Cross My Heart (A Contemporary Romance Novel)
didn’t drink so much, and there was food in the house, and she even did some cooking. They watched baseball together sometimes, all three of them, and to Michael that was as close to heaven as he ever hoped to get.
It usually fell apart when his dad left, but this time he was determined to make things different. To take care of his mother, to take care of everything. He stayed with her every minute, hardly sleeping at night, and she actually seemed to be settling into a routine without alcohol.
Then, one night, he woke up to hear her moving around in the living room.
He was out of bed like a shot, and he caught her just as she was slipping out the front door of the apartment.
“Where are you going?” he asked, trying to sound casual.
She was wearing the half sly, half furtive expression he knew and hated. “I won’t be gone long,” she said. “Go back to sleep, pumpkin.”
“I’ll come with you.”
She tried for a light-hearted laugh. “Don’t be silly. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”
His parents both used that phrase a lot— I promise. He knew it didn’t mean anything.
“If you need something at the store, I’ll get it for you.”
She hesitated, and he knew she was searching for a lie to tell. They’d both pretended for so long that she didn’t have a drinking problem that it was automatic now, a habit they’d never be able to break.
“I’m actually meeting a friend, pumpkin. I’ll be back before you know it, okay?”
And then the feeling he hated most in the world was clawing through him—the scared little boy feeling that was his first conscious memory.
“Please don’t go.” He tried never to say that to his mother, because it never worked. It didn’t work now.
“Just go back to bed, angel. If you’re asleep you won’t even know I’m gone.”
She opened the door, and he grabbed her wrist. “Please, Mom. Please stay.”
He’d never done that before. Never begged her to stay after it was obvious she was going to leave no matter what he did.
His mother tried to pull away from him, but he hung on. He was crying now, tears and snot running down his face, and he didn’t even care. “Please, Mom. Please.”
She jerked her arm out of his grasp. “Stop it, Michael,” she said sharply. “You’re acting like a baby. Go back to sleep and I’ll be back before you wake up.”
It was two days before she came home again.
He’d gambled, and lost. He would never gamble again.
He never cried again, either. From that point on he’d honed a quality of detachment as his best defense against his parents, until eventually it became a part of him. Instead of armor he could put on and take off at will, he’d crafted himself an exoskeleton that would be in place forever.
It was still in place. And behind it, a part of him had never grown up. On the outside he was an accomplished surgeon, and on the inside he was no better than the little boy he’d once been, planning to be a doctor so that people would need him and not the other way around.
But in spite of all his efforts, he did need someone. He needed Claire. Needed her just as much, if not more, than she needed him.
If he asked her to stay and she said no, it would hurt worse than anything he’d ever experienced. It would mean that he’d failed.
And it didn’t matter. For the first time in his life, the fear of failure meant nothing. Not when he compared it to what he might gain.
The song ended, and he turned off the radio.
“Claire.” He looked over at her, but she was staring out the passenger window again.
“What.”
There was an ache in his throat he wasn’t sure he could talk past. He took a deep breath, and then another, hoping she’d turn around. When she didn’t he spoke to her back.
“I want you to live here. With me.”
No response. Claire kept staring out the window and didn’t say a thing.
He was pretty sure that when she did speak it would be to say no, thanks —or more likely, hell, no . But the important thing was that he’d told her. He’d told his daughter he wanted her with him, that she was more important to him than anything in the world.
Because they weren’t back where they started. The gap between them didn’t seem so deep and wide any more. The last two weeks had changed things—had changed him. And he wanted Claire to know it.
After a long minute, she turned to look at him.
Tears were streaming down her face. “Do you really mean it?”
His heart spasmed in his
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