Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
When Lita returned from Modesto, Los Angeles looked different. As if she were seeing the traffic, the sidewalk cafés, and tourists through a new pair of eyes. For so long, life had been about making it to the next moment. Riling up James. Buying new drum equipment. Sleeping off the crazy night before. Ignoring the pain every time James refused to see her. Touch her.
No more, though. She was done. It was time to stop waiting for wishes to come true, for other people to handle her decisions and start doing for herself. If there was an added benefit of keeping her mind occupied, instead of focusing on the slashed-to-ribbons organ stuttering inside her chest, well…the distractions didn’t hurt either.
She spent her first night back in Los Angeles packing her hotel room. No more rock star purgatory for Lita. Her packing style of throwing everything into giant boxes from Staples might have been messy and unorthodox, but it got the job done. Next, she found a real estate leasing agent online and viewed several two-bedroom apartments before settling on a bright, airy duplex in Santa Monica, not too far from the beach. She sat there now, cross-legged in the empty living room, going through her wallet to scrutinize the credit cards.
Had she applied for any of them—or had it all been James? And holy shit, it hurt to think about him. Great, gulping breaths accompanied any mental recitation of his name, as if the very thought of his presence sucked the air from the room. What was he doing? Would he ever come back? The uncertainty heaped on top of her like dirt being shoveled from a grave. Maybe she shouldn’t want him to return to Los Angeles. After all, the credit cards and various memberships spread out around her on the floor proved he’d taken up too much space in her life.
Not all his fault, though. Not all. She’d leaned on James, loved him taking care of her needs. She’d craved it because it was the only way he’d shown affection for four years. The only tangible proof that he felt something.
He’d felt something, all right. Pity. He hadn’t taken care of her out of love, he’d done it out of guilt. Over their first encounter. Over wanting to play rough with a girl he didn’t think was mentally healthy enough to handle it. If she was being fair, her actions over the course of four years did nothing to prove his theory wrong. She’d been reckless, acting out at every opportunity. Perhaps it had been wrong to assume he could see beneath the surface to the strength beneath. Perhaps it had been na?ve to think her trip to Modesto would show him in such a short space of time that she wasn’t just an unruly brat. She was a woman that loved him and hadn’t known how to express it, because she didn’t know what it looked like.
Until he’d shown her in his own way, among the trees, before tearing the ground out from beneath her.
Lita stared at the cards for long moments before rising to her feet and digging a pair of orange-handled scissors from the kitchen’s junk drawer. She sat back down on the floor and cut up the cards, snipping them in half, one by one. No more relying on other people for her needs. This was her life and she would take control. Starting now.
Ignoring the tears that blurred her vision, she dialed the bank to make an appointment to close her accounts and open new ones.
* * *
James stared back at his reflection in the rearview mirror of his Mustang, wondering when he’d had time to grow a full beard. Although, time had become an irrelevant detail, hadn’t it? He showed up to places when he got there. Plans and schedules and punctuality were all laughable parts of a past life. The very notion of planning anything when his thoughts were so fucking occupied was impossible. He couldn’t think around the knowledge that Lita was somewhere hurting. And he was the cause. He’d been the cause for a very long time and making plans that didn’t include her felt like hurting her all over again, whether it made sense to his exhausted mind or not.
Since she’d walked away a little over a month ago, he’d worked. His father’s manager had shown back up to reclaim his position, but James hadn’t been ready to give up the distraction that was physical labor. So he’d taken on a co-managerial position that allowed him to take his frustration out on hard earth, day in and day out. Just as he’d done with Old News, James had found new avenues of success for the landscaping company, taking on eight new commercial contracts in the space of four weeks, allowing them to bring on new staff. Buy new equipment.
Distractions. All of them.
Distractions from the fact that he’d been wrong about Lita. He’d mistaken her inner strength for a weakness. She’d overcome huge obstacles in her life and he’d downplayed them, made them a pattern of which he’d become a part. Inexcusable. Her expression of horror and disappointment when she realized he’d underestimated her…it was the first thing he saw upon waking, if he managed to sleep at all. Most of the time, he didn’t. He lay awake, staring at the motel room ceiling, replaying their relationship since the very beginning.
At present, he’d made it to year two. The year Lita attempted to crack him with an extreme sports binge. Bungee jumping, cliff diving, racing lessons. He’d been a wreck for months, not sleeping for worry she’d sneak behind his back and attempt some stunt before he could verify it was secure. At the time, he’d been livid with Lita. Lecturing her nonstop. Using his authority to keep her out of harm’s way as much as possible. Now, James wished he could go back to those moments. Go back to having Lita parked on the tour bus bumper in front of him, belligerence in every line of her body…and tell her she was amazing.
That’s what she’d been trying to tell him, right? Show him? That she was resilient and unafraid. Daring and strong. While James had only seen someone hell-bent on harming themselves. How he could miss Lita’s message when he only ever looked at her baffled James. God, he’d been blind.
Well, he wasn’t now. And there was no way to come back from calling a woman like Lita weak. No way to repair four years’ worth of damage. He’d done the worst of it inside that very Mustang, could still feel the ghost of her sadness in the passenger seat, haunting him.
James shut off the ignition and stepped out of the car, into the hospital parking lot. His father was being released tomorrow and enough was enough. He’d respected the man’s wishes not to visit since arriving in town, but James’s resolve not to go after Lita was taking a rapid nosedive. He missed her like fucking hell. Missed her wit. Her cocky smile. And now he knew what she felt like beneath him, knew the bliss of being inside her. So going to her and begging until his face turned blue had become seriously appealing, especially since his return to Los Angeles was imminent. In order to prevent himself from going straight to her doorstep, he needed to go look his father in the face. And see himself reflecting back. James needed a reminder that Lita had a better future than one with a man like him.
A man who needed too much control. A man who needed to dominate her in an extreme way to get off. A man with violence in his blood. Lita might believe she loved him, but as he’d proven with his misjudgment, he wasn’t worthy of love that forgiving. He wasn’t worthy of a woman so strong when he couldn’t even overcome his own weaknesses.
James strode through the sliding glass hospital doors and walked straight into the waiting elevator. Since he’d been handling the insurance paperwork for his mother, he knew exactly where to find Malcolm Brandon in recovery. When he walked into the dimly lit room, one would have thought his father had been expecting him for the lack of surprise on his face. Malcolm had aged a lot, although since James hadn’t seen him in so long, it wasn’t apparent how much the stroke had to do with Malcolm’s pallid skin, new wrinkles. But his father’s eyes were exactly the same as he remembered. Steady and calculating.
“I don’t want to see you.”
James leaned against the far wall and crossed his arms. “Yeah? That’s too damn bad.”
Malcolm snorted. “Still not afraid of me.” At once, his father looked weary, his head flopping back against the pillows. “You never were.”
“No.” James waited for his father to start shouting, waited for his hands to fist in the bedclothes. To transform into the man of his memory. “I’m going back to Los Angeles tonight. I just needed to know some things before I went.”
After a heavy moment, his father waved a hand. Go ahead.
It took James a while to formulate exactly what he needed to say. He hadn’t walked in with a plan, only knew that he couldn’t let the opportunity to learn more about himself pass. “How did you stop?” He paced to the window without taking his attention from his father. “How did you learn to control the…violence?”
Malcolm’s face twisted. “What is this?”
“Just answer the question.”
His father’s shock faded in degrees. “I stopped feeling sorry for myself.” James hadn’t been expecting that answer at all, but Malcolm pushed on before he could question him. “Not all of us excel at whatever we set our minds to. Look at you, waltzing in here from Los Angeles and increasing my profit margins in the space of a month. Fifteen years ago, I would have hated you for that. Because I couldn’t do it. Still can’t do it.” The older man rubbed at the gray stubble dotting his jaw. “I would’ve felt how…smug you were. Even if you weren’t smug at all. And I would’ve felt the rage build and build at you, at myself. Until it took me over.”
A pushing started behind James’s eyes, someone prodding him with a fork from inside his head. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all. Wasn’t how he’d envisioned this conversation going. He’d expected to relate to his father on some unsettling level, but none of what Malcolm said sounded remotely familiar.
“It always went back to me feeling…less than. And it took me a lot of years to admit that.” He encompassed the room with a sweeping gesture. “I still feel less than once in a while. Why do you think I didn’t want you to see me like this?”
James stared out the window but saw nothing. “I thought you were still upset over all those times I called the police. Or what came after. The fighting.”
“No. You did the right thing.” James turned to his father, saw his face was a mask of shame. “Thank God your mother forgave me or I’d have nothing.”
The fork behind James’s eyes twisted, visions of Lita’s smiling face in the forest dancing in his head. “So the violence…it was always about you. Not the person you focused it on?”
The older man’s swallow was audible. “James, sometimes I forgot who I was even fighting and only saw myself.”
Was it possible that he’d not only underestimated Lita…but himself, too? Never once had his urges been about harming Lita. Jesus. Never. His needs were driven only by giving her pleasure. Satisfying his darker tastes with her. Not using them against her. God, he’d even sensed she needed the same rough satisfaction he did. Perhaps she’d been the very thing that called his baser instincts to the surface.
No, not perhaps. Lita had been the catalyst, all those nights ago in that meat market bar. He’d not only spent the last four years denying his own needs, but hers as well. And that… That was unacceptable.
Every moment that passed without her was a crime. His stomach turned over and pulled, just imagining her miles away, alone, being her brave, irrepressible self without him. She didn’t need him. Her walking away had proven that. But James needed her to live, to breathe, to function. Needed her close.
Could he convince her to trust him again? How?
When the answer came to him, he was already halfway to Los Angeles.