Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
NICK
I watched Mads leave the room, debating whether I wanted to smack him or fuck him.
Both, ideally, but that would have to wait.
In the meantime, his departure left an estranged mother and her son studying each other across a pretty suburban lounge in small-town New Zealand.
Two seriously screwed-up people who’d survived more family horrors than most could imagine.
Who had once been strong together, but who’d lost each other along the way.
“I hate that he won.” Chloe’s angry burst broke the uncomfortable silence.
In response to my questioning frown, she added, “Your father. He won in the end. Or at least he achieved his goal. You were separated from me and kept under his thumb. And I was hurt in a way that was far more painful than anything else he could’ve done.
What’s more, he’s still wielding that power from beyond the grave. Just look at us.”
Her words hit like a gut punch, and for a moment I couldn’t even think straight.
All those years of therapy and I still hadn’t really seen it that way.
For some stubborn reason, I’d always held my mother accountable for my pain.
Maybe because she was the easiest target, the one thing I hadn’t seen coming as a kid.
But sitting in front of her now, I knew she was right.
My father had manipulated and controlled everything about our lives, and he was still doing it.
That said, it was one thing to know it and quite another to change a worldview, years in the making.
As hard as I tried, I struggled to shift the anger I felt for my mother over to my father, even though it had been his poisonous lies and machinations that had fed it.
She doesn’t love you. She never did. If she did, she would never have left you.
“Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to change this.” I flicked a hand between us.
“No, it doesn’t.” She looked me in the eye. “And I can apologise till the cows come home, but nothing will change the fact I hurt you, badly. So I’ll keep apologising till the day I die and as often as you need to hear it.”
“You’re assuming there’s a future for us past today,” I reminded her bluntly and immediately regretted it.
She gave a sad shrug. “I’m assuming nothing. What I hope for is a very different thing. Can I show you something?”
A part of me wanted to say no just to hurt her, but I pulled on my big-boy pants and said, “Sure.”
She pointed to the wall of bookshelves. “Bottom shelf, far right, at the back, behind the Atlas, you’ll find an exercise book.”
I went to the bookcase and retrieved a bulging A4 journal. I set it on the coffee table and pushed it her way.
“You do it.” She pushed it back. “It might help. It might not.”
I studied her a moment, then picked up the journal and retrieved my glasses from my coat pocket. I held it in my hands almost fearfully, thinking I knew what it contained. And I was right.
It fell open on the photo of a young boy in his practice gear on a rugby field.
A younger version of me. Maybe around nine years of age.
Young and already cynical. All the secrets I was hiding from the world.
The photograph caught me bracing against a tackle, my muscles corded, determination written in my glare.
Bring it on, arsehole. I will fuck you up.
Pretty much how I’d approached the world my entire life.
A wave of compassion for that younger Nick caught me off guard, my throat thickening, bile churning in my belly.
I had no idea my father had taken those photos, let alone what he’d done with them.
But I did remember how hard it was just to get out of bed those first couple of years after my mother left.
How hard it was to make it to school. Rugby had been my only outlet.
The only place I felt that I truly fitted.
The one place I could release that anger I carried inside.
A place I felt . . . valued. And it was largely down to my coach who saw something in me and didn’t just throw me off the team because of my bad attitude and the fights I couldn’t seem to stay away from.
I flipped through the pages and found more photos.
Some from before Chloe left, some after.
And not just photos. There were pages of handwritten notes, school newsletter cutouts, university articles, newspaper clippings, and so on.
All carefully cut and pasted in place, dates and context added in that same flowery hand I recognised from her letter. A chronicle of my life.
Tears pricked my eyes as I scanned two pages dedicated to my wedding day with Davis.
I traced a finger over his face, remembering the day like it was yesterday, feeling the love and sadness, but no longer devastated by how it all ended.
I’d been given the miracle of a second chance and I couldn’t have been more excited.
I had a future I’d never dreamed possible when Davis had died.
Following the wedding pages, there were a few articles about Davis’s books and a report about his accident.
And then there was his death notice. That gave me pause.
Chloe had known I’d lost my husband. She’d followed all of it, right down to the final pages, which held news clippings of Madigan’s kidnapping and our mission in Australia. She’d known the grief I must’ve felt, my father was dead by then, and yet she still hadn’t reached out.
“You two are quite the celebrities.”
I set my glasses beside me on the couch and looked up to find her smiling, like she was maybe expecting something from me.
Gratitude? Relief that she had loved me and missed me enough to follow my life story?
If that was her hope, I had nothing to offer, speechless and uncertain about what the fuck it all meant.
If Chloe thought the scrapbook might endear her to me, might earn her a get-out-of-jail-free card, she was sorely mistaken.
All it did was highlight the fact she’d made no effort to contact me when she clearly could have.
When I’d left home. When I was a grown-up.
When my father didn’t hold my life in his hands.
The knowledge sat sour and unforgiving in my heart.
I didn’t need to ask the question. By the look on her face, Chloe already knew.
“You have no idea how many times I wanted to pick up the phone or write that letter,” she said, eyes brimming.
“But by the time your father died, you had a life, a good life. One without me in it. I was so proud of you, and the last thing I wanted was to step in and screw that up. I knew you probably hated me—”
“I didn’t—”
“Were angry with me, then,” she amended uneasily. “Very, very angry. Because that’s what I’d be in your place. And rightly so. I wasn’t sure that reconnecting with me was going to help that. Was I wrong?”
I couldn’t argue and so I said nothing.
She sighed. “I thought so. I didn’t want to mess up the life you’d built or the love you’d found.”
“Or your life,” I said bluntly, my voice rising. “Don’t pretend you held back out of concern just for me. I was away from Dad’s clutches for twenty years before he died and another ten after. And you still didn’t call.”
She paled at my anger. “I know. But I wasn’t away from his clutches until he died. He got sober, did you know that?”
I blinked, shocked. “No.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “It didn’t improve his personality, let’s put it that way. He was obviously keeping tabs on you, as well as me. He sent photos of you and Davis, of the house you lived in, and even a couple of Brendon—” She stopped and quickly looked away.
“Davis?” The very idea made me sick. “And who the hell is Brendon?”
Chloe ignored the question. “I didn’t know if contacting you would bring your father back into your life, and that was the last thing I wanted.
Then, after Travis died, I told myself I’d left things too long.
That you were fine without me. It was the coward’s way out, I know.
By then I was just scared you’d turn me away.
But when Davis died and you were nearly killed and all that stuff in Australia happened, I suppose the scales were ripped from my eyes.
I had one last chance to do the right thing. That’s why I wrote the letter.”
I was stumbling over how in the hell to process everything I’d heard, let alone respond to it, when the approaching rattle of cups in the hallway saved me. Seconds later, Mads entered the room carrying a tray laden with drinks and food. I’d never been so damned happy to see him.
Balancing the tray in his hands, Mads’ gaze bounced between Chloe and me as he tried to ascertain what he’d missed and how close I was to losing my shit.
The concern on his face deepened. He put the tray on the table and turned to me, deliberately putting his back to Chloe, letting her know who he was there for, whose back he had, where his loyalty lay. It meant everything.
“Are you okay?” His penetrating green eyes stripped me raw.
I shrugged, not wanting to lie.
He looked like he wanted to haul me out the door and take me home. Instead, he said, “You know I love you.”
It was exactly what I needed and the knot in my chest relaxed enough for me to nod and say it back.
Mads smiled that quirky smile he reserved just for me, and the world righted on its axis.
He turned back to the tray and set about serving the drinks.
It was then I noticed the cupcakes. Pineapple and coconut, straight out of my childhood.
Memories tumbled and my breath caught in my chest.
“They were your favourite once, if I remember right?” Chloe said softly. “I kept the recipe.”
My gaze jerked up and I snapped, “That was a long time ago.”