CHAPTER SIX #3
“Obviously that didn’t work out the way he wanted,” he said with a shrug.
“After I was discharged the second time, I kept my head down, finished high school and went away to college out of state to get away from him. It was in college that I started drinking and doing recreational drugs, hoping it would somehow block my psychic abilities...but it only muffled them. They never went away. I managed to get through college and pretty much partied my way through the next few years... Until I got drunk one night and wrecked my car. Then my parents’ lawyers arranged for me to have a stint in rehab—as opposed to jail time. ”
He was very pale as he stood there telling me about his past, and so I pulled out a chair for him. “Sit down,” I said, and joined him at the table.
Dex folded his hands on the tabletop. “I figured you’d yell at me. Be angry.”
“Oh, I am angry,” I assured him. “But I make it a rule not to lose my temper. Bad things happen and my magick goes chaotic when I do.”
“That’s a little scary,” he said.
I met his eyes. “Sugar, you have no idea.”
Dex blew out a stabilizing breath. “Anyway, it was during rehab that I realized the doctor’s ‘helpful’ prescriptions weren’t helping me at all, so I checked myself out, threw away the prescriptions, and stayed sober.
I worked whatever cash jobs I could find...
landscaping, construction, even overnight cleaning crews. ”
“How’d you end up back in Birmingham?” I asked.
“A college friend that I’d kept in touch with asked me if I could help him remodel his old farmhouse in Warrior.
He and his wife had a baby coming and they needed affordable help.
I traded room and board for a salary and ended up staying there for six months.
We finished the remodel a week before his wife was due.
Then I heard from a mutual friend that a store owner in Birmingham had a bad experience with a local contractor and needed a handyman to help get her store remodeled. That’s how I met Lorna.”
Silently, I nodded.
“It was a risk living in Birmingham again, but this area is so far removed from my family’s world—and so I changed my name, my appearance, and started over. They would never think to look for me in Five Point South…and working for Lorna was like extra insurance.”
“I understand that.” I nodded. Lorna Southern was a force unto herself.
“When my father passed,” he continued, “I knew thanks to the precognitive dream that my mother would go full tilt with the company lawyers. She’d send people to start looking for me, try and force me back into the family business; and the last thing I wanted was for them to come here and intrude on the new life that I’d built. ”
“So, you ran away and hid from everybody for a few weeks?”
His eyes met mine. “Actually, I went to see my uncle—my father’s brother in Mississippi.
He’s an attorney and the only relative I still have contact with.
Uncle Josh helped me to keep a low profile while I figured out how to deal with the mess of my family, the reading of the will, and the inheritance. ”
“Hmph.” I tipped my head to one side as I considered that. “Lorna never mentioned anything about you still being in touch with an uncle.”
“The rest of my family had no idea that Josh and I are close, and I never told Lorna about him,” Dex admitted.
“Seems you do that a lot,” I said. “Not tell people the full story. Lorna’s been worried sick.”
“I know.”
“Have you contacted her yet?”
“No,” he said. “I wanted to come and see you first, to try and explain why I left so abruptly.” He reached across the table and took my hand.
“It’s been a rough couple of weeks dealing with lawyers and my family.
It was worse for me worrying about you. Knowing that I’d probably hurt you by leaving the way I did, and I’m sorry. ”
I eased my hand away from his. “Do you have any idea how it felt to wake up alone and find out that you not only snuck out of my apartment, but that you disappeared altogether after you got what you wanted?”
“Don’t say that,” he said, his voice low.
“It’s been humiliating to have my private life picked over and poked into. Having people see me as a one-night stand type of girl,” I said, doing my best to stay calm.
“You were never that.” He eased closer to me as he spoke. “I was trying to protect both you and Lorna from my family.”
“Well, it’s too late for that,” I said. “Your mother was here a couple of weeks ago, before I opened, and she had plenty to say to me.”
“Damn it,” he muttered. “How bad was it?”
“She called me an opportunistic slut and made it clear that I would never get any of your inheritance. She followed that up with announcing that she would do everything in her power to run my shop right out of business; and then destroy me.”
Dex cringed.
“She really got irate when I insisted that I didn’t know where you were, so I took her by the elbow and escorted her right out the front door.
“I would have loved to have seen that,” he said.
“Her purse dog needs obedience training,” I replied tartly. “As it was, I had to teach him a bit of a magickal lesson in manners.”