Chapter 5 Rae #2
Waiting for my mother to face me again, I whispered, “Sorry, maybe I should just go—”
My mom moved me toward the table. “Oh, you’re fine, just need a little food.”
After being physically forced into my seat, I was suddenly face to face with Davis, who looked as though he might be as uncomfortable as me.
“Now, let’s eat.” My mom sat down with a heavy sigh, my father trailing her, after grabbing the glass pitcher of juice that I’d made.
“Sorry, in the chaos, we missed introductions,” my mom said, smiling, forcing the conversation to circle back to the two twenty-somethings at the table.
“Thomas, right?” I asked with a bit of a bite, because for all I knew he’d catfished my parents into loving him.
He was a liar.
His dark brows caved as a flare of red tipped his ears. “Uh…no, that’s reserved for Millie and Roger. It’s Davis to everyone else.”
Fuck.
He just said it—threw his name out there like it was nothing. Did he remember me? Did he realize who it was that sat across from him? I stayed quiet, having a difficult time wrapping my brain and heart around the magnitude of what was happening here.
For years I had desperately wanted Davis here, in my house, meeting my parents. But now, I just wanted him out of my sight. I didn’t want to be in the same hemisphere as him, let alone the same room.
“Honey—” My mother cleared her throat, bringing my gaze up to meet hers. “Aren’t you going to introduce yourself?”
What were we, five?
“Raelyn. People call me Rae.”
It was rude, I knew it. They knew it. Davis probably knew it.
My tone explained exactly how I currently felt about introducing myself to him.
Silence expanded in the room, hovering over us like a wet cloud, so I decided to ask the one question that kept popping into my head.
“Why do they call you Thomas if that’s not your name?”
Davis didn’t say anything, and the moment stretched awkwardly until he finally set his fork down and cleared his throat.
“It’s my legal name. Your parents heard about…
” He hesitated, staring down at his plate for a second too long for it to be casual.
“Uh…my upbringing, and well, it’s a long story, but they decided to call me by that instead of what everyone else called me.
They know I go by Davis, but it’s special for them to call me by the name I was given, so they call me Thomas. ”
Feeling my face heat from his direct attention, I let my chin fall to my chest.
Why did it seem like hurt laced each word when he talked about his name and his parents? Why did I care?
“Thomas, I finished that book.” My mother took over the conversation, cheerily.
The low chuckle I heard from across the table had my reluctant gaze traveling up. The sound was deep and throaty, like sunshine found in between a sliver of rock, somewhere in the darkest cavern.
But his laughter was nothing compared to the smile that stretched along his face, and the dimple that popped out on the side of his cheek. My stomach flipped, immediately followed by a gripping fear.
Through all the years of tracking him, of following him as often as I could, he had never once smiled. A frown had always tugged along his devastating jaw line, a dark cloud hanging over his head. Happiness wasn’t an emotion he seemed familiar with, and yet, seeing it on him…
It could ruin me.
Again.
“You’re lying.” Davis called my mother out good naturedly, still with that smile intact.
Laughter echoed from both my parents as they all joined in on an inside joke.
“I goaded her into finishing it,” my father added around a bite of his food. “Every night that she would work on a puzzle instead of reading, I’d say something.”
All three of them were laughing now, and I was left feeling like an outsider.
Keeping my eyes on my plate, I felt the murmur of conversation shift and suddenly Davis was clearing his throat.
“So, Rae—you just moved back from New York?”
I lifted my head as my thoughts strangled any response I could deliver. Instead, I just ended up staring.
His face flushed the smallest bit, his mouth working—surely to finish the bite of food—and then his throat cleared.
“You grew up around here, right?” Navy eyes implored an answer from me, but I remained frozen, unsure of what to say and unwilling to play whatever game this was. He had to remember me—how could he not?
“She did,” my dad replied on my behalf, filling in the silence.
Davis’s gaze swung from me to my father, and that’s when I realized I was embarrassing my parents. Shame fluttered alongside my pulse as I tried to recover.
“Yeah, sorry. I did.”
There. Short, honest, and to the point.
His gaze was back on me as he dug into his mashed potatoes.
“Well, I was just curious…because there was this—”
My knee jumped under the table. It was completely subconscious, but the table jerked, and Mom jumped up.
“Rae,” she whined accusingly as she swiped red juice from her shirt.
“Mom, oh crap, I’m so sorry.” I turned toward her, jumping up to help, and my hasty movement toppled my glass too.
Davis dove forward to catch it, while I turned and tried for the same thing.
Our heads cracked together, and suddenly I wanted to cry—and not because of the pain radiating through my temple.
I’d take roaches any day over this crater in my chest that kept expanding each and every time I seemed to do something that embarrassed my family.
“Ouch!” I rubbed at my forehead while using a potholder to mop up the excess liquid.
“Shit, sorry about that,” Davis grunted, rubbing at his own forehead.
Normal me would have reassured him it wasn’t his fault—that this was all mine because it was, but hurt and angry me just turned away and let him sit there in pain.
“Here, Mom…I’ll grab some towels.” I darted toward the sink, reached for a few from the drawer and walked back to the table, wiping and cleaning while my dad said something that made Davis laugh. I didn’t miss the way Davis continued to cut a look in my direction every few seconds or so.
Cradling the wet potholder and towels, I stood and addressed the table. “I’m going to go throw these in the wash.”
Darting toward the living room, I cut down the hall and practically dove into the laundry room. Dumping the soaked mess in my arms on the top of the dryer, I braced myself on the ledge of the washer.
If only I had included my parents in what had happened all those years ago, they’d never have agreed to befriend this man. Now it was too late, and they loved him more than me.
“So stupid,” I muttered out loud, pushing open the top of the machine lid and swiping my load inside.
“What was that?”
Davis had walked up behind me, holding the center of his soaked shirt away from his chest. I hadn’t even realized he’d gotten juice on it.
“Nothing, sorry…” I looked down at my feet, hating this feeling notching in my gut.
It was a swelling of my pride, a shrinking of myself and a whole lot of pain that hadn’t been addressed.
I had taken advantage of the school counselors three years ago to try to work through these feelings, and I realized now how foolish I was to have assumed I was all fixed.
Davis stepped around me, pulling my thoughts from the past, and that’s when I realized I had missed a rather large development.
His shirt was gone. I sucked in a silent breath and quickly averted my gaze.
I had never seen him shirtless; even that night he was with that woman in the library, he had been fully clothed.
I allowed one look, darting my eyes to the side, so he wouldn’t know I was peeking.
But holy shit! He was cut like stone and molded into a magazine-worthy masterpiece.
“Your dad said I could just borrow one of his white shirts, said they were folded on the counter in here?”
Trying not to gulp awkwardly, or shake—I pointed toward the pile I had finished earlier that day. “Right there.”
My eyes returned to my feet, which needed to begin moving out of the room and away from him.
“You don’t like me very much,” he said, matter of fact.
Shrugging, I turned and grabbed the soap, filled the washer and started it without offering to add his sullied shirt.
“I have no reason not to like you.” The first lie of the evening. “I just wasn’t prepared to meet you. My parents have talked about you quite a bit over the years, and I had no idea you were even remotely close to my age.” Or named Davis Brenton.
He shook his head, smiling before turning away and slipping into a shirt. The fact that I would be thinking about him shirtless in my house later tonight made me hate him just a little bit more, if that were even possible.
“So, the fact that I was close to your age made you nervous—is what you’re saying?”
I could tell without even looking at his face that he’d have a dark brow raised in an attempt to be funny, or flirty…either was unacceptable.
“I’m saying…” I inhaled a deep breath and looked up.
“That I just moved back, and I’m tired…and the last thing I wanted to do was meet some recluse that can only seem to make friends with people old enough to be his parents.
It’s obvious you don’t have much of a life, but now that I’m home, you won’t have them all to yourself anymore. Sorry, but the meal ticket is up.”
My heart raced as I bit out each venomous word, hating that I was forced to watch his playful expression turn hard and resentful.
Steadying myself, I went to leave when I felt a tug on my elbow and suddenly his palm was against the door, shutting us in with my back flat against the surface.
“Let’s cut the shit. I was nice for the sake of your parents, but that obviously was a waste. I don’t know what your problem is, but you don’t know me,” he seethed, one palm above my head, his face close to mine.
But I did know him—he just had a shit memory, which was not my fault.
Smiling, I lifted my chin, daring him to move closer. “I don’t need to know you to know that you’re a leech. You’re sucking the life out of my parents, and now that I’m back, I’m going to put a stop to it.”
There was a storm in those eyes that I once adored, a violent, turbulent tempest.
“You got back from being away for over four years, with what…a handful of visits throughout the entire time you were gone?” Shaking his head, he snapped, “Say whatever the fuck you want, but your parents deserve better than having their spoiled brat finally grace them with her presence and immediately start throwing her weight around.”
Guilt tugged hard at my chest, a rusty chain around my heart, aching with all the words I still owed to my parents about why I had stayed away.
I had no idea why I wanted to taunt him into becoming this vile thing in front of me, but his words hit harder than a cement block to the face.
I was too stunned to respond, so he continued.
“You think you know anything about me at all? You don’t know anything.
I, on the other hand, know everything about you, Rae, and I know that they got the short end of the stick when they got you.
I’ve been good to them, and I will continue to be good to them because we both know you being here is only temporary.
You’re too selfish of a person to stick around. ”
With that he tugged on the doorknob, forcing me forward. He moved so we didn’t touch, and then he slipped out into the hall, taking the last word with him.