Page 60 of Until Hanna

“They are, especially them. Douglas kind of adopted me the minute I moved to London.” I tip my head to the side. “What did he say to you?”

“Just that he’d kill me if I hurt you.”

“I would say I’m surprised, but after what you witnessed at dinner, you know I’m not,” I mutter, and he laughs.

“Tell me about your mom and dad. You never talk about them.” With the way his muscles seem to bunch, I conclude it’s definitely a sore subject. He’s told me a lot about his sister, but we haven’t talked much about his parents besides the fact that his dad is a principal and his mom is a teacher.

“I’m not close with them.”

“Okay.” I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t, not for a long time. So long, I start to wonder if that’s all he’ll give me.

“My dad is a good guy, and my mom is a good woman, but their relationship while Miranda and I were growing up was toxic.”

“Toxic?”

“Dad was a perpetual cheater, and Mom was a perpetual forgiver. It was an ugly cycle that lasted at least until my sister graduated high school. It could still be going on today, but we just don’t know about it, because we don’t live in their house to see it firsthand.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It is,” he says softly, pulling my hand over to his thigh. “I lost respect for my dad growing up. I couldn’t understand how he could do that to his wife, how he could see her crying all the fucking time and not care—or not care enough to change. And I did not understand why my mom stuck around, or why she didn’t tell him to fuck off and leave his ass. If she didn’t depend on him financially, she could have made it on her own.”

“I don’t think it’s that easy,” I say quietly, and his fingers around mine spasm. “I mean, sure, that sounds great in theory, but the idea of leaving the safety of the relationship you’re in—even if it’s toxic—is sometimes more terrifying than sticking around for the same thing to happen again.”

“That’s fucked.”

“You’re right, it is. But it’s also true, and as a woman and a mom, she was probably scared of what might happen if she left your dad.”

“Better the devil you know.”

“Exactly,” I whisper. “Do you talk to them at all?”

“They email and call all the time. Our lack of a relationship isn’t because of a lack of effort on their part. I just don’t know how to get over what I saw and heard as a kid, or how to separate that from who they are as people now.”

“Parents, even great ones, have a tendency to mess us up.” I shrug. “I mean, I love my mom and dad, and we’re close—reallyclose. But my dad’s overprotectiveness was a lot for me to deal with, so instead of dealing with it, I moved an ocean away so I could stretch my wings.”

“Babe,” he says quietly, and I shrug.

“We all have our thing, right?”

“Right.”

“I don’t know how you’d go about changing your relationship with your dad, because the way he treated your mom was horrible, and I can understand why it would be hard to respect him enough to give him a second chance. But you should work on your relationship with your mom. She didn’t do anything wrong except love a man who didn’t deserve that from her.”

The sound he makes isn’t one of agreement or of denial, and it’s not my place to keep pushing. Even if we were to get married and have kids one day, I would never do more than encourage that relationship. Because it wasn’t me who went through what he did, so I don’t fully understand the deep-seated hurt he carries around. And it wouldn’t be fair of me to try to force a relationship on him that he either isn’t ready for or doesn’t want.

When we arrive back at the house, all the anxiousness and grief I felt before we left comes crashing back down on me making me feel sick. And when Walker opens the door, I hesitate to even step inside.

“Come on.” He takes my hand but doesn’t pull me along. He waits until I walk through the door myself. The lights above us are working, and it smells like paint—something I didn’t notice before. Then again, it was still light out when we left for Douglas’s house. “Pack a bag.”

“What?” I ask as he closes the door behind us when we step inside my apartment.

“I’m going to find us a room for the night. Tomorrow, we can start looking at apartments.”

“I thought you said I should wait to talk to Office Taylor?”

“I did, but that was before I watched you turn white as a ghost when we pulled up to the house. Pack a bag. Mizzy will be okay over night alone, and tomorrow, I’ll see if there is a short-term rental I can get us into until we find a place.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

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