Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
H e reached for my hand, clasping our palms together. That simple touch had me believing that no matter what, everything was going to be okay.
“Okay. Okay. Jeez, you’re impatient.”
He bulged. “Impatient. I do not think I am impatient. You have nearly eaten all your meal. That proves how patient I am.”
“Really?” Faking annoyance, I flashed an evil glare.
“Yes. Really.”
I had another mouthful of champagne and nodded. It was time. “When I was a kid, one of the trailer parks we lived in was in Kilmore. It’s a remote town in the middle of Victoria, at the bottom of Australia.”
I huffed out a sigh, trying to put the events into a sequence in my head. “I had just made myself a bowl of Coco Pops when my father sat down opposite me in the booth seat and said we needed to chat. He’d never done that before. He was always off working, and when he was home, we never chatted.”
“What’d he do for work? ”
I searched my brain. I’d never thought about that. “He was in the mines, but I don’t know exactly what he did.”
Roman’s brows drilled together. It must have been hard to comprehend how a fourteen-year-old didn’t know what her father did for a living.
“Anyway, I knew straight away something was up because he was sober.” I shrugged. “That was unusual too.”
Roman squeezed my hand.
My throat started to constrict, and I swallowed. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
And don’t look at Roman or he will make you cry.
“Mother was in the bedroom with some guy. Tony was his name. Apparently, he was the supervisor at the fuel stop Mother worked at sometimes.”
Roman’s eyes bulged but I kept talking, needing to get it out as quickly as possible.
“The bedroom was just ten feet away. Yet Dad seemed oblivious to . . . to the noises.”
Roman’s breath hitched. “So, your dad knew what . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence.
I huffed, hardly able to believe I was talking about this. “Yeah, they both slept around. All the time.”
Roman scratched his beard, and it was hard to decipher what he was thinking. When I was growing up, my parents’ free-love mentality had never struck me as strange. It was only after I’d moved out with William and started to see what normal families did, that I realized how fucked-up my parents were.
But at the time, I hadn’t known any different.
“Anyway.” I sipped the champagne and Roman topped up my glass again. “It was the afternoon. I only remember that because Mother had been in the bedroom with Tony and a bowl full of marijuana most of the day. Each of the three times she had emerged from the bedroom, she’d staggered to the communal bathroom in the trailer park, and I didn’t think she’d make it back. But she did. And each time she wobbled past me like I didn’t exist.”
“Oh, Dais.” He brought his chair around closer to me and wove his fingers into my hand. “I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged. “Nothing to be sorry about. It’s just how it was.”
“Doesn’t make it right.”
“My parents had sex with other people. At least they didn’t beat each other up.”
He nodded. “That’s true.”
“I met many kids in those trailer parks who went through way more shit than I did.”
The concern on Roman’s face had my throat constricting. He really did worry for me. Nobody ever worried for me.
“So, your dad sat you down while your mom was banging a guy in the bedroom.”
“Yeah, and believe me, the van wasn’t very big, we heard everything.”
He shook his head. “Why did you stay in there?”
I stewed over that comment and finally shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess ’cause it was our home. Besides, there was nowhere else to go other than the communal kitchens and I hated those places.”
“Didn’t you have friends you could go to?”
“We moved around all the time. We’d only been in this place for a week, so I hadn’t met anyone yet.”
“Wow, we sure did live different childhoods.”
I captured his gaze and found myself at the mercy of his questioning eyes. He must have a thousand things he wanted to ask and for the first time in my life, I was willing to answer. It was strange, but also liberating. I felt like I could talk to Roman about anything. Scary as that admission was, it was also a welcome change .
But as we continued to look at each other, I had the strangest feeling Roman already knew what I was going to say. Like we’d traveled this familiar path before.
My heart fluttered, but I forced it back. Roman was just a friend. If I didn’t keep that focus, and he kept on looking at me with those gorgeous eyes, I was likely to tear my shirt off and rub my tits in his face.
Oh, God!
Roman is just a friend. A really good friend.
Like the best big brother a girl could have.
Just a friend. Just a friend.
But I could talk to him without fear of judgment. No one had offered me that—except Zali.
The revelation had my pulse racing and my head spinning, yet I also felt so very complete. Roman was taking all my broken little pieces and making me whole again.
I, Daisy Chayne, was ready to jump into that pit of flaming memories without fear of getting burned. I just hoped I came out the other end rejuvenated. Free.
It was suddenly important to tell Roman every single detail—no more skimming over the crap or dodging the embarrassing bits.
My past couldn’t be changed. It was how I dealt with it that mattered.
I inched closer to him, our thighs touching. When he squeezed my hand, I was ready to tell my friend the worst moment of my life.
“It was strange because my father was calm.” I huffed. “He was never calm. Dad was always angry. Over work conditions. His so-called mates. At politicians. Mother. The food we ate. His shoes. Clothes. It didn’t matter, he always had something to bitch about.”
“Some people are just like that.”
That was true. I’d met enough of them on my Vacation Dreamz tours. “It was the first time he’d ever sat near me without a scowl on his face. He actually looked at me like I was family, and not a random who’d staggered into the caravan after a drunken invitation.”
Roman’s expression morphed into a troubled frown, and I had the feeling he wanted to say something profound but couldn’t work out what.
I saved him by carrying on. “It was my fourteenth birthday.”
“Oh, I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Yeah, well, birthdays weren’t really celebrated in my home. Birthday gifts had been sporadic. Most of the time they forgot. And those times I did get a present, they were usually just practical stuff. School shoes. Textbooks. Things like that. I never got a push-bike or a cool pair of jeans. But by the look on my father’s face, I’d actually thought he’d bought me something special. Like a puppy or a horse.”
“It wasn’t though, was it?”
I shook my head. “No.”
Roman reached for my other hand, locking us together in a complete circle.
“Dad had patted my hand across the table, and it freaked me out. He never touched me. Not in a nice way like that, anyway.” I tried to smile, but I was sure it was lopsided. “I’d yanked my hand back and that ticked Dad off. His scowl returned and he yelled at Mother to shut the fuck up.”
A frown drilled across Roman’s forehead. “I can’t even imagine . . .”
“Yeah, well . . .” I shrugged.
“Did she shut up?”
Staring at my spoon, I searched my memory banks. “Yeah, actually, she did.”
“But she didn’t come out.”
“No. Of course not. ”
“So, what happened?”
It had been fifteen years, yet I could still picture the tiny split on Dad’s bottom lip that he’d earned in a fight two nights before. I could still smell the dope wafting under Mother’s bedroom door. I could even picture the three little birds that were pecking at the ground outside the trailer.
“Dad said he had something very important to tell me, but right at that very moment, the noises from the bedroom grew louder. Mother’s groaning . . .” I shook my head. “Dad yelled at her. He was so furious spit landed on his chin.”
A stabbing pain shot through my belly like a warning shot. I winced and leaned forward, trying to get comfortable.
“Oh, hey, you okay?”
I rode out the pain with clenched teeth, and my eyes squeezed shut. Roman inched around and moved his hand to my back. He rubbed in a way that was as soothing as his kind words. The vise around my insides took forever to subside, and I eased away. Roman reached for our glasses and topped them up.
“Take your time, babe. We have all night.”
Babe . Oh, my god. I wanted to cry at how perfect that sounded. He was a tease. A perfect, handsome, sexy, gentlemanly tease. It was getting harder and harder to remember he was just a friend. Roman was everything I wanted in a man, except he was too young and he didn’t want me. We were just friends. Friends who were bonding over long-repressed secrets.
I sipped my drink and clutched my hand around the glass. “You know what was weird?”
He shook his head.
“When mother did stop, a creepy silence fell on the caravan, that wasn’t any better.”
I took another drink, gulping at it this time. Roman reached for my hands, taking the glass from me and weaving his fingers into mine. He must’ve known this was the point of no return.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and the vision of my dad sitting across from me invaded my senses. It was so strong I could smell his stale sweaty clothes. I snapped my eyes open and stared at the big freckle on my thumb, the one that was different from all the rest.
“Dad was so calm when he spoke. It was like he’d been practicing the speech over and over, you know?”
I looked up at Roman and he nodded.
“He said that he and Mother had agreed to wait until I was grown up before they told me this.”
“But you were only fourteen?”
Nodding, I cleared my throat. “Dad said . . . do you know what an orgy is, sweetheart?”
Roman gasped. “What?”
I opened my eyes and huffed. “That’s exactly what he said. I remember it like it was yesterday. He never called me sweetheart, yet the way he spoke . . .”
I lowered my eyes, not wanting to see the pity in Roman’s expression. “It was like we were about to walk into hell. Of course, I had no idea what an orgy was, and when I shook my head, Dad smiled. I thought maybe an orgy was an alcoholic drink of some kind, and it was going to be my birthday gift.” I swallowed so hard it hurt.
Roman’s eyes were wide, and it was impossible to imagine what was going through his brain.
“Dad cleared his throat, and there was something about the way he smiled at me—I don’t know, it was creepy, yet almost like he was relieved. In that instant, I knew I wasn’t getting a bottle of special alcohol or a puppy for my birthday.” I sighed. “I was getting something that no fourteen-year-old should ever receive. The ugly truth.”
“What did he say? ”
“He told me an orgy was like a party, except everyone has sex together. I yelled at him to stop. But he said I had to hear this, that it was time.”
“Oh no.” The horror on Roman’s face suggested he had an idea where my story was going.
“He said I was conceived at one of those parties. There were four men and two women—one of them was my mother.” I clamped my eyes shut but then I saw my father and his rotten smile, so I opened them and stared at my unique freckle. “Dad’s exact words were, ‘We all fucked each other like rabbits’.”
Roman squeezed my hands. The expression on his face matched my churning insides.
“I yelled at him to stop. Screamed it. I yelled for him to shut his fucking mouth.”
“What’d your mother do?”
“She never came out, if that’s what you mean?”
“Wow, that’s cold.”
“Mother only cared about herself.”
“I’m so sorry, Dais.” He wrapped his arms around me, and I squished my cheek to his chest.
Roman was so sweet. And caring. And perfect.
We sat there with our arms around each other, me listening to his heart and replaying that day, reliving my father’s speech over and over. What I did. What he did. What my mother didn’t do. Those pretty birds outside pecking at the ground. If that scene was scripted into a movie, it would end up on the cutting room floor for being too fucked-up.
Roman eased back, his expression a complicated mix of sorrow and confusion.
I shrugged. “So, there you go. I was conceived at an orgy.”
His blinking eyes confirmed he was trying to piece things together.
“Dad told me that one of the other men had to be my father.” I could picture that man nodding at me like a huge weight had shifted from his shoulders.
“What?” Roman sucked air in through his teeth. “Why did he say that?”
I huffed, remembering every moment like it’d happened yesterday. Staring at that freckle, I repeated it word for word. “Dad said, ‘Well look at you, Daisy. We don’t look anything alike’.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Roman blurted. “Many kids don’t look like their parents.”
“I guess so. But I was made from a concoction of sperms. It explained why I looked nothing like my mother, nothing like my father. After he’d told me, nearly everything made sense. I’d always been a freak, and I finally knew why. It explained why I had big tits and narrow hips. Why I had red frizzy hair and very pale skin. Why I acted nothing like them.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Dais. Do you know who your father is?”
Shaking my head, I lowered my eyes. “The men were all on their four-day break from the coal mine. Dad couldn’t remember their names. He couldn’t even describe what they looked like. Everyone had been high on pot and drunk on whatever cheap grog they could get their hands on.
“He said they hadn’t planned the orgy. It’d just happened. Dad had said that like it was meant to be a good thing.” I shook my head. “So, he pretended to be my father for fourteen years.”
Roman scratched his chin stubble. “Have you ever tried to find your real dad?”
“No. I have no idea where to even start.”
We fell into silence, Roman blinking over and over like he was trying to process my bombshell.
Maybe I shouldn’t tell him what happened next .
Roman drained the last of the champagne into our glasses, and as he drank his drink, a frown rippled his forehead. “Did your mom ever come out?”
“After Dad finished telling me, he pulled a note from his pocket, shoved it under mother’s bedroom door, and walked out with nothing but the clothes he was wearing and his wallet.”
Roman’s jaw dropped. “Walked out? As in, left?”
“Yeah. I never saw him again. Oh, and he took the car.” I huffed. “Mother was more pissed about the car than him leaving.”
“What?” His brows bounced up. “Really?”
“It was the only asset they had. Even though it was a shit-box. Dad had won it in a poker game though, so I guess technically it was his.”
Roman’s expression grew dark. It was a lot to take in. I’d had fifteen years to process it and I still had issues. “What’re you thinking?”
“What did your mom say when you told her what he’d said?”
I chewed on the inside of my lip.
He blinked at me. “You didn’t tell her?”
I didn’t do or say anything, yet Roman could read me like a fifty-foot billboard. It was freaky. It was also scary.
“Dais . . .” He tilted his head. “Why didn’t you tell her?”
I shrugged. “It wouldn’t have mattered. She’d just deny it and say he was lying.”
“Do you think he was lying?”
“No. It didn’t take rocket science to know we weren’t related.”
“Basing it on looks alone is not exactly a scientific conclusion.”
“Rob, that was his name. Rob. He had black hair, black eyes. Dark skin.” I twirled a loop of hair around my finger. “Red.”
“Isn’t red hair a throwback from previous generations?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about your grandparents? What did they look like?”
“I have no idea. I never met them.”
His eyes grew darker. “Aunties, uncles?”
“Roman, I never met any family.”
“Did you ever think about trying to find your father?”
“Are you kidding? Mother barely remembered the name of the guy she slept with the night before, let alone the three other men she’d fucked fourteen years prior.”
“Jeez.” He drove his fingers through his hair, and it bounced back into place.
I released a huge sigh and a kind of numbness settled over me as we fell into a comfortable silence.
It was a minute or so before Roman met my gaze. “Thank you.”
I blinked at him. “What for?”
“For telling me.”
A tiny smile inched across my lips. “Thanks for listening.”
He pulled me to his chest, and the therapeutic beat of his heart calmed me as did his delightful scent. Roman gave good hugs. It was like he had a special power that removed all the worries in the world. Even my insides had settled. Or maybe it was his delicious soup.
A brutal reality slammed into my brain like a freight train.
In just over four months, I may never hug Roman again.
Oh, God. What was I going to do?
My phone rang and with a jolt, I pulled back from Roman .
I glanced at my bedside table and when I saw the number on the cell, my heart sunk like a brick. Mother.
Roman looked at me with a curious expression. “Do you want to answer that?”
“No.”
He cocked his head. “Do you want to check who it is?”
“I know who it is. Mother.”
“Okay.” He looked uncomfortable. After what I’d just told him there was no possible way to interpret what’d be going through his brain.
He had a truly special relationship with his mother and his whole family for that matter. It may have been impossible for him to understand how I felt about my mother.
Her timing was perfect to ruin our special moment, and I cursed her for the millionth time. When the ringing stopped, I gulped my wine and prayed it wouldn’t ring again.
It did. Of course, it did. Mother would never go away now that she had my number.
The dark expression on Roman’s face grew darker. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No.”
The phone kept ringing. Five. Six. Seven.
I wanted to grab it and toss it out the chalet window. If it wasn’t my work phone, I would have. And if I wasn’t required to have it on 24-7, I would’ve switched it off.
It stopped and seconds later, started again. Groaning, I stood and snatched it from the bedside table.
“I can go if you want.”
“No,” I snapped. But I hadn’t meant to. I sighed. “Please, don’t go. I need you.”
Roman stood, strode to me, and wrapped his arms around me. He always knew exactly what to do. I tossed the ringing phone onto my bed, clutched his body to mine, and squeezed. His beating heart was a soothing dose of medicine for my raging emotions. The phone rang again.
He eased back.
“Sorry. She’s not going to give up.”
An awkward smile crawled across his lips. “I can tell.”
I reached for his hand. “Please, please stay.”
He nodded, and together we sat side by side on the bed and waited until the phone rang again. I still jumped when it did. Inhaling a deep breath, I jabbed the green button. “Hello, Mother.”
“Oh, thank God. I thought you’d never answer.”
“I’m busy. I’ve told you that.”
“Yes, I know. I’m so sorry to be a burden. It’s just . . .” She sniffled and I groaned. Here we go. Mother was about to put on one of her shows.
“They’ve, they’ve found . . .” She burst into a wracking sob, and I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting it out.
The warmth of Roman’s thigh pressing up against mine was the stability I needed to get through this.
“What have they found, Mom?” I still didn’t feel right calling her that.
“They’ve found another tumor. I need you here. I need you,” she howled into my ear. “You should be here with me.”
“I can’t yet, Mom.” My gut churned at what I was about to say. “I’ll be there when my work has finished.”
“You’re coming.” Her sobbing miraculously stopped.
“Yes. In January.”
“But . . . but January? It may be too late.”
“It won’t be. You’re going to be fine.”
“I’m not fine. I’m dying.”
“You’ll be fine. I’ve got to go, Mom. We’ll talk again soon.” I hung up before she said another word. My pulse thumped in my ears.
“Is your mother okay?” Roman rubbed my leg .
“She has breast cancer.”
“Oh no.” His expression crumpled into absolute sorrow. “Is it bad?”
“She says so.”
He frowned and looked at me all weird. “You don’t believe her?”
Staring at the ceiling, I clenched my fists. “Mother has lied about having cancer many times.”
“What? Why? Who does that?”
“She used it for sympathy, to get men into bed with her. She could break into tears like that.” I clicked my fingers.
His face morphed into an expression of disgust.
“Yeah, pathetic, huh?”
“And for the guys who fell for it.”
“Mom was pretty and fun—guys loved being around her. When they didn’t fall for her flirting, they fell for her cancer story.”
“So why do you believe her this time?”
“She sent me the doctor’s letter. And the scan showing the mass in her breast.”
His brows drilled together. “So, it’s real.”
“Yes. She’s been told she won’t make it to Christmas.”
He gasped. “Christmas. But . . . but . . .”
I knew what he was thinking. “Yeah. I’m working right up to Christmas.”
“Daisy, you have to go to her.”
“What?”
“Christmas may be too late.”
“Roman, you don’t understand. I hate my mother.”
He emitted a tiny whistle. “I’m sure you don’t mean that.”
My chin quivered. “Yes, I do.”
“Oh, come here.” He tugged me to his chest. My chin wobbled, but I refused to cry. I’d cried enough over my fucked-up parents. Instead, I wanted to make the most of this moment with Roman. Sharing this hug made sharing my shitty secret with him all worth it.
But there was something burning on my mind that I had to know. I was torn between asking it and remaining silent in his embrace all night.
I heaved out a sigh, pulled back, and looked into his honey eyes. “Why are you so nice to me?”
He flashed that sisterly-love grin, pulled my head to his chest, and squeezed. With his heart beating in my ear, he said, “You’ll figure it out.”
I eased back and looked up at him. “What does that mean?”
“It means you will figure it out.”
Blinking, I returned to his embrace, wrapping my arms around him.
I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure what out?
He rubbed his hand up and down my back and the tenderness had me even more confused.
We are just friends.
Maybe that was what he wanted me to figure out. Friends were nice to each other. They helped each other. They would take a bullet for each other. Zali had been my first real friend. And maybe because Roman was a man, I was reading way too much into his friendship.
That was it! I never knew it was possible to be friends with a man. Real friends. Friends that shared secrets and childhood horror stories. Friends who made soup and rubbed your back when you were sick.
The pitchfork in my uterus twisted again and wincing, I doubled over.
Roman eased back and placed his hand below my elbow. “Damn, I thought my soup had cured your pain.”
Groaning, I let him help me onto the bed and pull the sheet up over me .
“You need a good night’s sleep.” Roman left my side and strolled to the table. “We have an early day tomorrow.” He gathered the dirty bowls and returned them to the tray he’d brought them in on.
“Man, you can be bossy.”
“Just looking after my girl.” He winked at me.
My girl! Okay, he’s forgiven.
After cleaning up, he came back to me and kissed my forehead. “ Buona notte. Sogni d'oro .”
Good night. Sweet dreams.
I don’t know if anyone had ever said that to me before. Another first, and an absolutely beautiful one.
My soul soared like an eagle in the clouds.
But once he’d closed the door, and the minutes ticked away, that eagle swiftly drifted back to earth.
Come Christmas, when I’m booted out of Europe, I may never see Roman again.