Page 56 of Bracing The Storm

I nod grimly. “It was quite the surprise to find out today. You’re a good singer, I’ll give you that.”

“So it wasn’t pretense. You really didn’t know?” He throws me a sideways glance.

I shake my head. “Not a clue.”

“Not a single one?”

“I thought you looked a bit familiar, but that’s about it. If it wasn’t for my friend, Mia, calling while you were singing and her recognizing your voice, I still wouldn’t know.” I roll my eyes. “Don’t look at me so incredulous. Therearepeople on our planet who haven’t heard of you. I happen to be one of them.”

“I didn’t even think that was possible.” His tone betrays a shift. I narrow my eyes as I regard his profile and think I catch a little quirk to his lips, as though the situation is amusing him.

“I’m glad you’re having a laugh at my expense,” I grumble. “Seriously, it’s not as impossible as you make it out to be. When I don’t sleep, I work. I don’t listen to music, have no time for watching television or reading magazines, and most certainly don’t spend the few hours I sometimes have to spare on checking the breakfast habits of celebrities on social media.”

He nods. “Fair enough. It must be quite a sad life though, all work and no play.”

His frankness renders me speechless. It echoes the way I started to feel after the fiasco that happened back home—the one that left my whole life in shatters and my professional reputation tarnished to the point that no company would hire me. Overnight, I found myself jobless, with no professional aspirations, and on the brink of losing my tiny matchbox apartment.

I wasted years for nothing, and yet I don’t regret having tried to build a better life for myself.

“Some people don’t grow up privileged like you. I didn’t really have much of a choice.” The jab is hidden in my choice of a comeback, but if Patrick notices it, he doesn’t engage.

A few minutes pass in silence.

“Here we are. Home, sweet home.” He takes the turn around the house and swipes across the display of his cell phone a few times to open the electric garage doors. I haven’t been in here before. As the lights go on, I’m instantly left gawking at the small collection of sports cars.

So, heisthat kind of guy. He just doesn’t want to admit it.

“There’s your answer, I guess.” He nods toward a sleek, silver thing that’s polished to perfection and would probably be something like the equivalent of a Victoria’s Secret model in a car show.

He points at one of the sports cars. “That one was a present from my father right before he died. It was his parting gift to me.His exact words were that he wouldn’t be able to rest in peace knowing I could risk breaking my neck by driving his old truck,” Patrick goes on to explain. “The man had a sense of humor.”

I smile. “He did. And yet you keep driving this old thing. It makes no sense.”

He kills the engine and turns to face me, his eyes two dark pools that seem to swallow up the space between us. “My father and I had our differences, but we were incredibly close. I was already in a bad place when he fell ill and passed shortly after. When he died, it felt as though he took a big piece of my life with him.”

“I’m sorry that you had to go through something like that,” I whisper even though I can’t comprehend what it must feel like. When my father died, I felt nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it was yet another betrayal. He hadn’t just checked out of his responsibilities toward my mother and me. He had also left his new wife and my half-brother in financial shambles and proved his incompetence as a person once again.

“We all have to face grief and loss at one point or another. That’s life,” Patrick says. “The hard part, though, is that with every single day that passes, my memories of him fade just a little more. No matter how hard I try to hold on to them, they seem to keep slipping through my fingers. This truck is the one thing that keeps me close to him.” He pauses, takes a long breath, and lets it out slowly, lost in the past. “I think he had it before I was born. He certainly drove it for as long as I remember. His fingertips touched the leather so many times, his fingerprints are etched into it. Sometimes, when I sit in here, I can feel him, smell his cologne. I imagine him sitting beside me, listening to me, silent and composed, his strong presence a pillar of tranquility. And then I realize he’s gone forever. He won’t ever sit beside me and listen to whatever I have to share with him.This truck is all I have left of him. I’m not ready to let go of it just yet.”

His words make me strangely emotional, maybe because it’s an explanation I would never have expected. My heart breaks for him. He might be close to thirty, but no one is ever immune to pain, and surely not when you had the kind of relationship he seems to have had with his father.

“I’m so sorry, Patrick,” I repeat, even though the words are nothing but empty shells. They’re like a Band-Aid; you put it on your skin to hide the wound and even after it heals, the remaining scar will always be that one constant reminder of how raw and painful it once felt.

He takes a deep breath, and the shadows of the past instantly seem to evaporate. “I told you my story, now it’s your turn to tell me yours.”

My heart starts to beat frantically in my chest. He opened up and now he expects me to do the same. Why didn’t I see it coming? I can’t tell him the truth, and I most certainly can’t disclose anything about the last few months of my life. He wouldn’t believe me, not when he already thinks I conned his mother out of her estate.

“What do you mean?” I stammer.

“Why don’t you wait for me in the kitchen, make us some tea, and then you can tell me all about how you met my mother?”

I almost heave a sigh of relief. Out of all the things he could have asked, the story about the night I met his mother is probably the one I don’t even mind sharing. As long as I leave out some of the details of my past, gloss over a thing here and there, I’ll be fine. I can get away with telling him as little as possible. It’s not like my private matters are any of his business anyway.

“Isn’t most of the kitchen in your part of the house?” I ask playfully.

He winks. “I’ll make an exception today. And you can even use the door. You don’t have to jump in through the window. How about that?”

“Why, thank you! Your generosity knows no boundaries.” I step out of the truck and head for the door connecting the garage with the house. His laughter is ringing in my mind long after I’ve boiled the water, filled two mugs with an aromatic herbal blend, and texted Duncan an excuse about needing to get home immediately because of some important phone call. I know my excuse sounds far-fetched and improbable, like a big, fat lie so I’m not surprised that he doesn’t respond. But at this point I don’t care. For all I know, Duncan might have changed his mind and decided to ditch me halfway through our date. Come to think of it, it's quite possible, considering how long he took to find a parking spot.

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