Page 61 of Their Stormy Reunion

“Mom tried to get up, but he kicked her and she fell back on the floor. Then he dropped me beside her and kicked me in the stomach. I threw up. He bent down and wiped my face in my puke. I must have passed out, because that’s it. That’s all I remember.”

Michael stopped talking. As we lay side-by-side on the sofa, I rocked him. Rocked the little boy who had suffered such a brutal past.

“So, there it is, Fallon. My first memory. That’s why I never shared.”

This time I didn’t cry, but I so wished Michael would cry. He needed to for that little boy.

“How old were you when you were taken away from them?”

“Five. It was the night I watched my dad murder my mother.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Well, at least you set your alarm, there is that,” Zarek said as he trudged into my house behind me, petting Harley along the way.

“What are you talking about?”

“You look like shit. I thought your big plan was to take time off and protect your woman. Where is she? And if she’s not here, why aren’t you where she is?”

“Apparently, we’re at a ‘stand-still.’ Her words, not mine.” I went over to the fridge and pulled out my third beer for the day, and it was only four o’clock. “Want one?” I asked Zarek.

“No. Too easy to go down that path.” He peered into my recycling bin and saw the empty beer bottles. “I’m thinking you don’t need a beer, either,” he said as he took it out of my hand and put it back into the refrigerator. “Let’s go to your backyard and throw the ball for Harley.”

I shrugged. Why not?

Zarek reached into the fridge and pulled out two sports drinks, handed one to me, and then I followed him out my back door, carefully setting the alarm.

Harley was jumping up and down when he realized it was playtime. Zarek threw the tennis ball a good long ways. “So, explain what a ‘stand-still’ means.”

“I confessed about the set-up that I pulled with Lindsay.”

Zarek looked me up and down. He took in my ratty Army t-shirt and unwashed jeans. “You’re not limping, so I’m assuming she didn’t castrate you, so there is that.”

“Yeah, we got past that part. Then she asked me why I did it.”

“Did you tell her that you were an ignorant asshole who can’t recognize a miracle when he has it in the palm of his hand?”

Harley dropped the tennis ball at my feet. I patted her head, and then threw the ball farther than Zarek had, not that I was keeping track.

“I told her I didn’t know why.”

“Then what happened?”

“We made love.”

“You are one lucky son of a bitch,” Zarek said as he shook his head.

“For a little bit. Then I had to tell her that Sid had planted the copperheads. I had to come totally clean about Sid’s threats, and that she and her family were in danger. She went ballistic. She told me how we couldn’t be together with me keeping so many things from her. My childhood, the reason I pulled out of the wedding, and the fact that Sid was gunning for me.”

Harley came back, happy as hell, dropping the ball at my feet. I nudged it over to Zarek. He picked it up and threw it out for her to chase. They kept that up for another ten or fifteen minutes. I knew my friend, he was waiting me out.

Finally, it worked. “I told her about my first memory with my real mom and dad. It wasn’t pretty.”

“I can’t imagine it was,” he muttered.

“I hated telling her that.”

“The dredging it up?” Zarek asked.