Page 79 of Soft Tissue Damage
“Elena is kind, loving, and sensitive. I’m sorry, Leon, but you have never deserved Elena.”
“Bullshit. I wanted to marry her.”
Leon is in no way ready for marriage, and certainly not with my Elena. “You have a strange way of showing it. Screwing another woman. Letting men treat her like a piece of meat. Ignoring her cry for help when she was lost. You wanted to marry her? I would kill for her.”
As I recount all of Leon’s misdeeds, he fumes silently.
I take a deep breath and say in a more level tone, “You’re young, which means you make mistakes, and I hope once you’ve had time to think, you’ll learn from this. Do better, Leon. I still love you. I’ll always love you, but you need to grow up and become a man you can be proud of.”
“Like I’m supposed to be proud of you?” he sneers.
I don’t feel one scrap of shame over pursuing the future mother of my children. The woman I’m certain that can make me happy, and whom I’ll work hard to make happy. Elena’s so close to seeing my true face, and she hasn’t turned away from me. I think I can reveal some of my criminal work without worrying she’ll panic and tell me to stop. Maybe after she’s met Mercer’s wife, Vivienne, I can tell her the whole truth. I think she’ll like Vivienne, and the young mother can be her friend and show her that while men like me and Mercer walk in dark and dangerous places, we’ll always come back to them. We’d never hurt them. We only want to love and protect our families.
“It was you dancing with her last night, wasn’t it?” Leon accuses.
“It was.”
“She looked so happy,” he says bitterly. “I hate her for that. She’s supposed to be miserable like me.” He turns, and slams out of the house.
I sigh and rub my brow. I wish my son wasn’t hurting as much as he is now, but I hope he learns from this experience, and the next woman he dates he will treat better than he treated Elena.
When I come back into the kitchen, Elena’s cheeks are wet with tears. I take her in my arms and hold her close. “I’m so sorry you had to hear all of Leon’s unkind words.”
She puts her hands on my chest and clutches handfuls of my shirt. “I don’t care about that. The way you stood up for me, Cullan? No one’s ever done that for me before.”
“Of course, darlin’,” I murmur, kissing the tears fromher cheeks. “No one has the right to talk to you that way. If someone is cruel to you, you can tell them you don’t want them in your life. You have every right.”
“I wasn’t raised that way. I don’t know how.”
I know Elena is able to lash out if she feels trapped or angry, but she should feel confident enough to calmly tell someone to back off when they need to hear it. I pull back and put my hands on her shoulders, staring deep into her eyes. “You were raised by two timid little church women who probably couldn’t say boo to a goose, but good manners are only for good people who treat you right.”
“They aren’t really timid…” She hesitates for a moment, and then nods. “I’ll try, Cullan. Thank you.”
“That’s my girl,” I murmur, and kiss her again. I taste the saltiness of her tears on my tongue. She wraps her arms around me and parts her lips, inviting me deeper. “Let’s go to bed.”
Upstairs, we lay together beneath the bedclothes, and Elena strokes my bare chest.
“I heard some of your conversation with Leon,” she whispers.
I smile against her lips. “I’ll bet you did. He was talking loud enough. What did you hear?”
“That you were on your own for two years and you…you liked my smile as soon as you saw me.”
“I likedyouas soon as I saw you.”
She holds me tighter. “I liked you as soon as I saw you, too. I liked you so much that I had to confess it to mypriest. Father Connell was so outraged that he wouldn’t even give me penance.”
“No forgiveness? I don’t think it’s supposed to work like that.”
“I don’t know. I was too upset to ask. I don’t think I’m a very good Catholic. I have doubts. I feel like I go through the motions for my aunts.”
“We all have our spiritual paths to walk, and they rarely look the same.”
“Are you spiritual? What do you believe?”
I think for a moment, stroking her hair. If there is a god, I’m going to hell. “I’m agnostic. I don’t have faith, but it’s impossible to know if I’m right or wrong about there being a higher being.”
“That’s true. I… I did hear something that you sounded certain about,” she says tentatively. “You want to be a father again.”
