where her hand rested on my belly. The skin was still red, even after all these years. Some parts were puckered, others were smooth. Where water had trickled down over the contours of my flesh, there were strange scars from where it had puddled and then trailed down like tiny capillaries.
My abdomen, hip, and lower back area were a mess. My butt bore deeper scars where they’d done skin grafts to heal some of the deeper wounds.
But though the scars were revolting, she touched the damaged flesh as though it were healthy.
Like it had been before.
Didn’t it revolt her?
Repulse her?
Even though Gina claimed to want me back, went to these bizarre lengths to entice me, I knew for a fact she’d find them repugnant.
Had I been nuts enough to want her back, I’d have had to accept that she’d never be able to come to terms with what she’d done to me.
And yes, I was aware of the irony in that statement.
Her fingers spread out over my belly, touching me in a place that hadn’t known another’s touch in far too long. But she didn’t stop there. She smoothed her palm over the bumps of my muscles, then reached up to cup my jaw.
“Tell me what happened?”
I swallowed. “Why?”
“Because this is why you’ve been the way you’ve been. It’s why you’ve chosen this path for us. I want to understand before I say yes to anything.” She sucked down a shuddery breath. “You have to understand, Nicholas, I know I’m a pushover.” Her smile was lopsided.
“No. You’re not,” I ground out, hating that she thought that of herself.
“I am. I let my mom push me around, let you push me around—”
“It’s to my shame that you can lump us both together in that sentence.” I sighed and though it was weird for me, strange to initiate contact like that, especially with my scars on display, I tilted forward until my forehead rested against hers.
“Tell me,” she urged, not replying to my comment, and I didn’t blame her. There wasn’t much to say. No apology I could give for the way I’d whipped her with my tongue, lashed her with my actions.
“There isn’t that much to tell. Honestly,” I rasped when she shook her head. “We got a divorce a few months after this happened. She cited cruelty as her reasoning, used a few examples of me going off the rails at her in the aftermath of this.”
She scowled at me. “Didn’t you throw that shit back in her face in court?”
“Why would I?” I shrugged, and at her gasp, shot her a wry look. “I wanted to get divorced. The second she did this, I wanted her out of my life. And I planned for it. The nurses wanted me to have her arrested on domestic abuse charges, but I knew that wouldn’t wash. They even called the cops in, but I told them it was just an accident.