Page 123 of Broken Vows

I drag in a slow breath. I don’t want to talk about any of this. Don’t want to tell her a damn thing. But I won’t let her think the wrong thing about my mom. So I give her the short version.

Fast. Ugly. Over before I can lose my nerve.

“She came out here from the Midwest as a kid. Wanted to be an actress. Got an agent. He was a grown man.” The words come out clipped.

“He knocked her up. Disappeared. Her family disowned her. She had me.”

Carmen stays quiet, but her expression softens in a way I can barely stand to look at.

“She did the best she could,” I mutter. “Got dealt a shit hand from the start.”

I pause.

“Things got hard for her, but she got clean eventually. Was good with Theo. I wasn’t around much after he was born. Spent too many years pissed at her.”

Carmen’s brows bunch together, but she doesn’t ask. I drop my shoulders and tell her anyway.

“I didn’t know about Theo until after he was born. I kept pushing her about his father. He should have been helping. Turns out she didn’t even know the guy. Just some asshole who paid her when she needed money.”

My throat tightens.

“She never told me she was struggling.”

The silence stretches.

“She was a good mom to him,” I say quietly.

I should stop there. That’s enough. But something about her sitting beside me, and not pulling away, makes the next words come out before I can lock them down.

“I’m nothing like him,” I say.

She lifts her head. “Who?”

“The agent. Whatever the fuck he was.”

“Of course you’re not.” She says it so simply it hits harder than it should. Like there is no question in her mind.

But Carmen doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know the ugly shit I’ve done.

There’s a line between being dangerous and being a sick fuck. I know exactly which side I’m on. That doesn’t make me a good man.

“What happened to him?” she asks carefully.

I pull her down against my chest so she can’t keep looking at me. “Someone killed him. I was a kid when it happened.”

She goes quiet for a moment.

“Good,” she says.

That gets under my ribs in a way I don’t expect.

Her hand settles against my shirt. “I mean…not good. I don’t know. I just—” She exhales. “I’m glad he couldn’t do that again.”

I let out a slow breath and tighten my arm around her. For a while, neither of us says anything.

Then Carmen’s voice comes softer. “I was so far off the mark. Just sometimes you say things and it sounds like you had a child,” she says. “And Theo looks so much like you. It seemed to add up. I’m sorry.”

I should let her think she imagined it. It would be easier. But I can’t.