Chapter 44 #2
“A few weeks later, though, I realised that something wasn’t right,” I continued.
“I was working at a cinema back then, and sometimes I stole from the customers. At least, from those who looked like they had a few pounds to spare. I stashed the money away in a drawer in my bedroom when I got home. After a while, though, I noticed that it kept disappearing. At first, I thought I was imagining it. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it. ”
Henry raised his eyebrows. “Your mum was stealing from you?”
I nodded. “Right after that, we got another warning notice from our landlord, even though the rent should have been covered. By that point, my mum wasn’t coming home much anymore, and she stayed at Randell’s place most nights.
When I asked her about the money, she got angry, screamed at me, and stormed out of the apartment.
That should have been a clear warning sign. ”
“You just wanted to see the best in her.”
He was right. In my eyes, my mum could do no wrong for a long time.
I had looked up to her and admired her strength.
Because strength didn’t mean you succeeded at everything—it meant getting back up and carrying on, even when you failed and life knocked you down.
My mum had never given up. She’d always fought for us—at least until Randell had stolen her strength.
“After that fight, everything happened so fast,” I went on, ignoring the tightness in my chest that came from knowing how the story ended—an ending I hated.
“My money was vanishing. The warning notices kept coming, until eventually we were evicted. We moved in with Randell. I hadn’t had much contact with him up to that point, and I thought it would be a good thing.
Living in his bungalow seemed like a better option than living on the streets.
But with the three of us sharing fifty square metres, my mum could no longer hide what was happening to my money.
They’d been stealing it and spending it on drugs.
Randell had been an addict for a while, and he’d dragged my mum into it.
She assured me that they were just harmless pills to help her relax, and I was gullible enough to believe her. ”
Henry tensed beside me. I couldn’t quite read the expression that flickered across his face. Worry? Panic? Guilt? Whatever it was, he quickly suppressed it. He seemed to know where the story was heading and took a deep breath, as if bracing himself for what came next.
“But it wasn’t just the drugs that my mum had concealed from me.
She’d also hidden the fact that Randell was beating her, just like her dad used to.
She hadn’t been spending six days a week with him because she loved him, but because she was ashamed and didn’t want me to see the bruises.
It didn’t take long, though, for Randell to show me his true colours.
One evening, after I’d come home from my shift at the cinema, he lashed out at me for forgetting to take out the rubbish.
He beat me black and blue, until my mum stepped in to stop him. ”
“What a pathetic son of a bitch,” Henry growled. His grip tightened around my hand, and his eyes darkened, matching the menace in his voice. His intensity sent a shiver down my spine. “Did that happen often?”
“All the time,” I admitted. “Although it was usually my mum he beat up. She often protected me. I begged her to leave him, but she was dependent on him. He wasn’t just her partner—he was her drug dealer too.
She was so terrified of not being able to get the drugs anymore that she stayed with him, despite everything.
At some point, she started taking more hardcore drugs, because it was the only way she could tolerate him.
It was a vicious circle. I lost my job at the cinema because I had to take care of her and couldn’t stick to a regular schedule.
I threatened to leave so many times if she didn’t get sober, but either she didn’t care, or she knew I was bluffing.
” My heart clenched. It hurt to remember.
“I kept trying to make her stop. I brought home brochures, showed her statistics. I hid my money and her drugs, but she always sniffed them out, like a bloodhound. Once, I even flushed the drugs down the toilet—and later that night, Randell beat me so badly I thought I was going to die. The hearing in my right ear never fully came back. He damaged something.”
Absent-mindedly, I touched my ear with my free hand. I wasn’t completely deaf on that side, and over time, I’d learned to live with it. But it had been a real disadvantage on the streets. I’d always had to sleep on my right side, so I could listen for danger with my left.
“Even that didn’t open my mum’s eyes. One evening, I came home and she was lying on the sofa, unconscious.
I didn’t think much of it—the drugs often knocked her out—and I went to take a shower.
It was only later, when I was making myself something to eat, that I realised something was wrong.
She hadn’t moved an inch and was completely still.
Too still. I called the ambulance right away, but it was too late. She was already dead.”
My voice cracked, and my eyes burnt. I had relived that moment hundreds of times in my nightmares, but saying it out loud made it so much worse.
Guilt and shame twisted inside me. As much as I blamed Randell, I blamed myself just as much—maybe even more.
Because unlike him, I had truly loved my mum . . . yet I had still let her die.
Henry’s fingers tightened around mine. “Your mum died of an overdose?” he asked, his tone a mix of horror and panic, presumably because this was yet another terrible secret from my past that would be best kept out of the public eye.
I nodded. “The worst thing is that I don’t know whether she was already dead when I got home or if she was still alive, dying while I was singing Taylor Swift songs in the shower.”
Henry’s expression softened. “You did everything you could.”
“Did I, though? I can’t stop wondering if she would still be alive if I had checked on her right away. Or if I’d tried harder to get her off the drugs.”
“You did everything you could,” Henry repeated insistently.
“So why wasn’t it enough?” I croaked. The memory of her lifeless body sent a fresh wave of pain through my chest. Tears welled up in my eyes again—as if I hadn’t cried enough for one day.
But I couldn’t stop them. They came flooding out, loud and ugly.
I squeezed my eyes shut and clamped a hand over my mouth, but it was useless.
I whimpered, my shoulders shook, and an agonised sob broke the silence of the café.
Suddenly, warm hands cupped my face. I felt Henry’s breath on my skin, then the soft press of his lips as he kissed the tears from my cheeks. Everything inside me tightened, pain and gratitude coming together with unbearable intensity.
“Don’t blame yourself, angel,” Henry murmured and rested his forehead against mine.
“I didn’t know your mom, but if she was even half as loving, selfless, and understanding as you are, she wouldn’t want you to carry this guilt around with you.
And I’m sure she was grateful for how long you fought for her, even if she couldn’t tell you that.
That’s not something to be taken for granted, and it just shows how much you loved her. ”
I began to cry even harder. Henry’s words had shattered something deep inside me, only to piece it back together again.
He wrapped his arms around me, and I pressed my face into his chest to muffle the sobs that racked my body.
He held me close, his lips grazing my forehead as his hands moved gently over my back.
He murmured soothingly into my ear. His words, his warmth, and his voice grounded me; Henry was an anchor keeping me from being completely swept away by my pain and guilt.
I took a trembling breath and concentrated on his steady breathing. With every rise and fall of his chest, my tears slowed and the pain became more bearable, though it didn’t disappear completely. It never would.
“Are you feeling any better?” he asked after a while.
I nodded, not yet trusting my voice.
He took his hand from my back, and a second later, he offered me a packet of tissues out of his pocket. I took one, and after I blew my nose, I dabbed at my eyes, though most of my tears had seeped into Henry’s shirt.
I traced my fingers over his chest. “I really have to stop crying all over you.”
“I like it.”
“Strange kink, but OK.”
He smiled. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that I like being the one to comfort you,” he explained, stroking my cheek. His skin was warm while mine was cold. I leaned into the touch. It felt safe and familiar. “You have to promise me one thing, though.”
“Anything,” I said, and I meant it.
His gaze met mine firmly, not quite matching the softness of his voice. “Promise me you’ll never hold back from talking to me just because you think I’m too busy to listen. It’s true that I have a lot going on, but it’s never so much that I can’t be there for you when you need me.”
A warm feeling spread through me at his words.
Realising that what I felt for this man was so much more than gratitude.
He had woken something in me that was both beautiful and terrifying.
I saw nothing but warmth and affection when I looked into his blue eyes.
I had been so alone in the last few months, but Henry had taken me under his wing without a moment’s hesitation and led me out of that loneliness.
I had left it behind a little more every day, and now it was so distant that I could barely see it. I saw only Henry.
“Do you know how incredible you are?”
He smiled. “Thanks. You’re not too bad yourself.”
“I’m serious.”
“Me too. You’re really not so bad.”
I saw through his attempt to lighten the mood on this dark day—and it wasn’t even necessary. With him by my side, every day felt a little brighter. Ignoring his teasing, I kissed him.
Our lips melted together. We must have kissed hundreds of times in the past few weeks, but this one felt different—deeper and more intimate. Sharing the truth about my past with Henry had revealed another truth. A truth I could no longer deny.
I, Kate Hamilton, was madly and hopelessly in love with Henry Darlington. And that was probably the most beautiful realisation of this terrible day.