had nowhere to go and my mom knew it. We moved in with her folks until she found a job, then we moved to California.
“Can I ask...?” His brows crinkled together. He wanted to know more without overstepping any bounds and her heart opened up.
“Why we left him?” She quirked one eyebrow up because she wasn’t sure that was his question, but he nodded so she continued. “My father was a crack addict.” Saying the words still felt foreign even after all these years. She bit the tip of the chocolate. “He loved us, I know he did. At least as much as he could. But he couldn’t stay away from the stuff. He’d try. He’d go weeks, sometimes months without it, but he always went back. Then it was back to rehab. He lied and let us down over and over. A never-ending circle my mom finally decided she didn’t want to go around anymore. She didn’t want me caught in it either. So she—we—left.”
Troy rubbed his hand across her thigh and the gentle touch had her insides melting. “Did he ever get violent?” The edge in his voice mixed with the worry in his eyes.
“Not violent per se.” She shook her head. “I never felt physically threatened by him, but he used to yell if my mom caught him in a lie. He always found a way to turn it around on her. Looking back on it, I think it was amazing how he could spin one of his lies into something Mom or I did wrong. Oh he used to get royally fucked up. He managed to hide it in the beginning, but you can only hide that behavior for so long. There’s only so much covering up a person can do before their lies are unraveled.”
He was way too quiet. Did he think differently of her now?
Rain came down harder and Troy hit the wipers. They smoothed across the windshield in a muted rhythmic swoosh.
“Okay, you got my sad story. You know just about everything there is to know about me.” Not exactly true, but because much of her life had been played out in the public eye, he sure as hell had more information on her than she did on him. Hell, she still didn’t know his age. “How old are you?”
He sighed as if he had no way around her. Which he didn’t. “Thirty-six.”
She would’ve pegged him for thirty. He looked good. “Where did you grow up?” She’d asked him that in the hospital and he’d dodged her. Maybe he thought she hadn’t noticed. Wrong.
“Didn’t I answer that one already?”
She laughed. “‘All over’ doesn’t count. You were born... Now you finish the sentence.” This was like pulling out wisdom teeth with toothpicks.
“On the East Coast,” he said. “Boston.”
“See? That wasn’t so hard. You lived there for how long?”
“Until I was nine.” He’d been nine when he’d last seen his uncle, which made sense.
She scratched her nose, then unwrapped another Kiss. The soft vibration of the road hummed through her.
“Was there a reason you moved?”
“Is there a reason you need to know all this?” He glanced in her direction again.
Whoa. What was that all about? Did she really want to work this hard on a man? Though his answers had been short and sweet the past couple of days, he’d at least opened up to her little. “I’m sorry.” Her tone sounded too brisk. Even she heard it. But she was very sorry she got involved with him in the first place if this is how he reacted to friendly conversation. “Forget I asked.” She popped the whole chocolate, but no amount would fix this ache. She sat forward, feeling miles away from the man next to her. Especially after she’d just spilled something so personal and private about her life. Maybe Cal was right. She knew nothing about him. The last thing she wanted was to fall for an emotionally distant man. Life was too short to be in the dark when it came to a partnership. She wanted more than monosyllabic answers accompanied by the occasional shrug that screamed indifference, or sharp return questions that cut the inquiry.
It was his smile and his rare laughter that drew her in. She loved his dry humor, but she needed way more than that to stay interested. She needed participation. Cooperation. A partner. There was nothing she wanted more than to listen to him talk about himself. Learn the things that made him the man he