Games of the Heart (The ‘Burg #4)(33)
Author: Kristen Ashley

Then I remembered those books and every inch of my body froze.

“Rhonda found them,” he said gently and my eyes moved to his face to see there was pain in it. Not a little bit of it either. And even as angry as I was, I had to admit, it hurt to see. “She brought them to me asking me to help you. I know and she knows about Denny Lowe.”

I stared at him, speechless.

Mike wasn’t speechless.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart, but Darrin found these and he knew too.”

I continued to stare at him silently.

Mike kept talking.

“I loved reading how you felt about me. It’s beautiful and straight up, Angel, I’ll treasure it. Swear to God, I will. But I hated reading what Denny did to you and I’m sorry, so sorry I can’t say, you went through that. And, if you’ve got issues about Denny, you can always get help. I know time has passed but even demons that have dug deep can be pulled out. And after we’re done talking, if you still want my help, I can give you names of people you can talk to that might help you deal.”

That was when I spoke.

“You read them?”

Mike nodded.

“You read my journals?” I asked again just to confirm.

“I did, Dusty. It killed me to read a lot of what I read but I read it. And now Rhonda is worried because, without sharing your secret, Darrin told her repeatedly he was worried that you weren’t making good decisions about men because of what happened with Lowe. And LeBrec could be a prime example of that. You need to think about that and what you’re going to do to make smarter choices before more of your life slides by.”

“So you’re breaking up with me because you found out a guy who turned out to be a serial killer felt me up.”

He blinked, his chin jerking back with his blink and hesitated a moment before he said, “It’s more complicated than that.”

“No, it isn’t,” I shot back.

“Yes, it is,” he returned immediately and firmly.

I suddenly leaned in and hissed, “Bullshit.” Then I took five steps to him, snatched the books out of his hand and shook them in the air at my side. “You know why Darrin had these? Because I gave them to him.”

Mike blinked with the chin jerk again.

“Yeah,” I snapped. “I was leaving town and was going to throw them away and Darrin thought the shit I drew in them was too pretty just to throw away so he asked if he could have them and I said sure.”

Mike stared at me.

I kept going.

“I also told him about Denny, like, the night it happened. He was pissed as all hell, got a bunch of his buddies together, found Denny and messed him up.”

Mike continued to stare at me.

“I don’t have any demons, Mike,” I kept snapping. “Darrin took me to Father Phillip and Father Phillip took me to visit Thelma Whitehouse. She’d been attacked a few years earlier and talked at some self-help group in Indianapolis. We got together a dozen times, maybe more. She was cool. So cool, only a few of the times we talked about Denny and then I was over it so we talked about a whole load of other shit because she was into music like I was and she introduced me to pottery making. She still sends me Christmas cards and those funny emails you pass around all the time and I do the same.”

“Dusty –” Mike started but I talked right over him, taking two steps back as I did.

“And Beau wasn’t a psycho dick when I met him, Mike. Dicks never are dicks until they think they have their hooks in you and you can’t get away so only then do they show you the dick within. He’s handsome and he could be really sweet and he was great in bed. He just can’t wrap his head around the fact that I’m the only woman in his forty years who kicked his ass out. Yes, he’s that conceited but that’s on him, not on me. And it’s totally uncool for you to suggest that me getting felt up by a lunatic when I was in high school is the reason why I make poor choices in men. It isn’t. I don’t bring that shit on myself. I don’t search that shit out. There are just a lot of dicks out there. And them being dicks isn’t on me either. They’re just dicks. Darrin was worried about the men in my life because Darrin is my big brother. That’s what big brothers do. They worry. He was settled and happy with his family. He wanted me to have that too. It wasn’t only Rhonda he told that shit to. He told me all the time he wanted that for me.”

“You changed,” he reminded me gently. “You became not you.”

“Uh…yeah,” I replied. “I was a girl. I was fifteen. I got my period, my hormones were all over the place and my sister was a complete and total bitch who seemed to exist to make my life a misery and some of that time she wasn’t even around anymore because she was at college. Still, she’s smart and she was committed to the task so she found ways to do it. My parents didn’t get the music I listened to and talked to me about it constantly, certain I was going to commit suicide or some stupid shit like that. I mean, what the f**k? So I liked Nirvana and Kurt Cobain blew off his head off with a shotgun. That didn’t mean Dad had to hide his which he did. They just didn’t get me. Nobody got me. I didn’t even get me. And this was because I was fifteen, I was artistic and I wanted my life to f**king start. Not tomorrow, not in three years, yesterday. I was young, stupid and impatient. I get that now. I get that then I was a little bitch and acted like one. I’m not proud of the way I was then and I know my behavior was ludicrous. I look at pictures of me back then and cringe. But, since then, I’ve been through more phases because that’s just me. I’m a woman. We do that shit. Hell, I’ll take my grunge phase over my Shania phase. Black leather pants and all that hair? Crazy.”

“Honey –” he began again and moved toward me but I leaned into him and snapped, “Don’t you f**king get near me,” and he stopped dead.

I stared at him.

Then I told him, “I’ll give you this. When Denny Lowe went on a rampage, that freaked me out. But only because I felt fortunate he didn’t snap when he was trying his thing with me. It sucked, that coming back up but it was way over, he didn’t get very far, I got away and I survived. I was even surprised he turned out to be as whacked as he was because, seriously? He was kind of charming before he got all handsy. That creeped me way the hell out but I guess they can be like that, people who are loop-di-loo in their brains. When Denny did his thing, wreaking mayhem all over The United States, Darrin and I talked about it a lot. But not because I needed him to comfort me. Because he was way more freaked about it than me thinking what could have happened to his baby sister at the hands of that madman. So it was me comforting my brother not the other way around.”