Page 55 of Hunted

The words he’d scrawled in his poisonous ink about her and her mother were etched indelibly in Lexi’s mind.

I couldn’t stand the woman. Marrying her was the biggest mistake of my life. And I should have known all along the brat she carried wasn’t mine. Five years later, she died, weak, sickly thing that she was, leaving me to raise another man’s child.

“All those years,” Lexi whispered, and she slowly sat up. She brushed the hot tears with the back of one hand and was surprised when no fresh ones fell to burn her face. “All those years, bending over backwards to please him. But it didn’t matter what I did, what I was, or what I became. None of it mattered.”

Her eyes dried slowly, leaving salt on her skin. “None of it mattered,” she said again, and finally it was beginning to sink in. Her eyes were opening. She was understanding. It hadn’t been that she unworthy, or that she’d disappointed her genius father in some way. It had never been that. She could have been crowned queen of the world and he still wouldn’t have loved her.

“It wasn’t me. It was never me, it was him.” Pushing both hands through her hair, she sat on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t a revelation, though. Not really. It was merely confirmation of something she’d been feeling for a very long time. But she’d been unable to acknowledge it. Because if it were true, then it would mean her father was just a selfish, cruel jerk who was truly unworthy of her love. But he was the only person she could love, the only person in her young life. So rather than face the truth, she’d seen her entire existence through the warped glass of a lie. She’d chosen to believe every adult who ever told her what a great man her father was and how many lives he’d saved. And her mother, who’d told her geniuses were different, and needed to be cared for and protected.

All those things had made her see herself as a warped reflection in a funhouse mirror. She’d let herself feel inadequate, unworthy of the great man’s love, when deep down, she’d known better. She’d always known better.

Lexi sniffed and yanked open the drawer in the nightstand. Her scrap book lay there, and she took it out, opened the cover. There she was five years old, getting on the school bus for the first time. The mother of the little boy next door had taken the picture, certainly not her own father. Lexi happened to be in the shot because they got on the bus together. And the woman had sent her son in with a copy for Lexi a week later.

She’d been terrified to get on that big yellow bus. Her father had called her a coward.

“But I wasn’t,” she whispered, remembering now more vividly than she ever had before. “That boy … Billy … he was just as scared as I was. But his mother came to the bus with him. She hugged him hard, and promised she’d be waiting right there in the same spot when he came home that afternoon.”

The pain in her heart softened then and began to change form, to alter into something else. She flipped the page.

There was the shy little girl in the second-grade production of The Wizard of Oz. Only she’d had no proud parent in the audience. Her father had said he might be willing to take the afternoon off if she’d gotten the lead, but he certainly wasn’t missing work to see her play an extra.

“I thought if I could only be better … just be better, he’d love me.”

The pain became an ember, and as she flipped more pages, relived other disappointments, other times when he’d made her feel worthless, the ember glowed hotter and brighter. It turned out she was capable of feeling anger toward a man she’d adored. She’d ached to win his affection. She’d become a doctor to try to earn his love. But he’d never once given it.

“Damn you,” she whispered when she flipped a page and found a photo of him, accepting some award. She stood up, tearing the cellophane away, peeling the photo from the book, holding it at arm’s length in a white-knuckled grip, and she said it again, louder this time. “Damn you! How could you do that to a motherless child who adored you?”

Rage welled higher, flooding her soul and spilling out of her. It had built up there all her life, but it had been denied. No more. No more.

“It wasn’t me, you selfish bastard! Do you hear me? It was never me. It was you!” She flipped pages, tearing out every clipping about one of his achievements, every story about another award he’d won, every article calling him brilliant. “You’re the one who wasn’t good enough. You didn’t deserve the love I lavished on you. And you were wrong to throw it away! You were stupid to throw it away! And so is that idiot downstairs!”

Crumpling the photos and clippings, she took a shuddering breath. She felt strong. She felt free of a terrible burden she’d carried too long.

“I am good enough,” she told the wad in her hands. “I always was. You were too filled with hate to see it. And Romano is too filled with guilt, and this damned quest for vengeance. I love him. I love him a hundred times more than I ever loved you!” She fell to her knees in front of the hearth, her chin falling to her chest, her eyes filling again. “But he can’t return that feeling any more than you could, can he, Father? No, of course he can’t. And I’ll tell you something, I’m through. I’m not going to waste any more of my heart on men too stupid to know my value. I am worthy, dammit. And one of these days, I’ll find someone who’s worthy of me.”

She tossed the wad of keepsakes into the fire. Red flames licked at them, devoured them, turned them into a charred ball of ash, which she thought resembled her father’s black soul. “I will,” she whispered. “I swear to God, I will.”

“Lexi …”

She stiffened, not turning at the sound of Connor’s hoarse voice coming from the bedroom doorway. How long had he been there? How much had he heard?

It didn’t matter, did it? She’d made her decision. She thought maybe she was beginning to know herself as she truly was for the very first time.

She got to her feet, choosing to ignore his intrusion. Crossing the bedroom, she opened the closet and located a cardboard box in the back. Bending to it, she flipped it over, emptying its contents onto the floor and tossing the box onto the bed. Then she crossed the room again, her steps fast and sure. She picked up the trophies, the gold watches, the medallions her father had won over the years, and dropped them into the box.

Connor followed her as she moved down the hallway, yanking framed certificates off the walls. He’d hung more every day since they’d arrived. Those went into the box too.

Then she returned to her bedroom, and went to the framed portrait of her father that sat on her nightstand. She threw it at the box as if she were trying to pulverize it. The sound of breaking glass was satisfying.

“I know you’re angry,” Connor said. “You have every right to be.”

She tipped her jewelry box upside down, shaking the contents onto the dresser, shoving the piles around. Her class ring. He’d complained about the cost but finally shelled out the money for it in lieu of a birthday present. It felt hard and cold in her palm, and then it sailed through the air like a missile, the box its target.

“Will you stop? Will you just talk to me for a minute? Please?” He grabbed her arm. “Stop this. Lexi, we have to talk.”

She stood still, panting with rage. She couldn’t look at him.

He touched her face, lifted her chin, and she met his eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

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