Page 32 of Tru Blue
He was breathing hard, like everything he had rode on those words. What was it like for him, living with that on his shoulders, made worse by the complete and total loss of his mother’s love? How many times had he been forced to explain his past? Voluntary manslaughter. Six years in prison.
Prison. The word echoed in her mind.
“Gemma, I swear to you, I’ve never used drugs a day in my life, and—”
She held up her hand, unable to listen to more. Not now. It was too painful after feeling so much so fast. Too scary to think his past had actually happened to him. To anyone. Too overwhelming to think he’d witnessed and been through all that he had. She needed space, time. Air.
She needed to breathe.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she pushed past him and made her escape.
TRUMAN STOOD ON the deck long after he heard Gemma drive away. He’d spent six long years honing his ability to turn off his emotions, and tonight, as pain coursed through his veins and anger gnawed at his gut for all the parts of his life he hadn’t chosen—and the parts he had—he realized he’d been repressing his emotions for a hell of a lot longer than that.
When his mother had irreparably screwed him over, he’d felt like she’d stabbed him in the chest. When he’d found out Quincy was using, that knife had jammed in deeper. When he’d tried to help Quincy and his brother had turned him away with hatred in his eyes, it was like he’d yanked on the knife, slicing him open from naval to sternum. And when he’d found out he had two siblings who had been living a life no child should ever have to, he felt like someone had grabbed each side of that gaping wound and torn it open, allowing his guts to pour out.
Gemma walking away should feel like a pinprick. He hadn’t known her long enough to validate the way she sucked the air out of his lungs.
His next move took no thought. He had to move on, to push past the fucking self-loathing for the choices he’d made. Only he didn’t think he’d made the wrong decisions, because he would do it all over again to protect Quincy. But this time he’d be smart enough to turn his mother in to the police and get Quincy into a stable home, instead of leaving him there without anyone to protect him from his mother’s dirty habits. She’d always left Quincy alone. She’d left Quincy to him. And then she’d put him in jail.
At the threshold to his bedroom, he crammed all those awful memories aside, forcing himself to leave them outside. He couldn’t allow any of those noxious emotions to touch the kids. Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply, using all the mental techniques Bear had taught him to clear his mind. The techniques that had carried him through his adult life. Only then did he enter the bedroom and turn on the radio very softly, making sure he could hear it through the monitor. Bear had given him the long-distance video monitoring system as a gift when he’d come by earlier. He’d also watched the kids so Truman could shower before seeing Gemma. Bear was as taken with the babies as Truman was. When Truman had gone to jail, he had offered to try to fight for custody of Quincy, but Bear’s past wasn’t exactly clean, and Truman worried that the truth would come out. He wasn’t willing to chance his brother being tried as an adult, and he wasn’t about to implicate Bear in the crime by telling him the truth about what had happened.
He brushed a kiss to Kennedy’s forehead. “Love you, princess.” Leaning into the crib, he touched his lips to Lincoln’s forehead and was relieved to feel his fever had relented. “Love you, buddy.”
His heart swelled within his chest. He didn’t know if he’d ever see Gemma again, but he knew there was no way in hell he’d ever look at these babies again and not think of her.
With the monitor in hand, he locked the front door, turned on the porch light, and headed out back. He carried the metal box from the deck and made his way down the steps and through the wooden gate to the junkyard. The weight of his painting supplies was familiar and unsettling. He stopped inside the gate, checked the video reception on the monitor, and turned up the volume. Hearing the radio loud and clear, he made his way to one of the cars he hadn’t yet released his demons on, set up the monitor, and unpacked his supplies.
