I smiled, hooking my finger in her collar and pulling us together, face to face. “First, a shower.”
And I drove off, taking us home as quickly as possible.
Later that night, long after the sun had set, and I’d left Winter to work on some marketing ideas for the tour with Alex, I walked up to a front door I’d nev
er knocked on and never thought I would.
There was so much I’d missed over the years, that when I pieced them together now, it all fit like a puzzle.
The ice cream she gave me when I was seven one day on the street, saying they gave her and Rika one too many.
The way she looked at me at graduation, and I wondered why she was even there at all, but then I just thought she showed up as a family friend, because Michael was graduating, too.
The way I heard through the grapevine my senior year that she’d told Rika to stay far away from me when she was an incoming freshman, because she knew we’d be at the same school. I’d thought it was because my reputation preceded me, but it was because she was afraid something would happen between us.
She was right to warn her off. To think how many times I taunted that line with Rika…
Jesus, fuck.
Oh, what the hell. In the long scheme of things, it was just another rung on the ladder of fucked-up shit I’d done that just made our little group a little more interesting. We’d get over it.
Ringing the doorbell, I slid a hand in my pants pocket, dressed in a black suit and black shirt, because it wasn’t Winter’s Damon I needed to be tonight.
The door opened, and I looked into her eyes, her smile fading and her chest caving deeper and deeper as she breathed.
I stared at her face, seeing it with new eyes and studying her features to try to detect any parts of me. Blonde hair, same as Rika’s, in a stylish, messy bun with strands of hair around her face. Thin, toned body—much healthier than a couple years ago when she was hopped up on pills and alcohol.
She wore a slender pair of black pants, a black, sleeveless blouse, and her makeup made her look so much younger than her mid-forties.
I didn’t see much of me, though. Or maybe my pulse was thundering in my ears so hard, I was just too impatient and distracted to think straight.
“Is it true?” I demanded.
She dropped her hand from the knob and stood there, as if in a trance.
“Is what true?” I heard someone say.
Rika came out from somewhere behind her mother, her fingers threaded through the handle of a coffee cup and looking at me.
They, on the other hand, looked a lot alike.
When no one said anything, her gaze shifted to her mother. “Mom?”
But Christiane’s eyes dropped, her lips trembled, and she knew it was over. There was no hiding this anymore.
“My grandfather would tell a story…” she finally said, still carrying a hint of her Afrikaner accent, “about an ancestor from Persia. Centuries ago. A woman named Mahin.” Her solemn eyes rose, meeting mine. “He said that’s where he got his black hair and raven eyes.”
My black hair and raven eyes.
“And he said,” she continued, “every few generations she shows herself again.”
Liquid heat charged through my blood, and I was so angry, but I wasn’t sure I should be, and even if I shouldn’t be, I wanted to be, because there had to be someone else I could take this out on.
How could anyone be that weak?
I tried to understand her position. My father was a dangerous man, and I knew he threatened her, killed her husband, and no doubt, threatened to hurt Rika, but…
How do you live like that? In this town, under his fucking nose, knowing your kid is a mile away, living every day without you? How do you not snatch him off the street when he was five or eight or eleven, and just run?