Page 62 of Fight

Eighteen

P

“What happened?” he asked later.

I was again curled in his arms, needing the solace I always found there even more than before.

Learning what I had, being with him as I had, had left me feeling raw, exposed.

Weak.

I hated that feeling most of the time, but it was different here with him. I loved him, trusted him, which was far more dangerous than love, even with those parts of myself that I had yet to accept. I’d trust him with this too.

“I saw my mother,” I whispered.

“And she made you cry?”

I sighed, not sure where to start, but comforted by his arms around me, his hands on my body. I couldn’t say I hated talking about this because I never had, not with anyone. Yet something else I would share with Ioan.

“It was always just the two of us,” I said. “Her and me.”

“Your father?”

“Who the fuck knows? Not even her, I’d bet.”

I’d asked her about my father once or twice and gotten one of my mother’s stammering, stalling responses that didn’t tell me anything. Eventually, I’d stopped asking, and soon after, stopped caring to know.

He said nothing, and I exhaled deeply and shifted in his hold.

“That’s super bitchy. She’s a good person. She just has poor judgment,” I said.

“Sounds like you’re apologizing for her,” he said.

“So what if I am?” I whispered, my voice taking an edge.

“Finish the story, jefe.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I snapped. Always standing my ground, pushing people away when they got too close. That was how I survived. Ioan had gotten closer than anyone else ever, something I accepted but hadn’t quite figured out how to manage. Lashing out, pushing was instinct.

Ioan didn’t notice or didn’t care. He laughed low, his breath warm against my ear, his hands still moving in soothing circles, and I realized that I sounded ridiculous, so I continued on.

“She’s a really great woman and she always has been. She just…she makes bad choices. It started in silly, harmless ways. She’d spend all of her paycheck on a new TV. Or use the last of the grocery money on a steak dinner at the fanciest restaurant in town. Use the rent money for a spur-of-the-moment trip to Florida. All harmless, like I said.”

I looked at Ioan, could tell from his expression that he didn’t agree, but he didn’t voice that. Instead he said, “But then…?”

“How do you know there’s a ‘but then’?” I asked.

“Let me see,” he said. “When I met you, you were in the hands of a vicious Ukrainian mobster, so call it a hunch. And stop stalling.”

“So, yeah, my mom always had pretty bad judgment, and that extended to men. You could blindfold her and put her in a room with a thousand saints. No matter what, she’d find the scumbag. It’s her messed-up version of a superpower,” I said.

Ioan laughed lightly but didn’t speak, so I continued. “I can’t tell you how many daddies I had and how each and every one of them, save one or two outliers, were complete and total assholes.”

“How so?” he asked, and I couldn’t miss the implication in his voice.

“Not like that. Well, there was one, but Ma saw the way he was looking at me and she got rid of him really quick. See, she isn’t an awful person. But, yeah, when I was around eleven, maybe twelve, she hooked up with this real smooth guy. Even preteen me could see right through his crap, but Ma had stars in her eyes. He treated her really good, got us a little house and car, bought me toys. Dolls and shit like that even though I was way too old for that crap and had no interest in it.”

“And then?”

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