just limped along. I never understood the change in my dad, though. I mean... for years he beat me, then... nothing."
"I'm so glad he stopped hitting you."
"No difference to me. The waiting to get clipped was as bad as getting my ass slammed. And to not know why... but I did find out. At my oldest brother's bachelor party. I was like twenty by then and had moved from Southie - er - South Boston to here because I was starting as a cop with the CPD. Anyway, I went back home for the party. We were in some guy's house with a lot of strippers. My father was pounding the beers hard. I was doing lines of cocaine and sucking back Scotch. Party comes to an end and I'm buzzing out of control. I'd done a lot of coke... man, I was so fucking polluted that night. So... Dad's leaving... getting a ride home from someone, and suddenly I had to talk to the sonofabitch."
"I end up chasing him out into the street, but he's all ignoring me and shit. So in front of all the guys, I just grabbed him. I was beyond pissed. I started going off on him, about how I thought he'd been a real shitty father to me, how I was surprised he stopped cracking me because he liked it so much. I went on and on, until my old man finally looked into my face. I just froze. There was... total terror in his eyes. He was completely scared of me. Then he said, I left yah alone 'cause I couldn't have yah killin' any more of m'children, could I? I was all... What the fuck? He starts to cry and says, Yah knew she was my favorite... yah knew and that's why yah put hah in that cah w' those boys. Yah did it, yah knew what would happen." Butch shook his head. "Man, everyone heard it. All the guys. My oldest brother, too... My father actually thought I'd had my sister murdered to get back at him."
Marissa tried to embrace him, but again he shrugged her off and took a deep breath. "I don't go home anymore. Ever. Last I heard, Ma and Pa were spending some time in Florida every year, but otherwise were still in the house I grew up in. Like, my sister Joyce, her baby was just baptized? The only reason I knew about it was because her husband called me out of guilt.
"So here's my deal, Marissa. I've had a piece missing all my life. I've always been different from other people, not just in my family but when I was working here on the CPD force, too. I never fit in... until I met the Brotherhood. I met your kind... and, shit, now I know why. I was a stranger among humans." He cursed softly. "I wanted to go through the change not just for you, but for me. Because I felt like then... I could be who I'm supposed to be. I mean, hell, I've been living on the fringes all my life. I kind of wanted to know what being in the thick was like."
In a powerful move, he got off the floor. "So that's why I want... why I wanted to do this. It wasn't just about you."
He went over to a window and pushed aside the pale blue velvet drapery. As he stared out into the night, the glow from a lamp on the desk fell across the planes of his face, the heft of his shoulders, the thick pads of his chest. And the golden cross that lay over his heart.
God, how he yearned as he looked out of the window. Yearned so fiercely his eyes nearly glowed.
She thought of him the night she'd fed from Rehvenge. Saddened, hurt, paralyzed by biology.
Butch shrugged. "But... you know, sometimes you can't have what you want. So you deal and move on." He glanced back at her. "Like I said, you don't want me to, I won't."
Chapter Thirty-five
Butch looked away from Marissa and stared back out into the darkness. Against the dense black screen of the night, he saw images of his family, clip art that made his eyes sting. Holy fuck, he'd never put the whole story into words before. Never expected to.
Not a pretty picture, the whole lot of it.
Which was another reason he'd wanted to go through the transition. He could have used another shot at life, and the change