The Touch of Magic Series, page 69
But it wasn’t him. It was what she knew. Glancing to the front of the store, Megan caught the voices of people talking after close. While she wanted Tristan to understand, she wasn’t willing to gut herself here in the back of the store. She wasn’t ready for Yasmin to hear. “Not here.”
Megan wanted him to come around. She wanted him to agree that this was the right decision. It would hurt her, she knew. It felt good that he still wanted her, but Megan understood she needed to get him to stop.
“Come on.” He slid his hand down her arm, grasping again when he got to her wrist.
She should have fought it, but he twisted his hand and laced his fingers through hers. He tugged her out the back door without telling anyone that he was heading out. Without letting go, he slid her into the passenger seat in his car and closed the door. He was backing out of the parking spot before she fully comprehended what she’d gotten herself into. Or allowed herself to be gotten into.
He turned down Hollywood Boulevard, heading into the lights and businesses that were just getting rolling even as his closed shop. Three different times he suggested a place they might go in and talk. Three different times she turned him down.
Each of the places was a bar, or a restaurant. She didn’t want to yell her story over a beer and noise, and she didn’t want to be where others could overhear it. It wasn’t that kind of thing to share. They were turning up toward the canyons, into the Hollywood Hills before she realized where he was heading. He’d had enough of her saying ‘no,’ he was taking her to his house.
Not where she wanted to go.
He would have to drive her back to the shop, or she’d have to call for a ride, or . . . too late. They were already up beyond Franklin Avenue. Megan thought about protesting, but realized he’d probably gladly drive her home when she was done telling him the truth.
It all seemed too normal when he pulled into the narrow drive that aimed sharply up, then leveled out with just enough space for one car. He led her in through the side door and to the kitchen, where he politely offered her a drink and she declined.
She should have told him she was making stupid decisions because on some level she was stupidly holding onto some tiny sliver of hope. Her brain didn’t believe he’d be around when he knew the details. Still her heart wanted him to be. Actually, all of her wanted him to be. So at war with herself, she was doing dumb things like getting into his car and telling him her whole story. What was the point?
“I shouldn’t do this.” She somehow found the real words. Words to stop the charade. Even if she still wanted him. Even if part of stopping it was about never having to hear him tell her he’d had enough.
It was almost easier when she just didn’t hear from him, then some sliver of her could believe it would work out.
“No. You said you’d tell me. So tell me.”
“Tristan, I—”
“I drove you here. I found a place where no one can overhear.” He was frustrated with her, and wasn’t he always? But she could still hear him. Almost worse than her, he still held out some hope. But he was blissfully ignorant of her life. “Look. I know you don’t owe me anything. But maybe you could stop showing up at my store and telling me you’re going to explain if you aren’t. If you really don’t give a shit about me, stop looking at me like that!”
“You’re right. I’m completely sending mixed signals. I’m sorry.” She still didn’t make a move to leave. In some part of the back of her head, she harbored a fantasy about him telling her it would all be okay. She didn’t know what that would be like, what he could possibly say that would make things all right, because they weren’t. They never had been.
“I grew up in a small town.” She started and he waited, didn’t look at her like she was dumb or off her freaking rocker, didn’t even think it. She took a breath and continued. “I knew everyone, and everyone knew me.”
Tristan just nodded. He’d opened a beer for himself, and she wondered if he was trying to not have to drive her home or if he just needed something to do with his hands, but he didn’t say anything.
Megan took breath and continued.
“I heard everything. All the fights in marriages. All the people who stole from the gas station. All the kids thinking of suicide. All the people who’d seen the movie before, spoiling the ending. All the kids at school, thinking each other was cute, or fat, or dumb. All the teachers thinking the same thing.”
“Jesus.” He took a deep breath, then a drink of the beer as though it would help him swallow what she was dishing up.
“I loved being in the woods, because I was usually alone. I love the beach, because people are mostly happy.” She tried to put something positive on it.
“That’s why you don’t want to go to the movies.”
She nodded. “People think awful things. Even in the movies. Guys trying to figure out how to get in some girl’s pants. One girl was pregnant and trying to figure out how to pin it on her boyfriend. She was in high school.”
“That’s what you listen to in the movies?” His expression turned sad.
She didn’t want his pity, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. “It was her father’s baby.”
“Good Goddess.” This time he tipped the beer up and drained it. She waited him out. “What did you do?”
“What could I do? I was in the movies! I wasn’t supposed to know that. She never told anyone. What could I possibly say? ‘I overheard your worries in the movie and’ . . . and what? What could I do?” Megan remembered the hurt, the worries she had for herself, could she help?
“Megan,” he set the now empty bottle down. “Did you tell your parents?”
As if she could. “No. My father is the town’s minister. Small town, his church is the biggest. That girl went to our church, but I couldn’t tell my father.”
His heart clenched for her. She could feel it in her own chest. She didn’t want that. She was here now. This was L.A. not Hansen, Georgia. She wanted to forget it. Though she lived a life shut away from people, people were sometimes good. Tristan was good. Yasmin was good. Hers was still a solitary life. Not one to share. She played a harsh card. “I was nine.”
CHAPTER 23
Tristan swallowed hard. He couldn’t hide the revulsion her words caused.
Megan couldn’t hide that she felt it.
“I knew you’d feel this way about me if I told you.” She stepped back, away from his reaction.
“Feel how?” He felt his face frown. She had to know she’d legitimately confused him.
“You’re horrified.” She waved a hand for emphasis.
“Yes, for what you went through. Not at you.” He frowned at her. Then he had an idea. A disturbing one. “What am I feeling right now?”
Angry herself, she turned away, biting off her words. “Don’t test me.”
“What am I feeling right now?”
She whipped back around, almost yelling. “Do you doubt me? Doubt what I can do? All I wanted was to live without it!”
“What am I feeling right now?” Tristan tried to stay calm, tried to focus his feelings at her. He was curious. Concerned. Clearly crazy.
“You’re angry.” She was, too. He didn’t need to be psychic to feel it coming off her in waves.
“Why?” He pressed.
“Jesus, Tristan. You’re mad at me. Mad at me for not being more cooperative. For not helping that girl. I know she killed herself. They buried her and no one knew she was pregnant. No one knew what her father did. I’m angry at me, too! But I can’t tell people what I know!”
He took a deep breath, trying to hold back feelings that couldn’t be held back. His chain of reasoning was thrown off that Megan had not only borne the knowledge that the girl was being abused by her father, but that she’d killed herself without telling anyone. Pushing that awful thought aside, Tristan refocused on the matter at hand. Neither of them could save that girl, but he still held out hope of saving the two of them.
“That’s not why I’m angry.”
She’d been irritated, frustrated, mad. But with those words she changed. Megan was now just confused.
“You know what I feel, but you don’t seem to know why I feel it. It’s just a guess isn’t it?”
“Of course not.” She frowned at him, her brows more furrowed than he thought possible. “I’ve always had this.”
“I was angry that no one helped you.” He said, watching her expression get even more confused.
“What?”
Another deep breath of many tonight. He figured many more were coming. “I’m angry because no one helped you. I’m angry that you were nine and you heard such things and had no one to talk to, no way to let go of what you were getting.”
She stilled.
Tristan let her stand, absorbing his idea for a moment. He was just about to speak when she opened her mouth.
“You think I’ve been misinterpreting it all along?”
“No. I think you’re probably mostly right.” This time he turned away, wishing for a pen to fiddle with, something to do with his hands. “I think when you hear what other people think, you probably mostly interpret the reasons behind it pretty well. But I’m guessing you miss sometimes, too.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened. Closed again. “I always believed I had everything. The thoughts, the feelings, I see pictures from people’s heads. Why wouldn’t I have the reasons?”
He couldn’t fight the grin that spread on his face. “Because, for all your talents, that isn’t one of them.”
“I wouldn’t call it a talent.” She was at least wry, not angry anymore. “It’s really more of a curse.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“But it is. It’s just the way it is for me.” Once again she turned away.
How many times would she turn away? How many times could he turn her back before he gave up?
He didn’t know, but he wasn’t ready to quit yet. “Why? I’m still here. I still want . . . us.” He didn’t know how else to say it. He’d never had to fight for a woman like this, and he truly wasn’t sure why he wouldn’t just let her go. But he wouldn’t. He knew that much.
“I don’t trust it. This doesn’t change anything. It still always ends the same.”
“Maybe it doesn’t!” He fought back. “Maybe you’ve been ducking out because someone was angry but not at you. Maybe you’ve been leaving rather than asking. Maybe you were wrong.”
“Sure.” She shot back. “Maybe when I shook that woman’s hand and she was thinking about fucking my boyfriend it was an old image. Except he’d been wearing the shirt I bought him. Sure, I was wrong.” She only paused to take a breath. “When my teachers thought I was so stupid, I was wrong. Or when the chem teacher held my grades hostage so I wouldn’t tell that he was sleeping with the principal’s husband . . . I’m sure I was wrong.”
“Wait. How did they know?”
“I told you, everyone knew.” She was exasperated. It was late, she’d done spellwork, she was probably exhausted. But she was in his house and he wasn’t moving until she asked to leave.
“How?”
“Because I lived there all my life. Because almost everyone went to our church.” She looked away. “Because my father never hesitated to tell anyone.”
Stunned again, Tristan came to a dead stop. He hadn’t realized he’d been pacing until he jolted to a halt. He searched for a reason her father wasn’t being a complete asshole. “He didn’t understand how much it hurt you?”
“He understood.”
“I don’t understand.” Tristan had been raised with love, support, and the comfort of knowing someone understood him. “He could have helped that girl. You could have told him.”
“No. You have it all wrong. He could have helped her, would have, if she had gone to him. If I told him, then he couldn’t help her.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Megan.” He couldn’t wrap his brain around it. How did a parent do that?
This time, she gave out. She headed to his couch and stood in front of it. After half a second, it appeared her knees just cracked and she plopped down, as though she had no other choice. Her head rested in her hands.
Tristan wanted to help, but sensed he couldn’t. That even an arm around her shoulders would be more burden than relief.
Her voice, when it came, was low but steady. “You know that bible passage—thou shalt not suffer a witch to live? He thought I was a witch. He thought my ‘gifts,’ as you choose to call them, came from Satan.”
Tristan’s heart clenched involuntarily, and he wished with everything he had that he could hide it from her. But he stayed silent.
“When I was little, he tried exorcisms. Even brought in Catholic priests. Clearly, it didn’t work. I thought those were hard, but I thought I was bad, that Satan was in me, and I had to get him out.
“So I happily endured candle wax burns, starvation, being tied to the bed, and more.”
He couldn’t breathe. It was outright child abuse.
“Yes, it was child abuse. But why would I report it? I thought he loved me. I thought it was necessary. Obviously, it didn’t work.” A pause, a breath. Tristan was afraid it would get worse. It did.
“Then he tried to beat it out of me. Fists, belts, switches. You name it. If I mistakenly blurted something I knew, I was slapped so hard my ears rang. So I hid it. Then I was beaten for lying.” She wasn’t crying, but Tristan didn’t know how.
He felt that sharp pressure behind his eyeballs. How had such an amazing woman come out of that?
“It was my fault they didn’t have more children. It was the Satan in me that wouldn’t let them have more kids. So he hated me for that. He was the minister. He was supposed to be godly, but look what he had for a daughter.”
“You have to know that’s not right, Megan.” Tristan countered. But he understood. Even if you knew it, what you’d felt, believed, for so long left an indelible mark. Megan clearly had one.
“Sure, it’s not right. But back then I believed it along with him.”
“Where was your mother?” He was almost afraid to find out.
“Right there beside him. She didn’t believe as strongly as he did. She didn’t think it was Satan. She didn’t hate me. But I hated her, because she didn’t stop him.”
Yeah, not the answer he’d hoped.
“They sent me to my aunt’s when I was fourteen. I lived there for a year and a half. Best time of my life. She trained me to stay quiet because people don’t understand. Helped me live with it. My mom got pregnant and delivered my baby sister. But then my aunt got sick—cancer—and I had to go home. It was harder after having been somewhere good.”
Tristan didn’t agree. She’d been accepted, but that wasn’t the same as having her gifts embraced. Megan didn’t comment on his thoughts. Maybe she was just ignoring him.
“I kept to myself and kept my head down. But my father didn’t want me back. When I came back, he didn’t try at all to save me. He just hated me.”
“Is that too strong? He was your father. Did he really hate you?” He had to ask. Maybe things weren’t as bad with her father as she thought. Maybe this was something she’d misinterpreted.
She looked up at him, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “No. He wanted me dead. He wished I was never born. That I would die. He would look right at me and think these things, knowing I could hear him.”
That she didn’t blink, didn’t cry, didn’t even have a reaction to saying those things told Tristan just how much she accepted it.
“I went away to college. Did okay, except for the boyfriend who tested me. The one who slept around and managed to hide it from me. It was a game to him. But then the economy went bad, the church didn’t support my father. I went home after I graduated and got a job. Helped with my mother and my sisters.” She sighed. “It was another battle. My money was from Satan. I couldn’t even pay rent to help out. My mother and I lied. We told him her side work was bringing in more business than it was.”
Tristan sensed a change in the story. “Did you stay there until you moved here a few months ago?”
She nodded. “He threw me out. Apparently I was responsible for the storm that went through. Not random weather, not global warming. Just me. He’s protecting his town.”
“At the cost of his daughter?”
“It’s not a cost to him.” She acknowledged, once again without any emotion.
“I’m glad you’re here.” He finally sat, next to her but just far enough away that he didn’t touch her. He managed the words in a heartfelt whisper. He hurt for her. He ached. For all the teasing he’d taken in high school for being a witch, for taking the Solstice off from school for religious reasons, for his younger sister who couldn’t keep her magic in her own hands, he’d never endured what Megan had. “I’m sorry he was such a horrible person.”
Megan looked up at him. “He’s not horrible.”
Stunned, Tristan met her gaze. “How can you say that?”
“He saves people. Not just as a Christian. He finds them jobs. He’s literally given the shirt off his back.”
Tristan stared.
Megan continued. “He’s a black man married to a white woman in the deep south. He makes sure the entire town doesn’t have race issues. Hansen is the most integrated place I’ve ever seen, more even than here, because of him. He won’t let anyone speak out against homosexuality. He began performing marriages for gay couples long before anyone else. He preaches acceptance. He visits the hospital when people are sick. He makes sure their families have food. He counsels people on drugs and in trouble. He gets them help and makes sure they never do it again, and he hugs them and tells them he forgives them.” Her voice was slowly rising. “I saw him sit with a man who killed his own child in a fit of rage. He made sure the father got out of prison to attend the funeral and then he visited the man in jail every week of his sentence. He knows that’s not okay, but he finds forgiveness.
“My father isn’t a bad man. He’s one of the best men I’ve ever met. He preaches love and he practices what he preaches. I hear his thoughts. He doesn’t even think bad things about other people.
