Chapter 28 Throwing Things
Throwing things
“Fuck!”
Tinker turned the steel bar over to look at the hole he’d punched in the underside, the side that wasn’t supposed to have a hole. It was the second bar he’d done that to.
He threw it against the far wall of the garage, where it smashed against the metal sheeting with a satisfying bang. Running a hand over his head, he admitted defeat. There was no way he could focus on the bike he was building, not with his head all over the place.
“Got your text. Rough day?” Dani joined him at the worktable in the center of the garage and hopped up to sit on the workbench across from him.
“You could say that.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Yeah. You in the abstaining from drinking part of your training yet?”
Dani stared at him assessingly. “Depends. Is this a beer or whiskey conversation?”
“We can start with beer. May need to switch to whiskey, depending on how it goes,” he said.
She hopped off the bench. “All right. Office?”
“Yeah.” He led the way into the office at the back of the garage. Grabbing two bottles of beer from the small fridge, he popped the tops and held one out to Dani. She took it and sat cross-legged in the overstuffed chair.
Tinker sat on the small couch and took a long drink from his beer before setting it on the table next to him. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees.
“Jesus, Christian. Do you have cancer?”
He could hear the worry in her voice. “No,” he assured her.
“Then what? You’re freaking me out.”
“Abby knows about my arrest.”
“Oh.”
He looked up at her, trying to judge her reaction.
“You hadn’t told her before?” Dani asked.
Tinker shook his head.
“How did she find out?”
“Olivia’s aunt.” He took a sip of beer. “Got a copy of my arrest record somehow. Sent it to Abby with a note threatening to do something with it if Abby doesn’t send Olivia back to her.”
“What the fuck?” Dani said.
“Yeah.”
“What does Abby have to do with something you did twenty years ago? Something that shouldn’t even be in your record anymore, I might add.”
“Who the fuck knows? My guess is she’s going to use it against Abby because I’m a violent criminal, and if Abby’s with me, she’s unfit to be Olivia’s guardian.”
“Well, that’s bullshit,” Dani said. “On several fronts.”
“Yeah, well, that’s where we are.”
Dani took a deep breath. “How did Abby take it?”
“I’m not really sure yet.” He took another sip of his beer.
“How are you not sure? Have you talked to her?”
Tinker nodded. “I hadn’t heard from her in a couple of days.
I thought she’d ghosted me after we…ya know.
” He shrugged. It was more than ‘ya know,’ but he wasn’t going to get into details with his kid sister.
Hell, he wouldn’t get into details with anyone, but especially his kid sister. He sipped his beer.
“Went to her house to make her tell me to my face she didn’t want anything to do with me,” he added.
“And?” she asked.
“And she vomited in her kitchen sink.”
Dani’s look of outrage was almost comical. “Because of what you did? Did you explain why you did it?”
Tinker chuckled. “I didn’t get that far. She threw up because her kids got her sick—she’d been taking care of them the last couple of days.”
“Oh.” Dani’s entire body relaxed into the chair. “So you haven’t told her the details yet.”
Tinker shook his head. “She has the report. I told her to read it, then decide if she still wanted to be associated with me.”
“Christian.” Dani’s voice was heavy with admonishment.
“I wanted you to know she found out.”
“I’m okay if she knows. You don’t need to hide what happened from people.”
They sat in silence for several minutes until he decided to ask the question that had been burning a hole inside him for almost two decades.
“Do you hate me?”
Dani unfolded from the chair and sat next to him on the couch, resting her head on his shoulder. “Truthfully? I did.”
Tinker winced. Fuck, that hurt. He knew it was coming and he didn’t blame her. He could almost guarantee he hated himself more.
“For a long time. It took me a hell of a lot of therapy to understand you were just a kid yourself and had no idea what the fuck you were doing.” Dani paused. “I think the worst part was you never talked to me.”
“I talked to you,” he protested. “I called you all the time.”
“You talked at me. You told me Mom and Dad died. You told me you were going to join the Marines. You told me I was going to live with Dimitrii. You told me everything would be fine.
“You never asked me how I was doing or how I felt or what I wanted. Even after everything that happened, you never asked. And we didn’t ever talk about it, not really.
We talked about the aftermath—what came next.
You going to jail, me going into the system.
We were so busy trying to survive it all, we never stopped to talk about how we got there. ”
Tinker laid his head against the top of hers. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “I forgave you a long time ago. But Christian…you have to forgive yourself. What happened isn’t your fault.”
“Isn’t it? You said it yourself. I made decisions without really thinking about the consequences. If I hadn’t joined the Marines, you wouldn’t have had to live with Dimitrii, and—”
“I didn’t want to leave Charleston, Christian. I didn’t want to give up dancing or lose training time or find a new teacher or give up my shot at getting my pro card. Back then, neither of us had any reason to think something like that would happen.”
Tinker lifted his head to shake it. “I could have—”
“What? Shipped me off to great aunt what’s-her-face that we don’t actually have? Taken me with you? Put me into foster care?”
“You ended up there anyway,” he said dryly.
“Not the point.” She raised her head and shifted so she was facing him on the couch. “You were seventeen. Your parents had been killed, and you were suddenly responsible for a thirteen-year-old sister. You made the best decision you could at the time.”
Fuck. He needed another beer. Or whiskey.
“Look at me,” Dani demanded.
He turned his head. Apparently not enough, because she grabbed both sides of his face and turned his head fully to face her.
“I wanted him dead. More than you. I’ve done a lot of therapy and a lot of healing, and I still wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire. Our lives went sideways, but I’m happy now. I love my life. I love fighting. I love Angie and everyone at Leonidas. I love you. And I forgive you.”
There was a tight, stuttering feeling in his chest. Dani was right—they’d never talked about it. He threw an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a headlock like he used to do when they were kids.
She ended up half across him, but not fighting his hold.
“Too much emotion for you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he admitted.
He took a shuddering breath and let her go. “I love you too, Squirt.”
She smiled. “I’m not done yet. You have to forgive yourself, Christian. It’s the only way you’re going to be able to move on from this. I know why you volunteer for VACA. It doesn’t matter how many kids you help protect if you can’t forgive yourself.”
He gave her a long, steady look. Dani was touching on things he’d never admitted to himself. Not really. He knew why he did what he did, but he’d never given voice to it. “You moonlighting as a therapist?”
She stood up from the couch and brushed her hair back from her face. “Years and years of therapy. I know all the tricks.”
A thought struck him. “Do you miss it? Dancing?”
“Oh. I still dance.” She grabbed the beer bottle from the table and tossed it in the trash.
“Not like you used to,” he said softly.
She was quiet for several moments and he wasn’t sure she would answer.
“I still love to dance,” she said finally. “I still love it more than fighting. But I can’t dance like I did before. He ruined that for me. Timmy asks me to fill in for his classes when one of his other instructors is sick, and I’ll help him out, but I can’t ever do it professionally again.”
“You like teaching the kids, though, right?” He nodded at the long glass window that separated her gym from the garage.
She grinned. “Oh, yeah. Even the kids who act like it’s torture secretly enjoy it.
” She looked at her watch. “Speaking of, the after-school class will be here soon, and I need to set up. We’re working on kicks, so I’m going to make them do barre work.
Nothing like holding a plié for an entire minute to build those quads. ”
“You’re still lead for the event Saturday, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You need any help?”
He shrugged. “Sure. Another person will help. I didn’t schedule you since I thought you’d be training. Your fight’s in three weeks, right?”
“Yeah, but I won’t start working out twice a day until Monday, so I can help out.”
“Cool. I’ll forward you the schedule. I’m on site all day tomorrow, starting around noon. The dad wants us to go through the guest list. Apparently, he has a photo book with headshots of all the people attending.”
Dani frowned. “This is just a sixteenth birthday party, right?”
“That’s what they keep saying.”
“Rich people are so weird.”
“Got that right,” he said.
She paused at the office door. “You should tell Abby the truth, not just what’s in the arrest record.”
“Maybe I should end things.” He put his elbows on his knees and grabbed the back of his head with both hands. “It’ll be easier in the long run.”
The couch dipped as Dani sat back down. “Easier for who?”
He dropped one hand and turned to face her. “Everyone. Abby won’t have to worry about my past affecting her custody case, and I won’t have to worry about—”
“Getting your heart broken?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Tinker, this is the first time I can remember you ever being with someone for more than a couple of days.”
“I dated Lisa Montgomery for an entire year,” he protested.
“High school doesn’t count,” Dani said dryly. “Look, I like Abby. She’s funny and smart. And I like how you’ve been since you met her. She’s a mom. I think she’ll understand.”
He nodded, hoping she was right. “I don’t want her to look at me differently.”
Dani cocked her head. “Christian, you’re a sexy, tatted, bike riding, former Marine, security guy. How do you think she looks at you now?”
That was…disturbing. “As my sister, could you refrain from using the word sexy to describe me?”
She stood and walked back to the door. “You’re deflecting, but I’m going to let you do it because it’s been an emotional day for you. And how do you think I feel hearing all my friends talk about you? If I hear them say you belong on the cover of a book one more time, I’m going to puke.”
“What book?” he asked, frustrated.
“What do you mean, what book?”
“You’re like the third person who’s said something about me and a book. What book are you talking about?”
“Who else said something about a book?”
“Abby, the first night we met. Then her friend Lindsey.”
Dani let out a small chuckle and said through a shit-eating grin, “You should ask her to show you which book. After you talk about why you were arrested. It’ll help ease any lingering tension.”
“That makes absolutely no sense,” he said.
“Oh, it will,” she said in a singsong voice as she left.
What book? That reminded him. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and typed alms into the search bar.