Splinters of You (Retired Sinners MC #1) - Anne Malcom Page 0,83

sung my praises. But he’d known who I was all along. He liked my books. Because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have worn, dog-eared copies.

I hadn’t said anything. Not even when he picked up the book and started reading.

Neither had he.

I usually could not stand having someone in the same room as me when I was writing. It had been impossible, up until now. But I liked it. Whenever I came up for air, he was there, not staring at me, concentrating. I liked that. He was lost in a world I created.

And I was lost in a world he was helping me create without even knowing.

Saint was cooking me dinner. He never asked me what I liked, what I felt like, or what I didn’t like.

He just cooked. And did the dishes. It turned out he was totally OCD, which I really liked.

And I really liked the dinners. Some were full of calories I never would’ve eaten. Most were what he said. Good ingredients. Expensive. Most vegetables grown in his greenhouse. So, I never complained.

I was getting far too used to it all, in fact.

My laptop was in front of me, my phone was beside me. Saint was refilling my wine.

My phone buzzed, then lit up, and we both looked down. Saint made no effort to hide the fact he was looking. Curious, not jealous. Greedy, maybe. Like I was. I wanted to know who knew him, wanted to make sure they didn’t know him like I did. Didn’t have parts of him I should’ve had. Yes, toxic. Unhealthy. But whatever.

I ignored the call. The sixth from my mother. I would’ve worried about my father’s health but no doubt there would’ve been texts accompanying the calls, in all caps. She just wanted attention. Probably had seen the news articles. She wanted to play the concerned mother while getting the details, so she could be quoted as knowing more than the media whenever she decided to give her statement.

Saint watched me ignore the call and waited. He didn’t ask anything. But he was waiting for me to decide whether I was going to volunteer any more information about myself. Because he was greedy too. He’d given me the rotten flesh covering the skeletons in his past. I had only given him scraps. More than I’d given anyone else, but that wasn’t the point.

I didn’t want to give him more. That wasn’t what this was about, after all. I wanted his past, so I could use it to my benefit. So I could take what I needed and discard what I didn’t. That shouldn’t have bothered me. But it did. Not enough to make me stop, but enough to have me speaking, offering the rancid buffet of my past.

“My mother doesn’t like me,” I said. “Or love me, I don’t think. She’s just run out of people to pretend to care about.” I paused. “I think she really did care about my father, more about his ability to give her the life she desired. But he was a man that you couldn’t help but like. But love.”

“How’d he die?” The question was unusual from Saint. He could’ve just waited for more information, as he tended to do, but he didn’t want to wait. He wanted to make the gesture that the question represented. It shouldn’t have meant anything. But it did.

“Oh, he’s not dead,” I replied. “Not medically, at least. But I’ve figuratively picked out his coffin, buried him in the plot he has had reserved for years, and poured one out on his grave. He’s dead in all the important ways. He had Alzheimer’s. He wouldn’t be able to tell you his wife’s name, his age, or whether or not he has a daughter.” I paused. “He might be able to answer those things, if you catch the right moment. But the wrong one waits just after that, to wipe it all away.”

The last time I’d seen him, he’d spent the entire conversation jumping in and out. He was coherent enough to understand he was slipping away, that he could barely recognize his daughter, and it made him angry. I’d never seen my father angry. Not when I snuck out and crashed his truck. Not when I’d been caught with his commander’s son, naked from the waist down. Not when mom had found the stash of weed I’d smoked once before deciding I hated it. All those times, he remained calm while my mother screamed, lamented over why she was