“No.” Her gaze hit mine and I knew she wasn’t going to budge on this. She wasn’t ever going to tell me, and I would never know who he was.
“Please,” I begged, “just tell me who my dad is and then we can leave.”
She opened the door to the car again, and this time Beast banged his hand against it, slamming it closed and making her jump. Her gaze met his with steely determination and she shook her head.
“No. You don’t need to know who he is. He was a one-night stand. He was a nomad in the wind. He was a man I met in a bar. I don’t know his name. He said he wanted nothing to do with you… Which excuse do you want, Belle? You can take your pick, because I’m not telling you who he was!” Her voice remained calm as she spoke, but I saw the wildness in her eyes and the resentment she felt every time she looked at me.
We stayed that way for a moment, my mom and I staring at one another in defiance. And I knew she was never ever going to tell me. I’d never know who he was. I’d never know where my hair color came from, or my obsession with sushi. Or even the freckles on my thigh.
I wondered if she even knew who he was.
I stepped away from her, pulling Beast with me, and she opened the door and got inside. I looked up at Beast and could see the frustration and anger rolling through him, but not for himself because of the awful things she’d said, but for me.
“Are you driving, or am I?” I asked, knowing that would get him to move into action.
He snorted out a laugh and pulled open my door for me.
I swallowed some of the hurt and the pain in my chest and climbed in the car. “Such a gentleman,” I said, looking up at him, and he smirked and closed my door before walking around the car to the driver’s side.
“A man like that has to be,” my mom chuckled from the back seat.
I turned in my seat to glare at her, but she wasn’t looking at me. Instead she was opening her window and lighting a cigarette that she’d fished out from her paper bag.
“Did you get the tequila and smokes for me?” she asked, oblivious or just indifferent to how she was making everyone feel.
Beast opened the door, the whole car rocking as his heavy frame climbed inside. He started the engine and we pulled away from the prison. Mom looked back at it, and when she turned her gaze back to the front I finally saw something more human in her. I saw her fear.
“Yeah,” I replied, and the fear disappeared as she forced a smile to her face.
“Good, me and you are going to party tonight. We need to get to know each other, don’t you think?” She was trying to be nice—I think—but I didn’t want to get to know her, I already knew everything about her that I needed to, and I didn’t like any part of her.
Back at my trailer she walked around, her critical gaze taking in my home and my things. She looked out the window at Beast, who was on the phone to the club, and then back to me.
“There’s not enough room for all three of us here,” she stated matter-of-factly. “I’m guessing he has somewhere else he can be.”
“No, he’s staying here,” I replied.
She scoffed. “Even dogs have other places they can go when they get kicked out, Belle. Someone will take pity on him.”
“Oh my God, will you just stop!” I yelled, anger and resentment uncurling inside me. “Do you even know who he is?”
“I don’t need to. I know his type.”
“His type?” I scowled. “What does that even mean?”
“He’s latched on to a pretty, successful girl who took pity on him, and he won’t give you up without a fight. You need to kick him to the curb. You’re a beautiful girl, Belle, and you can do so much better than that.” She rolled her eyes like what she was saying made sense, and I guess in her head it did.
Everything she cared about in the world was superficial.
She looked at Beast and all she saw was his outsides, his thick red scars, his pink burns, his damaged eye. She didn’t see the beauty of who he was underneath all of that. She just saw that he was different.
“Get out!” I said, calmly, meaning it. I didn’t want her near me or Beast if that was how she was going to be.
Hurt flashed across her face before she pulled her smile back in place. “Fine, I’m sorry, okay. If you want to be with him, then be with him. All I’m saying is you can do better. You’re a beautiful girl, Belle. Maybe you don’t see that, or maybe no one has told you that enough. That’s Jenna’s fault. I thought she would have done a better job with you, but clearly I was wrong.”
She grabbed the tequila from the kitchen counter and unscrewed the lid before taking a long swallow of it and then offering the bottle to me.
“Come on, drink with your momma. We’re celebrating my homecoming, sweetheart.” She shook the bottle, trying to temp me.
“I’m not sure there’s anything to celebrate,” I replied coldly before heading outside to Beast.
The door slammed closed behind me and Beast looked up, his eyes meeting mine. He said something into his phone before hanging up and slipping it into his cut, and then I was in his arms, right where I belonged.
“You good?” he asked.
I listened to his steady heartbeat in his chest, his scent wrapping around me as tight as his arms were, and I nodded.
“I am now,” I replied.
Chapter Twenty-Two
~ BEAST ~
Belle’s mom was a bitch.
A grade A, top-of-her-class, deserved-everything-coming-to-her bitch.
Not because of what she’d said to me; I couldn’t give a shit about that. I was a big boy and I knew how to handle myself. Besides, I knew that everything she said was right—I was a monster, both inside and out, and Belle deserved so much better than me. What I hated about her mom was the way she treated Belle. The way she spoke to her. The way she looked at her. The way she was clearly using her because she needed a place to stay so she could get back on her feet.
She had no desire to get to know Belle, and she wasn’t even trying that hard to hide the fact. She was just selfish to the bone.
Between Belle and I we’d been in and out of the trailer more times than a cat in heat. Every time I thought I could just about stand to be around the bitch without wanting to put a bullet in her head, her mouth opened and something cruel came out.
“What are you cooking for your mama tonight, Belle?” she called from the bedroom where she’d been lying for the past couple of hours watching TV and eating all of Belle’s snacks. We’d gotten in and she’d sunk almost the entire bottle of tequila in an hour before turning the radio on loud and dancing around the trailer until she’d thrown up. I’d carried her to Belle’s bed, where she’d passed out for an hour before waking up and demanding to watch Sex and the City reruns, more tequila, and food.
Belle glanced over at me before looking away quickly. She was embarrassed, but I couldn’t work out if she was embarrassed because of the way her mom treated her or just because of the way her mom was. Either way, she had nothing to be embarrassed about. I’d had one of these types of moms too and I knew how they thought, how they worked, and I knew that unless you cut them off like a leech, they drained you of everything.