“Good luck with that. Hey, you still bringing the nurse to the Bar this weekend?”

It had taken a week of persuasion with both words and sexual lures to get Saint to agree to come out and meet my friends. Ayden and Shaw were champing at the bit to get to actually meet her outside of the hospital setting.

“If she doesn’t back out on me. She’s really shy, timid around new people.”

“You better tell her if she plans on sticking around, she needs to get over that, or else Cora is going to put together an ambush and the girls will end up on her doorstep without you there as a buffer.”

That was exactly what would happen, so I made a mental reminder to push Saint a little harder the next time we hung out. I didn’t mind pushing her, usually the results ended up with us n*ked and wrapped around each other, but I was still leery of pushing too far because I just didn’t know where her breaking point was. And frankly, I didn’t know where mine was either. I liked her, really liked her, in bed and out of it, but there was always something unknown about her that kept me on the edge. She was a strong girl, had to be in order to do her job and be as good at it as she obviously was, but outside of her work and away from the hospital, there was a veil of vulnerability and unease that surrounded her. I could practically see the struggle she was having within herself when we were together. She wanted to be with me, wanted to spend time together, but the gears in her head would start turning and I could see her trying to figure out how much of herself she could give to me and still feel safe.

I was also doing my best to show her a good time. Ever since the incident in the backseat of my car, I kept it in the forefront of my mind that she essentially had missed out on all the teenage nonsense that went along with boys figuring out how to get into a girl’s pants. So I took her to the movies and tried to get my hands in her shirt. I took her out for pizza and made out with her on her doorstep when I dropped her off. I tried to get her to go on a double date with Rule and Shaw, but she had balked at the idea, not ready to be that fully ingrained in my life yet, which led to the question of what exactly we were doing together.

I had never spent more than one night or one weekend with the same girl, so to me we were doing something that looked like starting a relationship. To her, though, I just didn’t know. She texted me, called me when she had free time, but never stayed the night at my place when she came over and never asked me to stay when I was at hers. Granted, she never asked me to leave either, but there was just a lot of gray area happening, and I felt like I was navigating all of it blindly since I had never even been interested in starting something with anyone before. I knew she was special. I just didn’t know how to show her that beyond what I was already doing.

The drive to Brookside went quick, mostly because my mind was running over everything and didn’t give me a minute of peace. I pulled into the driveway and breathed out a grateful sigh that at least my idiot stepfather’s SUV wasn’t anywhere to be seen, unless it was in the garage. That was highly unlikely because what good did it do in the garage where the neighbors couldn’t see it, marvel at its awesomeness, and be eaten alive with envy at Grant Loften’s obvious wealth and prestige? Fucker. I would never hate anyone as much as I hated that guy and God willing there would come a time that my fist and his face had a meeting.

My entire childhood had been spent under his disapproving eyes. I could never do anything right, was always treated like a burden by him. One of my clearest memories of his sheer shitheadedness had been when I couldn’t have been more than four or five. I had just discovered crayons. I loved the colors, loved to swirl designs on anything and everything I could get my little, unruly hands on, including the walls. It was just crayon and what little kid didn’t draw on the wall? But to Grant it had been a crime akin to murder. To this day I can see him snapping every single one of the crayons and making me watch. I remembered the acrid smell of bleach as he made me scrub not just my bedroom wall where my art lived, but all the walls in the house. I was just a little kid, but to him that didn’t matter. Just like now, he never thought I did anything right.

What made it worse was the fact that he obviously loved my mom, treated her like she was a queen, and gave her whatever she wanted. He just had no time or use for me. And I would never, ever forgive him for making her choose between the two of us. Of course my mother should have picked me, I was her child, it was her job to love me unconditionally, but she hadn’t, and it was Grant who had made her have to make that call.

He was a man that had always been about appearance, a man all about prestige and perception, so the fact that I looked the way I did, acted how I wanted, had never made my time under his roof pleasant. As an adult … every single time he looked down his nose at me, every time he puckered his lips in disdain at what I was wearing or what I was saying … it took every ounce of self-control I possessed not to knock all his perfectly veneered teeth down his throat.

I jogged up the walkway that had a light dusting of snow on it still and knocked on the door. How sad was it that I was a stranger in the place that was supposed to be where my family lived? I saw my mom’s dark head peek through the window and then it took a solid four minutes for her to decide to open the door. We faced each other through the glass of the storm door and there was no mistaking the look of disappointment that flashed across her eyes when she took in my black hoodie, baseball hat, and jeans. I looked like I looked every other day of the year, and it was always lacking in her eyes. It shouldn’t still sting. I was an adult, had been on my own for way longer than she had ever pretended to raise me, but still there was always a tiny part of me that wanted her to see worth in me even though it always ended up with me feeling like she had drop-kicked my heart.

“What are you doing here? You didn’t call, Nashville.”

God, with the full name. I think she used it mostly because she knew how much it irked me.

“No I didn’t, but I want to talk to you for a minute, and I figured I could catch you at home.”

She played with the diamond necklace at her throat and put a hand on the door. My mom was a fairly tiny woman. I got my dark skin tone and hair from somewhere in her lineage. I could only assume everything else that made me who I was I got from Phil. Thank goodness for small favors.

“Grant will be home shortly. He won’t like that you dropped by unannounced.”

And just like it had always been, what Grant liked always won out over what was right and decent.

“It won’t take too long, Mom. Seriously, just give me five minutes.”

“You drove for two hours just to talk for five minutes, Nashville? That makes no sense.” Always with the censure and disapproval. It was a miracle I had managed to turn out as normal as I had.

“Mom …” I sighed and narrowed my eyes at her. “Phil is getting sicker and sicker. He has around-the-clock help at home, but he’s hardly eating and he sleeps all the time. I see him every day and I ask him every time to explain to me what in the hell happened. Someone needs to give me answers, Mom, and I’m not going anywhere until I get them. If you want me gone before Grant comes home, then you best start talking, otherwise I will hang out in the driveway and gladly have it out with him. No one wants that, I’m sure. What would the neighbors think?”

She looked like she was considering her options, and when one of the neighbors pulled out of their garage and looked over to see what was going on, I snorted at the irony as she finally relented and opened the door to let me in.

I followed her into the kitchen, where she begrudgingly offered me a drink. I turned her down and leaned against the counter while she poured herself a cup of coffee.

“I want to know why you never told me who Phil was. I want to know why you let me think my dad was just some deadbeat that took off on us. I spent my entire childhood thinking you couldn’t deal with me, didn’t love me because I reminded you of a stranger that disappointed you.” I glared at her for all the years of blame and guilt she had needlessly let me carry on my too-young shoulders.

“Phil was here, he took care of me, and he obviously cared for you and would have been in both our lives. I think I deserve to know what happened and why it took him facing death for the truth to come out.”

Her hands curled around the mug and I saw her pale a little under her makeup.

“What difference does any of that make now, Nashville? What purpose does rehashing any of it serve?”

“Stop calling me that. Nash, just Nash, and you know it. The purpose it serves is I want to know why I wasn’t ever good enough, why you still look at me like I’m a disappointment. Phil doesn’t get to pass on, get to die without me understanding why it mattered so much for him to keep your secrets.”

She heaved a sigh like I was annoying her more than anything else and looked at me over the rim of her mug.

“I met Phil when he was on leave from the navy. I was in New York on vacation the same time he was there for Fleet Week. He was good-looking, a handsome and dangerous young man in a uniform. I figured no one would get hurt if we indulged in a harmless fling. I thought it was just temporary, just a young girl sowing her oats, but it turned into something more. I came back home, back here, and when Phil’s service was up he moved out here to be with me. He was always very dedicated and chivalrous, he just wasn’t what I was looking for in a long-term partner.”

She cleared her throat and set the mug down on the counter. She wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“I liked Phil, he was a lot of fun, and for a while the relationship was a great time, but when it came time to settle down, I wanted a life that didn’t fit with a guy who rides a motorcycle and thinks tattooing is a viable career—that was not in my long-term plans. I broke it off with Phil when I met Grant. Grant is the kind of man who could provide a future, could provide the kind of home I always wanted. I knew what the right choice for me was between the two men without a question.”

I scowled at her because hearing her talk about Phil’s life and choices was hearing her belittle my life all over again. Her hands went back to the necklace at her throat and she twisted the ruby around and around.

“I didn’t know I was pregnant when Grant and I started seeing each other. When I figured it out I just assumed the baby was his.”

I choked a little. “Jesus, Mom, you were sleeping with both of them?” That was more than I needed to know for sure.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I was young and figuring life out, Nashville. Anyway Grant and I got engaged and married before you were born. We were both excited with the prospect of having a little boy, and Phil had opened the shop and started his own kind of life. Everything was going to be perfect.”

She walked to the other side of the kitchen and I realized she had moved as far away from me as she could without leaving the room.

“It was pretty clear the second you were born that you were Phil’s and not Grant’s. You were all brown like me, but the hair was Phil’s and those eyes … even as a baby they were too bright and too unmistakable. They were Donovan eyes. Grant was furious, accused me of having an affair, and told me it was him or my bastard baby. He couldn’t face everyone in Brookside knowing the baby wasn’t his. I thought he was going to leave me for sure.”

I already hated the guy, but now I wanted to pull all his teeth out with rusty pliers.

“I didn’t want to lose him, so I explained about Phil, about the relationship. Grant eventually realized that no one would judge him for taking care of a child that was left by his father. He refused to be on the birth certificate or give you his last name, though.” I could literally feel the temperature of my blood drop.

My hands clenched into fists at my sides. “But Phil didn’t go anywhere. He just didn’t know I existed.”

“No, he didn’t, and, in a perfect world, it would have stayed that way. Grant took care of us, provided for us, and we told you that your dad had abandoned us. But as time went on you just looked more and more like Phil. One of his friends saw you with me at Cherry Creek Mall when you were about four and told Phil. He was furious, threatened to take me to court, to fight for custody. Grant didn’t want that kind of mess, didn’t want the whole sordid tale out in public and we didn’t need child support, so we made a deal. I begged Phil, pleaded with him to keep his real identity and relation to you a secret, to keep it quiet until you were older. He very reluctantly agreed, but only as long as he got to be in your life and only as long as I agreed to let you have his last name. I never put a father on the birth certificate, so making you a Donovan officially was the easiest thing in the world.”