Page 29 of Tru Blue
He shook his head, his chin dropping to his chest, those intense blue eyes closing briefly, shutting her out. She felt his retreat, could almost see his walls cinching into place as his eyes opened. His jaw lifted, tightened, and he stared intently into the night. A deep inhalation expanded his chest. His shoulders squared as he turned to face her with a colder, guarded expression, like she’d seen the first night they’d met. In the space of a breath she saw sadness brimming in his eyes, and then, as if he’d pulled a curtain, his gaze shuttered again.
“What I have to tell you will make you question everything you thought you knew about me. It will probably infuriate you, and it might even make you wonder if you can trust your own instincts.”
“You’re scaring me,” she admitted warily.
He nodded, his jaw working over whatever was in his head. “I know. I’m sorry. But I can’t touch you like we both want me to with this hanging over my head.”
A nervous laugh escaped her lips. “You make it sound like you’re some kind of awful person.”
He shook his head, his mouth curving down in a frown. “I don’t even know what I am anymore, but I know I’m not the guy who can take anything more from you without being honest.”
“Truman, what does that mean, ‘you don’t know what you are anymore’?” She shifted, putting a few inches between them.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. His scruff jumped as the muscles beneath clenched. “You asked about my childhood. It was nothing like yours, which I assume you’ve realized by now. The only reason we had a roof over our heads was because my grandmother left my mother her house in her will. At some point she must have sold it, or abandoned it. God only knows. My mother was like cancer. She destroyed everything she touched.”
“She didn’t destroy you,” she said softly, unable to keep from caressing his arm.
His eyes dropped to where her fingers lay, and then they blinked slowly, remaining closed for a beat before fluttering open again.
“Yes, she did.” He paused, his struggle written in the lines mapping his face, the darkness burrowing into his gaze. “It’s a miracle I survived childhood, but by the time I realized she had a problem…I was a kid. I had no idea. I don’t even know when she began using drugs. She was fourteen when she had me. My grandmother was still alive and we lived with her, but she was a mess, too. Who knows? Maybe I was the reason she started using. Lord knows I’m learning how hard it is to raise an infant, and the way she treated me, it’s an easy assumption to make.”
He paused, and she could barely breathe. Her fingers tightened around his arm. She wanted to hold him until his painful past disappeared, but she sensed his walls and knew that the small touch he was allowing her was as much as he was going to accept right now.
“My memories aren’t clear enough to know much about when I was young, but what I do know is that after my grandmother passed away, things got bad. And when Quincy was born, things got even worse.”
“Quincy?”
“My brother,” he said softly. “I basically raised him until…for many years.”
“I didn’t know you had another brother. Do you have other siblings?”
He shook his head. “The night I found the kids was the first time I’d seen Quincy in months. The last time was when I pulled him out of a crack house and tried to get him help. He wanted no part of me or my help. As far I know, I don’t have any more siblings.”
His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, shifting his body so her hand slipped off his arm. He stared into the darkness again.
“I told him to stay away from the kids until he gets clean. I don’t even know their birthdays.” His eyes glazed over, and he cocked his head to the side, looking at her with a solemn expression. “The doctor thinks Kennedy is around two and a half and Lincoln is around five months.” He pressed his finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose, as if he were in pain, and turned away again.
Thank God those babies had him. Tears welled in her eyes, and when she touched his back, he bristled and lifted his eyes toward the sky, blinking repetitively.
