She moved down the stairs, aware of Jethro edging around her, moving in front of her, checking each room before she entered it. But the knowledge was distant, just as the awareness of the two men was distant. Suddenly, Keiley felt more alone than she had ever been in her life. Held suspended, watching events that she couldn’t understand how she had become a part of.
As she moved to the stove to check the roast boiling merrily, she was aware of Jethro leaving out the back door, but Mac stayed behind. Her house was becoming a merry-go-round of two men shifting and revolvi
ng around her.
Behind her, Mac pulled out a chair, and she heard his sigh as he sat down.
“I was five when I first realized what hatred was,” he suddenly said.
Keiley swung around in surprise. He always refused to discuss his childhood.
“Dad was insistent that I make friends with this kid on the other side of town. Tobias Blackwood. ” He wiped his hand down his face. “A shadow of a kid, though I didn’t realize then the ghosts he lived with or the reason my father insisted on the friendship. See, Dad liked an audience when he really got wound up, and showing another kid what a pussy his son was made him feel like a man. ”
Keiley felt the horror reflected in Mac’s eyes.
“It was late. After dark. Tobias and I had stayed outside as long as we could. We didn’t talk much, batted around the hills some, played some halfhearted basketball. But then we couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to go in.
“He got started on Mom during dinner. He asked her what she had done that day. See, he had sent her to the store for groceries while he did chores outside. ” His expression became distant. “She told him what she did, who she saw, how much the groceries cost, and the state of the damned vegetable bin. And I could see the fear building in her eyes. Was the owner there, he asked her. She shrugged and said she hadn’t seen him. And that crazy light lit his eyes. And I knew what was coming. ”
As Mac spoke, he stared around the kitchen. Once, the table had sat where the washroom was now. His mother had kept eating, small bites that she pushed into her mouth as her husband accused her of fucking the grocer. How long had it taken? How many times did she think she could do it and not get caught? He couldn’t walk in the store without the grocer smirking in amusement. Didn’t she know what a whore she was? An embarrassment.
Mac had chanced to look up at Tobias. The motherless boy was staring at his plate, his hands in his lap, unable to eat. And then Mac’s father had glanced at him.
You fucking bitch, look how you’ve ruined that kid’s meal. You ruin everything. I’ll have to go to another town just to buy groceries because you can’t keep your skirt around your fucking knees.
Tears had streaked her face and he had raged over that. As the meal drew to a close he turned to Mac. Johnnie, make sure your woman’s not a whore when you get one.
Then he had just stopped. His expression had evened out, and he began talking as though he hadn’t been raging for nearly an hour. As though he hadn’t just revealed the hell Mac lived with in front of another kid. A kid who could tell it. Who could go to school and relate his mother’s shame.
“He never said anything. ” Mac shook his head. “Tobias never told, and I made sure I never had company after that again. But I learned hatred. And I swore it wouldn’t happen to me, Kei. ”
He didn’t whine. He didn’t beg. He lifted his head and he stared back at her, his jaw clenched.
“I’ll never speak of this again. I never want to discuss it, ever again. Over the years, it grew steadily worse until one day Mom got sick. ” He couldn’t look at her. He inhaled roughly, remembering his fragile, timid little mother. “She got a fever and tried to say it was just a cold. Three days later she couldn’t get out of bed. Dad picked her up and carried her to the truck and took her to the doctor. They wanted her in the hospital, but he wanted her home. So she came home. She died the next evening. ”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered. “She should have left him. She should have killed him. ”
His lips twisted. “I told her the same thing. ” He raised his gaze to hers, the pain and fury at the pain crashing over him. “She said she made the vow. It was her mistake. In sickness, in health, for better or worse. It was her mistake and God would take care of her when she couldn’t live with it any longer. ”
“God!” Her hand capped over her lips as she stared back at Mac, horrified.
“I have him in me,” he said softly. “That filthy bastard’s blood runs through my veins. After Mom died, I left. I left him alone. And I swore I’d let him die alone. I went to college on a scholarship. Being away from him, I didn’t have to hide girlfriends. I was free. Or so I thought. ”
His first lover had been a tall, slender blonde. She had been a sexual adventurer and filled with life. And the first time Mac had seen her talking to another man he had terrified himself. The words had been hovering on his lips, the insults in his mind, the destructive paranoia blazing through his conscienceness.
“A friend of mine saw it,” he said softly. “He was a few years older than I was, and he knew something about the darkness that inhabits men’s souls. And he introduced me to my first ménage. ”
He leaned back in his chair, staring around the kitchen. After his father’s death he had had the place completely renovated. It looked nothing like the dark, squalid home he had lived in as a child.
He could still feel his mother, though. When his father wasn’t around, she would laugh. She played games with him as a child and talked to him as a teenager. Her gentle voice still filled his dreams sometimes. Her tears filled his nightmares.
“How did it evolve to this?” She waved her hand to encompass the situation they were in now.
“Jethro. ” A mocking smile twisted his lips. “I met him at the Law Enforcement Academy. We applied to the FBI the same day. He was like this other side of me. The darkness I kept hidden showed on his face. The softness he kept hidden, I knew how to give my women. ” He shrugged tightly. “It just evolved. When you and I married, I thought it would go away. I thought I could force it away. ”
He stared back at her forcefully then. “I haven’t let you see or know what raged inside me because I love you, Kei. I love you more than any man has a right to love a woman. ”
“Mac. ” She swallowed tightly. “The past is no excuse—”