Stay: Changing Tides, Book 1 (26 page)

His deep sigh pressed their bodies closer. “Doing and saying are two different animals.”

“I know.” She ran her fingers through his. “And I don’t have any room to talk. I let my own issues dictate my actions. I just want you to know how honored I am that you shared this with me. You’re an incredible, smart, honest man, Brack. And it’s hard—”

A huge crash and several disgruntled yells from the party stalled her statement. Brack stood, setting her on her feet to squint toward the tents. “What was that?”

“I have no idea.” She stood on tiptoe trying to see over the small incline. “Guess we’d better go see.”

He nodded, but his hand slipped into hers, and with a gentle tug, he pulled her into his arms.

“In a minute,” he whispered over her lips. “There’s something else I want to do right now.”

He didn’t wait for her to respond. The heavy press of his mouth sparked fire in her body. She inched closer, hungry for his kiss. What he’d shared tonight, opening up and letting her in, meant more to her than he would ever know. She could see him healing now. See him in the future, happy and without the heavy burden of guilt. He would make a good life for himself and his son. And when she shared her past, maybe, just maybe, she could be part of that life.

Another angry shout broke through the delicious spell and she pulled back, her breaths ragged with the need he evoked. “I have some things I’d like to tell you as well. I should have shared sooner, but it sounds like we’ll have to wait until later.”

With a sexy grin that promised they would talk, he grabbed her hand. The shouts became louder and more agitated as they neared the tents.

“Beatrice! Beatrice? Where’s my daughter, you fucking assholes? What did you do to her?”

Abby stopped cold as the familiar voice broke the night air.

Chapter Eighteen

Crazed, drunk, out of control.

Brack stared at the older version of Abby as the woman threw a chair aside after stumbling over it. The partygoers stood in a large circle around her while Abby tried to calm her down.

“Mom, stop. I’m fine.” She moved closer, her pace slow and hands held out. “Look at me. I’m okay.”

“Everyone wants my baby.” The older woman’s eyes darted at the onlookers. “I thought they were hiding you.”

“No. I was just taking a walk.” Brack fisted his hands when Abby managed to get a hold of her mother’s shoulder. “Why don’t we go to my place? We can catch up and you can get some rest.”

The woman jerked her shoulder away, and Brack took a step forward. Mother or not, he wasn’t going to let Abby get hurt.

“I don’t want to go to your place. Why not stay here at the party?” The woman twirled around in an off-balance dance, her voice sing-songed along. “I love parties!”

“Mom, we need to leave.” Brack’s heart went out to Abby. Color flushed her cheeks and throat, the angry furrow of her eyebrows not quite hiding her embarrassed glances at the people around her. “Please.”

Maggie Blake stepped forward, the therapist in her obviously taking over. “Abby, can I help with anything?”

“Stay back,” Abby pleaded. “You’ll make it worse.”

Abby’s mother turned at the new voice, her eyes squinted. “Who’s the fat ass?”

“Mother! Let’s go. Now!” Abby tugged at her arm and threw an apologetic glance at Maggie. “I’m so sorry.”

Rubbing her pregnant belly, Maggie smiled. “Nothing to it.”

“Let me go, you stupid bitch.” A sadistic snarl curved the woman’s mouth. She grabbed at her hair, ripping at it as she stumbled away from Abby’s reach. “You just want to get rid of me again. Go ahead. Call the police. Lock your mother away like before. You fucking cunt! You’ve always hated me. Always left me.”

Tears streaked Abby’s cheeks, the color draining as she attempted to catch her mother’s arm again. But her mom just moved farther out of reach, and the crowd parted fractionally to avoid the crazed woman. Then her bumbling steps took her sideways into a portion of the crowd. She thrashed around, pushing people out of the way as Abby grabbed her around the chest from behind.

She kicked her feet out in front of her, knocking Adam Little over in the process. Abby dragged her aside to check on the seven-year-old boy staring up at her with wary eyes. “Are you okay?”

“He’s fine.” Adam’s father knelt to check on his son. “Just get her away from my son or I’ll call the police.”

Abby’s mother screeched incoherent words at the man and ripped her arms free. She jerked around, her elbow catching Abby in the face. Blood trickled from a split in her lip, and Brack stormed forward. “Let me help, Abby.”

She swiped at her mouth and nodded. “Mom, this is Brack Elliot, captain of the local fire and rescue department.” With a small shake of her head, she continued, “Brack, my mother, Cheri.”

Assessing the situation, he nodded to Cheri. “Should I physically remove her?”

Abby pressed her sweatshirt to her lip. “She bites too.”

Damn. “Do you want me to call the police?”

“Mom, did you hear that?” She moved around to catch her mother’s vacant stare. “They’re going to call the police. Do you want to come with me? Or will I see you later, in a jail cell?”

Cheri stopped her mumbling and faced her daughter. Then her gaze focused somewhere in the distance, and Brack felt the weight of their insanity. She smelled of beer and sweat, her long blond hair dragging in greasy strands down her face and shoulders. It took a moment for her eyes to settle on him but when they did, she smiled. Well, kind of. It resembled more of a crooked twist.

“Is this who’ll take me in?” She sidled closer, her hands drifting over the front of his shirt. “Wanna handcuff me too? I won’t complain.”

And then she vomited. Right on his boots.

“Mom!” Abby grabbed her again, this time, steering her toward the parking lot while she was too sick to fight. “I’m so sorry, everyone. Go back to the party.”

Brack followed and after scuffing his boots through a large puddle near the parking lot, he rushed to catch up with her. She moved at a good pace, probably to keep her mother in motion. Even sick, the woman kept badgering her to take her back to the party.

When he finally caught up, Abby’s angry scowl and pale complexion worried him. “Hey, you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She bit the words out and pushed her mother to lean against the car. Fishing through her pocket, she pulled out her keys. “Go back to your friends, Brack. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of this. Hell, it’s just the same-old thing in a brand-new place.”

He grabbed the keys from her hand and unlocked the car door. “New or old, I want to help.”

She helped her mother into the passenger seat. With a low moan, Cheri sprawled across the seat, and Abby had to tuck her legs in before she could close the door. She didn’t move, her hand gripped tight to the roof of the car. Without turning, she said, “This is why I run, Brack. This is why I can’t build a life anywhere. No one wants to deal with this or even be around it. She’s ruined more potential new starts than I care to count, and even when I gave up and moved somewhere new, she ended up finding me. Just like now.”

“There are worse things in the world than a drunken mother, Abby.” He gently turned her to face him. “Look at me. This isn’t a reason to move again. It isn’t a reason to leave me.”

The dead emotion in her eyes scared him. “Yes it is. Can you imagine having to deal with this all the time? She gets better, then worse. Always there’s the promise that she’ll get help, take her meds and stay clean. But she never does.”

His strong, competent, rule-breaking Abby was running from an alcoholic mother? It didn’t make any sense. “Do you have any idea how many of those people back there have a relative or two with this same problem?”

“None of them. Or a very scattered few, I’d wager.” She shook her head, finally meeting his gaze. “She’s not just a drunk, or even just a heroin addict, though those are bad enough. She’s schizophrenic as well. It’s all mottled together.”

“Abby, that’s still no reason—”

She slashed a hand through the air. “Stop. You have no idea what that means. Or what it does to you or the people around you. Did your mother ever pick you up from school and end up dancing on the hood of the principal’s car? Ever sat at home when you were six, for four days, alone, terrified and hungry, wondering if your mother would come back because she was so strung out she’d forgotten you existed?”

Imagining Abby as a child, her world ruled by an unstable mother, gripped at his admittedly overprotective nature. “But you survived. You became an incredible, independent woman who is kind to everyone. Don’t you deserve to find happiness? Isn’t it time for you to think of you?”

“Happy?” she scoffed. “How is that possible with this hanging over my shoulder? I’ve tried, Brack. God knows I’ve tried. We’ve run the gauntlet of help, resources and clinics. And every time, I’m left holding the bills, the fines. I’m left with that look from people around me. That look that questions what’s wrong with my mother and what might be wrong with me.”

He couldn’t let that go. “You don’t actually believe people think less of you because of her?”

“Of course they do. It’s genetic reasoning.” She waved at the car where Cheri’s high heel shoe hit the window—with force. “I inherited her eyes. Why not her imbalance?”

“Just because she’s like this doesn’t mean you will be.” He tried to take her in his arms. There were few people he knew who could use a shoulder more than Abby at that moment. “You can’t think like that.”

“No, Brack. It’s you who can’t think like you are. In your controlled way of thinking, this is something that can be handled some other way than the way I deal with it. Yes, I move all the time. And when I leave, my mother will be fine for days, maybe weeks if I’m lucky. I got about a month and a half out of her once. Then she’ll lose it again. And she’ll leave. I got tired of waiting around, making friends and then having her come back and destroy it all.”

He wanted to dissuade her way of thinking, but she just went on.

“That’s why I move. That’s why I choose not to get involved. Because in the end, I just have to leave again.”

Her reasoning was sound, but he didn’t have to like it. “Have you ever tried to stick it out?”

She shook her head. “A person can only take so much before they have to protect themselves.”

“But how do you know you can’t manage it if you’ve never tried?”

“I don’t have to try. I’ve already lived it.” Pinching the bridge of her nose, she leaned back against the car. “Imagine one of your brothers acting like my mother. Imagine night after night of insanity, drunken messes, money missing, jail cell visits. Now you tell me, would you subject Jonathon to that? For how long? Until he physically hurt Jonathon? Or maybe until he showed up at Jonathon’s first baseball game and ran out on the field to help him bat?”

“I don‘t know what I would do.”

“Yes you do. But saying it would cement my reasoning.” She waved a hand through the air. “Going a step further. What if you knew you could become that way? Would you subject someone else to that? Would you have had children, knowing you might do this to them? Can you imagine subjecting someone you love to what you witnessed tonight? It’s why I’ve always been alone. It’s why I’ve refused to get attached. I won’t ever subject someone to this, from my mother or from myself.”

The open honesty in her gaze crushed any hope he’d harbored. She’d thought this through. The opinion deeply rooted in her heart and mind. And when presented like that, he couldn’t argue. He’d protect Jonathon. He’d keep him from any influence that he couldn’t control. There was no argument strong enough. He was going to lose her if he didn’t do something. “I’m going to convince you to stay. We can handle this. I know we can.”

“Brack, you’re a fool to want anything to do with me.”

“Just tell me how long I have.” He’d make her see that she belonged with him. With them. “When will you leave?”

The sudden slope of her shoulders spoke volumes. “Soon.”

He nodded. Until then, she wouldn’t be alone. Jonathon wouldn’t be home for a week. “Well, then, let’s get her to your house. I’ll go to the store for whatever you need, and we’ll see about getting her stable before you do leave.”

Her eyes widened, lips slightly parting. “Brack, I don’t want your help. Don’t you get it? I don’t want anyone, least of all someone I care about, to have to deal with this.”

“But you shouldn’t be alone. You shouldn’t have to do this by yourself.”

“It’s just preparation for the future. I’ll know what to do if I get sick.” She smiled sadly. “Don’t worry, I know how to handle her.”

She walked around and got in the car. He couldn’t hear their raised voices over the engine starting and closed his eyes. Damn it. She shouldn’t be alone. But she pulled away, leaving him standing there at a loss. He turned away, lashing out at a garbage can with a vicious kick as he passed.

Abby’s car pulled out of the parking lot and he neared the road, wanting to see her when she passed. But the car shot forward and jerked to the side. The tires squealed as the vehicle rocketed forward, swerving back and forth across the road. Brack could make out Cheri’s form halfway into the driver’s seat, Abby struggling against her to regain control. Too late, he realized he was in the car’s path and jumped out of the way, tumbling through the mud as the car smashed into the tree where he’d stood.