Page 12 of Falkner
“Like me?You don’t even know what sort of man I am.You just assumed you did.”She said she knew what she knew.“Take the car or not, but we’re leaving it here so that you can get around tomorrow.It’ll be better for you to have a car anyway after Doone and I get married, she’ll have less time to—”
“Get married?That’s funny.”She looked at her daughter, still holding out the keys.“You can’t marry, Doone.I won’t have it.I deserve you to be right here for me.Not right here, I don’t want to ever live with you again, but right where I deserve you to be.”
“You say that a lot, Mom.You deserve.What about what I want?Doesn’t that count in your little mind that I might need more than you?”She told her she didn’t know what she was talking about.“Yes, you do.You know just what I’m talking about.Why do you deserve something over my needs?I thought that parents wanted the best for their children, not the other way around.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”She was still holding out the keys while that man stood there holding onto Doone.“What’s really going on here?There is no way that the two of you know that much about each other that you want to marry him.”
“Well, I deserve this then.Does that help your mind in computing my needs?I have to work tomorrow and I don’t have any more time to use for it.You either drive yourself or you don’t go at all.It’s all on you as of right now.I’m leaving you my car so that you can get back and forth, and I’m going to be driving Falkner’s so that I can get back and forth.That’s what you deserve, if that’s something that makes you feel better.”She didn’t deserve this at all and told her so.“I have figured out that I don’t care what you think you might deserve or not.This is the way it’s going to be from now on.”
After pulling her hand forward and putting the keys in her hand, she turned on her heel and went to the other car again.Falken, or whatever his name was, just stood there.Looking at him, she could see that he was good-looking, a big man, too, but it mattered little to her since he was the cause of Doone acting out.
“This is all your fault.”He just grinned at her, and she found she wanted to punch him in the mouth.“She’ll come begging to help me before you can get your claws into her deeper.”
“I don’t have claws but paws, and she likes them just fine.”She had no idea what that meant, but didn’t say anything to him.It would be just like him to try to confuse her when all she wanted was what she deserved.“You’ve been manipulating and bullying her throughout her entire life.Well, I’m going to tell you right now that I’m going to pamper her and show her what it’s like to have someone really love her instead of using it as a weapon.”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”He just grinned again, and she drew back her fist to knock some sense into him.
“You let that swing and I’ll kill you so fast that your head will be wondering where its body is.”When he bowed to her, she put her fist down.She was no less pissed off, but there wasn’t any sense in getting herself killed over a man.Meggie had dealt with his kind before.Arrogant and a know-it-all.She’d get what she deserved in the end, and that would be what she wanted.“You do say that a greatdeal.You deserve.I wonder if you have ever gotten what you actually deserve.I believe you will start getting it now.”
With that, he turned and got into the newer car with her daughter.She had a feeling that what he thought she deserved over what he thought it meant were two different things entirely.It made the hair on the back of her neck and arms stand at attention.Going back into the house, she tossed the keys in the direction of her table and sat down.This wasn’t working out the way that she thought it should have.
~*~
“What’s she thinking?”Falkner looked over at Doone as he drove back home.“I saw you touch her.You have a connection or whatever it’s called to her now, don’t you?If so, what kind of terrible things is she thinking now?”
“She’s thinking about you and me and how she’s going to be telling me lies about you so that I don’t want to marry you.”He didn’t glance at Doone, keeping his eyes on the road.“She seems to think that I’ve brainwashed you in some way.That it’s all my fault that you’re acting the way that you are.And if she can, she’s going to separate the two of us so that she gets what she deserves.She thinks she deserves a great deal more of you than just your time taking her to the doctors and grocery store.Did you know that?”
“I’m beginning to see a lot of things that I didn’t before.”He was sure that she was.It had only taken her getting upset about not being able to take her mom to the grocery store in the morning for her to realize that she was forever demanding her time over anything else that might be going on.“She said she deserved the house I got her in, too.I could have easily lived with her there; I would have paid the rent on the house, but she wouldn’t have it.And when I moved in with her for those two weeks…I know that she offered me her bed, but I had no idea how much she hated me being there.There’s something else going on with her that I don’t understand.Did you get anything from her?”
“Just that she has a list of things that she’s going to have you get for her.Like a bigger television.The family down the street tossed out a box that was a fifty-two incher, and she felt like you would get her one even if she had to bully you into getting it.”Doone looked out the window, and his heart hurt for her pain.“I’m sorry that things are going wrong for you and your mother.”
“I am as well, but I think this has been going on a lot longer than I realized.Did I tell you that I had to hire a vampire to give her blood so that she’d not have cancer anymore?It took me a year to pay her off by using nearly half my paychecks each week I got paid.Her cancer wasn’t that bad.Had she been operated on, they said she had a ninety percent recovery rate, but she wouldn’t have it.I had to do something.She deserved to live, she told me.”Shaking her head, he reached for her hand and took it into his.“I’m beginning to see all sorts of things that she bullied me into for her to get what she deserved.I wonder now if dad hadn’t left because she’d been doing the same thing to him.”
“You should contact him.”She said that she thought that she would.“Did he ever keep in contact with you?”
“He tried, but my mom told me that he abandoned her right after she told him that she had cancer, and I couldn’t stand to be around him for doing that.”Shaking her head, she looked at him.“I can’t believe how much of this is coming out now.You must think that I’m really stupid for letting her get by with this for so long.”
“I could never think that you’re anything but brilliant.And since she’s been doing it your whole life, you didn’t know any better until it was pointed out to you.I’m just sorry that I didn’t see it before now.”She told him it’s only been about two weeks, and he was allowed that.“Thanks.But I hate seeing you hurting like you are.And she did hurt you a great deal, didn’t she?”
“Yes, and she will again before this is over.”She pulled out her cell phone.“But I’m going to start fighting back.I’m going to call my dad and find out why he really left us when he did.For all I know, he left because of something that Mom said to him.Or that he really did leave because he didn’t want to deal with her and her cancer.”
While she called her dad, he thought of the other things that he’d found in Meggie’s mind.Howshe had known how much it was going to cost her daughter to get her healed and thought, yet again, that she deserved it.It amazed him the number of things that she thought that she should have, and damn the consequences of what it would cost her daughter.Both mentally and financially.
He was going to take care that Meggie didn’t hurt her daughter again.He was going to protect her from her mother, even if he had to expose her more to the things that she’d been doing to Doone for all her life.And there was a long list of things that she’d been doing since Doone had been a little girl, too.
While Doone spoke to her dad, he drove to the local pizza shop and picked up their dinner.It was the cook’s night off, and all they wanted was a pizza and a couple of bottles of soda.After getting it and bringing it out to the car, he noticed that Doone was no longer on the phone.When he asked her if things were all right, she gave him a watery smile and said that they were now.He could only imagine what that meant to her.
“My dad said that there is just too much to unload about mom and that he’d like to meet me in town.I told him that you’d come with me.Is that all right?”He said it would be his pleasure to accompany her to a meal with her dad.“Good.I want you there as support.I don’t know if it’s the mate thing or what, but I’m becoming aware of the fact that you calm me in ways that I’d never thought of before.”This time, when he curled his fingers around hers, he kissed the back of her hand.“Thank you for that.”
“My pleasure.And yes, it’s the mate thing.I’m beginning to think this mate thing is a lot more beneficial than I thought it would be, like the calming thing.That’s the best part of it.Then knowing that you need me around as much as I do you makes me feel like I could go to the top of the building and beat my chest.”They both laughed just as he hoped she would.“I’ve wanted to say this to you before, but I love you, Doone.I think I have since I first met you.”
“You don’t have to say that to me.I already trust you to keep me safe.”He told her that it was true that he loved her with all his being.“I like you a great deal as well.I used to know what I thought love was, but now I’m not so sure.I can’t even remember the last time she ever said that to me back.So I stopped saying it to her a long time ago, too.She’s never loved me, I don’t think.I was just a means for her to get what she felt she deserved.”
That made her cry again, and he pulled her into his arms.The pizza was steaming up the windows, so he didn’t know who knocked on his car window until he rolled down the window.He was glad to see Cullen there.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt you guys.Are you all right, Doone?I will knock the shit out of Falkner if that’s what you want.”She said that it wasn’t him, thankfully, because he was sure that Cullen would do it, and invited him home for pizza.“I’m picking up my own dinner right now.How about I hitch a ride to your house and we eat together?Loren has been working late these last few nights, and I’ve missed having him around.”
Loren was a magical being whom Cullen met while he was out of the country.He’d been helping Waylon and Londyn out when they took kids in who needed a safe place to stay.He made sure that they had diapers and other things around so that they’d not feel so overwhelmed.Loren also made sure that none of the children, babies to almost adults, didn’t harm the Dixon family while they were around, too.It had only taken the one time that he’d put the protection around all the families.
