Page 57 of Midnight Racers

I never mentioned what Dad had done, and that was the second time lately, the first when in that meeting with Megan and the husband was trying to cheat his wife out of what she was entitled to. Now, I was blabbing since my emotions were all over the place since those men had targeted Charlotte.

I wanted to go back there, resurrect them, and kill them all over again.

“You never talk about your family,” Charlotte continued. “Are you close to them?”

I glanced at her for a moment. “Mum and I are still close. Dad is an asshole.”

“Is he a general asshole or a certified asshole?”

My lips twitched at her description. “He’s a real-life certified asshole. He threw Mum and me out of his life and moved his next wife in the following day. He didn’t want to know us after that.”

Her thumb stroked the side of my hand. “I’m sorry. No one should abandon their child.”

My stomach flipped. I had never put that title onto it before, but it was true. Dad abandoned us. Fuck!

“It was a long time ago.” I refused to look at her because her words had stabbed through me.

“We never get over our first heartbreak.”

“I—” I pursed my lips together again and stared at the road ahead of me. It had been over twenty years and I had never looked at it from this angle before. I had hated Dad for so long that I hadn’t stopped to focus on how it affected me at the time since I’d been so worried about Mum.

Charlotte had looked at me and saw beyond the barriers I created to keep the world from seeing how I really felt. The driveway into my house started as nothing more than a lane from the road. The only person who drove up and down was me since all my mail and parcels were delivered to a different address. This place was off the grid because that was the way I preferred it. Mum thought I lived in an apartment in London.

I mentally kicked myself—I should have taken Charlotte there. It had high-end security and was a fortress against invaders. What the hell was I thinking bringing Charlotte here?

The answer was painfully simple. I wanted to hide her from the world and protect her because she was mine.

“Is this your home?” Charlotte asked in a low tone. “It’s very… remote.”

She was being kind in her description. I came here to hide from the world, but there were times that I felt as if I was haunting it because I didn’t really belong here.

“I like peace and quiet,” I deflected.

“No, you don’t,” Charlotte corrected me. “You like music and conversation. Even when working on a car, you have noise in the background.”

Her comment startled me. No one had ever noticed the way I worked or what my preference was. The guys left me to it when I was tinkering on the cars, and when cleaning up a scene, none of us tended to talk. Yet, this woman had seen beyond the mask I had created.

“Maybe I’m different out of work,” I defended.

“You put the radio on in my kitchen in the mornings.”

I hadn’t even appreciated I did that. As much as I loved this house, I had bought it to hide and lick my wounds. Charlotte being here showed me the truth and that knowledge terrified me. I had become a recluse without even realising it.

I parked the car in the garage connected to the house, and sat for a moment. “I don’t normally bring people here,” I finally admitted.

Charlotte continued to sit facing me, watching me. “Do you want me to go?”

“Fuck, no!” I turned to face her. “It’s just I don’t want you to expect all the frills you have at your home.”

“In other words, you live in a bachelor pad.”

“Maybe?” I said as if it was a question. “Who knows anymore?”

“Well, it’s nearly morning and neither of us have had much sleep, so can you just point me in the direction of somewhere to put Pixie, and then bed?”

“You can put Pixie wherever you want,” I replied, getting out to retrieve her pet carrier.

“We need to put her in a contained space until she gets used to where she is,” Charlotte said. “It’ll make her feel safer if we put some of our clothes with our scent on it with her. We’re her family.”

---