Page 129 of Truck Me
Taking a deep breath, I step up onto his front porch and knock on his door. I hear Bullet first. She lets out a loud bark, and then rushes to the door, scratching at it. When she starts whining, I can’t help but smile.
“Down girl,” Garret’s deep gravelly voice sounds through the closed door. It sends a shiver through my body.
When he opens the door, Bullet comes barreling out and runs circles around me as if she knew it was me on the other side. I chuckle and pet her behind her ear when she finally takes a seat next to me.
Garret’s dark brown eyes meet mine, and he sucks in a ragged breath. His hands twitch and he stuffs them in his pockets as if that’s the only way he’ll keep from touching me. He looks just as nervous as I feel.
“You’re home,” he whispers.
I nod. “Just got back a couple of hours ago. I really need to talk to you.”
He swallows, dragging my eyes to his throat. The way it bobs up and down with the action sends a tingling sensation straight to my core. He looks sad, yet sexy. Then again, Garret looks sexy without even trying.
Today he’s wearing a pair of faded jeans and a dark gray Metallica t-shirt. His tattooed arms are flexed. I’m sure more from nerves than from showing off. His hair is messy and sticking up on the ends like he was just pulling on it. His beard is a little longer than the last time I saw him.
“Of course. Come in.” He steps aside and waits for me to enter. I hesitate for a moment, but only because I’m nervous, not because I don’t want to come on.
“Thanks.” I step past him, my shoulder brushing across his chest. This slight touch has my body begging for more. I’ve missed him so much and it almost hurts to be this close to him without touching him.
He shuts the door and leans against it while I lean against the edge of his table. We stare at each other for a moment as if neither of us knows where to begin.
He takes a step toward me and breaks the silence first. “Charlotte, I didn’t me—”
“Not yet.” I cut him off. I spin around and shove my hands into my hair, attempting to calm my pounding heart.
I went over the things I want to ask him again and again on the drive home. I rehearsed this shit, and now I can’t remember a single thing I wanted to say.
When I turn back to him, his hands are stuffed in his pockets again and his head is down. He looks so heartbroken that it makes me want to rush to him and hold him. Tell him everything will be okay.
“I need to ask you a few things,” I say quickly before I lose my nerve.
He looks up and nods.
Straightening my back and squaring my shoulders, I start. “Carol kept a journal. Not sure if you know that.”
“Rayne told me that’s how she found out about me.”
“Did she tell you anything else my sister wrote about?”
He shakes his head.
“Well, she was pretty detailed about her relationship with you. And honest about her feelings. I know what she was thinking back then. Now I need your side of it.”
He places his hand over his mouth and rubs his fingers around it and down his jaw. Then he takes a seat in the chair in the corner and rests his elbows on his knees. With his head down, he says, “I didn’t love her. She didn’t love me either. It wasn’t like that. Honestly, I think we were both bored. I know that sounds awful, but it’s the truth. There were other men. She was honest with me about that, but I don’t know who. We discussed having a paternity test done after the baby was born. That didn’t happen for obvious reasons.”
“Why didn’t you push for it? Say something?”
His tormented gaze lifts to mine. “You have to understand something about me. I’ve lived most of my life blaming myself for my mother’s death. My dad fell apart when she died. The lives of every member of my family were forever altered after that. All my brothers suffered because of the impact Mom dying had on our dad. Dad could never look at me when I was growing up. He treated me differently. I thought he blamed me for her death. I’ve lived with that guilt hanging over me for far longer than I should have.”
“Garret,” I whisper. My heart breaks a little more for him. “You weren’t responsible for that. You were just an innocent baby.”
“I know that now. But as a little boy, it was hard to process that. My mom chose to die so I could live. My dad became a shell of a man without her. I felt responsible.”
“So when Carol died …”
He nods. “I blamed myself. I was a stupid, broken twenty-two-year-old kid. When I heard Carol died in childbirth, I went off the deep end. Retreated further into myself than I’d ever done before. I stopped going to family dinners. I ignored my brothers’ requests to hang out. Right or wrong, I carried her death on my shoulders. It was all the confirmation I needed that Rayne was mine. I’d already killed my mom, and now I killed Carol too.”
“Garret.” His name comes out on a strangled sob.