so goddamn happy that not even he could bring her down.”
“What happened?” Alex asked, feeling a veil of portentousness wrapping around them both as they sat together in the quiet hush of his car.
“He didn’t hurt her that night, not physically anyway, but with the most violent psychological thrashing he could give her he told her she would not get one cent of financial support from him if she went to university. He then walked out of the kitchen, sat himself down on his lounge chair and turned the TV on and the subject never came up again.”
“That’s a terrible ending,” she whispered, swallowing in an effort to get the words out of her choked up throat. “And you?” Alex began again quietly. “Did he beat you too?”
“Oh no,” JP replied with a scoff in his voice. “My Da was solid gold coward. He only hit defenseless women; he had enough brains to work out that one day I might be able to throw a major punch back at him. And he wasn’t the only one to work that out because at fifteen I started lifting weights and pretty soon I was twice his size.”
“And Annabelle?”
“Once I could take him on the beatings stopped but I stayed at home for a few more years, for her sake. I tried to talk her into going to the police, leaving him; you name it, I tried it. But she wouldn’t do it. As for becoming a doctor my Da had killed the dream within her as surely as if he’d strangled it with his bare hands. She waited on him for five years until she died within three weeks of being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.”
“And your father?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. I haven’t spoken to him in over ten years.”
“I don’t understand, why didn’t he want her to study medicine?” Alex was confused at a level that went way beyond the simple story he’d just recounted to her.
“It was all about control. People might dress it up as something else but that’s all it comes down to—one person wanting to commandeer another’s life.”
Alex dropped her eyes and began to fidget with the ends of her hair lying across her shoulder.
“I know my mother’s situation was extreme, and I’m certainly not suggesting anyone in your family is a bully. But I do know something about regret and I’m here to tell you: don’t do deals with it, Alex. It will eat your life away from the inside out. In my mother’s case it ended up killing her.”
He’d dropped his head in front of her so that he could see her better in the dim light of his car, bringing his face closer to hers.
“I understand how bitter you are about your father JP, I really do. But you can’t be sure that what he did to your mother was the cause of her cancer. Thinking that way will only end in misery for you.”
“There’s not a doubt in my mind that the two are connected.”
She didn’t reply as she studied the hard, male angles of his face and the unrelenting light emanating from deep within his dark eyes. Suddenly a hand was cupping that face and drawing it closer to hers. In a haze, she recognised the silver watch around the slim wrist in front of her but it took several more seconds to register that the silver watch, the wrist and that hand were hers.
In the next moment that same wrist was resting on her lap, enclosed in his firm grip.
“If you ever kiss me Alex, I can promise you it won’t be out of pity.”
“I was not going to kiss you!”
JP guffawed. “I’ve been kissed by enough women in my life to know when it’s about to happen and when it’s their idea.”
“That’s it, I’m going!” Alex snapped at JP with sharp, shocked finality, horrified at the intimacy of the gesture she’d just shown him—not even wanting to think about what she might have instigated straight afterwards.
“Wait a second. Alex!” JP objected as he firmed his grip around her wrist to prevent her from opening the car door and fleeing into the night. “Can I come in and meet your parents?”
She gawked at him in disbelief. “No way! That’s a terrible idea!”
“Why? Will I embarrass you?” he asked with a provocative smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he released her arm.
“I don’t want to take you in there,” Alex answered in exasperation. “And what’s more, I don’t want to