Page 75 of Hard Rain Coming
“Your fourth birthday.” He was closer, only a few inches away, and she looked down, not wanting him to see the pain on her face. When she could, Vivian looked at her father.
“Mom said I could have a pony when I was old enough to take care of it. Said I had to be at least six or seven. But I wanted one so bad, and she wasn’t happy when you showed up at my party with Snowy.”
“No,” Manley said softly. “I caught hell for it later.”
“I bet you did.”
A heartbeat passed. Maybe two.
“I remember riding around the paddock on a horse that belonged to me. I felt so lucky. I knew Snowy was a bit wild, but you were there, at my back, so I wasn’t afraid. I felt free and safe with you there. I was happy. We all were.” She exhaled. “Until we weren’t. Until we went from a happy family to something else entirely. Mom died, and everything changed.”
Her father never looked away. His eyes shimmered with tears.
She fought the images and memories in her mind. Not wanting to see them or go back there, but knowing she had to push through.
“You were a mean drunk. Your words cut sharper, deeper, than any knife I could ever hold in my hands, and you liked to use them. God, how you threw them at us.” That anger inside her was stoked, and she made no effort to hide it. “You were cruel and selfish, and I spent so much time trying to be away from here because I didn’t want to exist in a world without Mom.” Her voice trembled. “Didn’t want to exist in a world that only had you in it. I acted out. I projected all the darkness inside me and didn’t care who got caught with the shrapnel. I was as mean as you were, and sometimes I was just as drunk. Or high. But then I got involved with someone who saw past all the bullshit, and even though the two of us were volatile together, we found some kind of happiness. He didn’t take my crap. He knew what I was living through.
“But then I got pregnant at the worst time ever. He and I weren’t in a good place, and you…” Her voice broke, and she slowly exhaled, fighting like hell to keep her shit together. “Those things you said that last night were sharper than any you’d thrown at me before. They cut deeper. They infected. They killed whatever kind of love I had for you. For this family. So I left and ran away. I stopped fighting for the only man who could make me halfway happy. I stopped thinking that I belonged to anyone. My world became about survival. About me. And I had a baby.”
She turned away from Manley, no longer able to look at him. The tears that had been threatening coursed down her face, and she swiped at them, trying her best to keep it together. “I had a daughter, and another family raised her as their own because I couldn’t. She’s beautiful and smart, and she reminds me of Mom. So much.” Her voice caught. She shuddered. “She’s everything I would have wanted, and I couldn’t keep her. For a lot of reasons. The biggest one being that I was a pathetic, sad, angry version of you. Thank God, I was strong enough to realize it. Strong enough to give her a fighting chance. Strong enough to give her up.”
“Vivian.” Manley’s voice wavered so badly, she winced. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sure you are.” She turned back to her father, uncaring of the tears or pain written across her face. “All drunks who find their way back to a sober life are sorry. What they don’t realize is that sorry isn’t enough. Not really. Because sorry doesn’t wipe out the darkness. It doesn’t make the pain go away. Maybe one day, it will lessen.” She shrugged. “I came here to forgive you. Some part of me knows I have to, because I’m done living with all this weight. Done living with the sins of your past. I want to be happy. I want to live with the man who makes me happy, and I hope like hell he’s willing to deal with this version of me until I can forgive you and become someone else. Someone better.”
She covered her hand with her mouth, fighting so hard to get the words out. After a few moments, she spoke softly.
“I’m not there yet, but maybe one day I will be, and when that happens, I’ll let you know.”
She didn’t give him a chance to say another word. She walked out of the Founder’s Cabin and into Dallas’s warm truck, where the maelstrom of tears and emotions cracked her soul wide open.
Dallas held her until there were no tears left, then quietly buckled her in. He turned the truck around, and they left the Founder’s Cabin. She didn’t care where they were headed.
As long as she was with him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
He brewed her a cup of tea. Then he offered to make her a sandwich, but she wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t interested in the TV.
It was killing him, watching Vivian like this.
“Hey,” Dallas said, sitting on the edge of the sofa. They’d been at his place for nearly an hour, and she hadn’t said a word. He was fine giving her space, but this silent thing was starting to worry him.
Vivian looked up at him and tried to smile before whispering, “Hey, yourself.”
“What’s going on inside that head of yours?”
For a couple of seconds, she said nothing, then shrugged and shook her head. “I didn’t forgive him. I couldn’t. Not yet.” A long, shuddering breath escaped. “Does that make me a bad person? Does that mean I’ll never be able to move on?”
“There’s no playbook, Viv. There’s only you and him and your situation. You’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t know if I’m strong enough.” She barely whispered her words, and he had to bend lower to hear them. “Don’t know if I have enough of the good stuff inside me. Enough to make all that darkness fade away.”
“Babe,” he said, moving onto the sofa so that their bodies touched. “You’re the strongest woman I know.”
She made a scoffing sound. “I’m a lot of things, but strong isn’t at the top of that list.”
“No?” He kept his tone gentle, but inside, he raged against a world that would make a woman like Vivian Bridgestone doubt herself. He slid his fingers under her chin so she could look nowhere but at him.