Page 6 of Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 29)

“You taught me to fight, Dad, what else was it for except to protect myself?”

“You punched your grandmother in the face?”

I yelled, “She was burning my arm, telling me that I’d burn like that all over my body forever if I didn’t give up my evil ways. I protected myself, used what you taught me and saved myself from a third-degree burn or worse.”

“I can’t believe this happened the way you’re telling it, Anita.”

“You always believed her.” I wasn’t yelling now, I wasn’t even angry, I was tired, so tired.

“You both had marks on you, I might have believed you.”

“Might, might?” The anger was back, the anger I’d always believed had been from my mother’s death, but therapy had helped me pull memories from childhood that explained my rage. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten what happened, more like my family repeated their version so often that I just accepted it. My family loved me, even my grandmother loved me, they wouldn’t hurt me like that on purpose, right? Right? Wrong, so fucking wrong.

“Anita, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what, Dad?” My voice was calm, too calm. It wasn’t the right reaction to this much emotion; I knew now that it was both a protective mechanism and a destructive one. Protective because it helped me get through the moment, but destructive because the stuffed emotions that I should have been experiencing just got buried and resurfaced all over my life for years.

“I’m sorry you were hurt. I’m sorry you felt you had to strike your grandmother.”

“She plays the martyr to perfection, Dad, she always did.”

“Anita, please.”

“Please what, Dad?”

“I love you both.”

“If you say so, Dad.”

“I love you, Anita.”

“I love you, too, Dad. Thanks for teaching me how to box, because she never laid a hand on me after that. I guess I really did have a mean right hook, just like you said.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Then let’s hang up, because I don’t know what to say either.”

“I love you,” he said.

“Yeah, I love you, too, Dad.” My voice was still even and unemotional, the way you’d sayI love youif you didn’t mean it at all, but that wasn’t it. I did love my dad, I just wished like hell I didn’t, because if I didn’t then I could have told him to go to hell and never darken my door again. If I didn’t love my family, I could have been done with them and just been happy in the life I’d built, but I did love them and there is always that fragile part of you, that inner-child part, that wants your family to love you, to protect you even if they didn’t. Part of us wants them to say sorry and make it up to us. We want our Hallmark movie moment that almost never really happens outside of the movies. I was a U.S. Marshal with the highest number of executions in the service, I knew better than to hope like that, but hope is a lying bitch that strings you along with just enough promise that you don’t want to give up. Damn it, damn it!

Peter stood beside me not saying anything; he started to try and hug me, which would have been a mistake, but then he held out his hand to me. I didn’t take it, but he just left it there open and waiting if I wanted to hold on to something. I didn’t need to hold on to anything or anyone, and the moment I thought it I realized why I had isolated myself for so long: because that was safer. If I didn’t depend on anyone but myself, then nobody got close enough to hurt meagain. I’d lived like that, protected myself like that, and been miserable and terribly alone.

Peter’s hand was just there if I wanted to take it, no demands, no force, no presumption. He was pretty damned smart for twenty. I hadn’t been that smart at twenty. Hell, I wasn’t sure I was that smart now. I took his hand, and he slowly wrapped his fingers around mine, but he didn’t try for more, he waited for me. My chest hurt; brokenhearted in books and movies is reserved for romantic love, but all kinds of love can break your heart. My eyes burned, my throat was tight like I was choking; what the hell was wrong with me?

“It’s okay, Anita,” he said, voice low and soft the way you talk jumpers off ledges, “whatever you’re feeling is okay.”

I tried to sayI’m all right, or something else sensible, but what came out was a sob and what came next was another. I collapsed against Peter, and he caught me the way I’d caught him once when he was small and bad things had happened. I cried into his chest like a freaking child because bad things had happened, and no one had protected me. I had saved myself; I was still saving myself and everyone else, but in that moment I let Peter save a little piece of me, a piece that was still fourteen and hadn’t realized that my grandmother hated me more than she loved me, and that I hated her right back.

3

THE CRYING HADalmost stopped. I was just standing there with my arms around Peter’s waist while he held me in place, and I leaned against him. I felt light and airy, and quiet inside like the world after a storm wiped it clean. It didn’t feel much like me.

Peter hugged me carefully and said, “I’ve always wanted to hold you in my arms, but this wasn’t how I pictured it.”

It made me laugh, just a little. “Didn’t meet expectations, huh?” I said, sighing with my head still resting on his chest.

“In some ways, no.” He stroked his hand down the back of my hair.

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