Not Over Yet by Amber Belldene

Author:Amber Belldene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amber Belldene
Published: 2016-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Lily clicked her seatbelt into the buckle as Eric tapped out a message on his phone. “Who are you texting?”

“Just letting Peter know it’s handled.” He slid the device into his pocket, and stared out over the dash. “I’ll drive you home, or is your address still a secret?”

She might regret it later, but after a surprise visit from not-so-dear-old dad, it seemed outright stupid to keep where she lived from him. “I’m around the corner from St. John’s on Twelfth Avenue.”

He nodded and then shut down—the angles of his shoulders sharpened, his fingers gripping the wheel like it was trying to get away from him. His sullen mood was justified—his own father had sabotaged his business in a juvenile act of attention seeking. Her chest hurt and, practically speaking, this brooding posed a problem. If he got stuck in his dark spiral, they wouldn’t get any nearer to the closure they both needed tonight.

She searched for gentle words, ones that might ease the pain of parental destructiveness. “So, that worked out. You got the trucks.”

“Right. I should give myself a big pat on the back.” His acidic tone could destroy metal.

He accelerated onto the highway and rolled down the windows, blasting her with cold air and the loud thrum of wind. In a second, he might turn on some of the classic rock he liked to fume to. Such a cliché, as if he’d developed an affection for the stuff by listening to an Internet radio station called Music for When You’re Seriously Pissed Off.

She rolled up her window.

He reached for the radio.

“Please don’t.” She blocked his hand. “I’m hungry and tired, and I’m getting a headache. And if you’re not going to tell me what that was all about with your dad, I would prefer silence.”

His hand fell from the volume knob and returned to squeezing the steering wheel like he was trying to turn a fistful of coal into diamonds.

Once upon a time, she’d tolerated his moods; perhaps she’d even found them a little mysterious and sexy. But now that she’d received an astonishing—and heart-wrenching—insight into them, they were tragic, the product of old, suffocating hurt. The desperation she’d always sensed in him took on deeper dimensions, and warning bells sounded in her mind. She should give him space and avoid getting sucked into his dark place. If she went there with him, all the boundaries she’d built between them might collapse. But he was hurting so much, and neither the womanly nor the priestly side of her could ignore it, ignore him. She shifted in the seat to face him. “Talk to me.”

He stared at the road ahead. His jaw muscles bulged and his hair pointed every which way from all the stress-raking he’d done with his fingers.

She touched his shoulder. “Take a deep breath.”

He flinched.

“Fine. Don’t.” It should have been a relief to heed the warning alarm blaring in her brain, but she wanted him to talk, to share, to finally let her in after all these years.

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