Page 68 of His Own Heaven

“My mother is… unwell. She’s bipolar, and when she was in a manic period she… drank. A lot.”

Toby stroked Lucy’s hair, breathed in her floral scent. “Is that why you don’t drink?”

She nodded, rubbed her cheek against his chest. “Yes. It’s also why I don’t own any bric-a-brac. Or as I used to call it, ammunition.”

“Pardon?”

“She used to throw things at me when she was in a foul mood.”

Clenching his jaw against the memories of his own bad mother, Toby held Lucy tighter, as if the cage of his arms could protect her from her past. “I’m sorry, baby.”

“Don’t be,” she said, her voice no longer soft, but clear and strident. “Everything she did just made me more determined to succeed. That wasn’t her intent, and it was a hard lesson to learn, but when you spend your whole childhood being told you’re unwanted, that you’re to blame for everything bad that’s happening to you, you can either sit there and take it, or you can fight back.”

“And you fought back?”

“Not at first.” She sighed deeply. “When I was younger and didn’t know any better, I sat there and took it. I feared her. Feared her temper and her mood swings. I took to hiding from her, would even walk home from school as slowly as possible just to delay the inevitable. I looked forward to finding her passed out on the couch. Days when she simply ignored me were bliss. Then one day I noticed something.”

Toby tilted his head, curious as he stared down at Lucy, as he watched her eyes flicker with memories. “What?”

“Mum never went off at me if Michael was home. So I started finding excuses to hang out with him as much as possible. And he let me. But eventually he told me he wouldn’t always be there to protect me, that I had to learn to deal with her on my own. So I did.” She huffed out a laugh. “In my own way.”

As he listened and digested everything Lucy was saying, Toby rubbed his hand in a circular motion against her back, the action helping to soothe him as much as it did her. He loathed Lucy’s mother on principle alone, and instinctively knew if he ever met the woman he wouldn’t hesitate to share his feelings with her. He felt close to Lucy, enjoyed the feeling of intimacy that sat so comfortably between them as she shared her past with him.

Was it because they both had shitty mothers? Was he simply feeling protective? Or did it run deeper than that, something more infinite?

All he knew was he wanted to curl himself around her, hold her, keep her safe, shield her from any more hurt. But he also wanted to know why he felt that way.

Desperately.

“Why was your mother so violent towards you?”

“Because I wasn’t born a boy,” she said matter-of-factly, looking up at him with a sad smile stretched thin across her tired face. “She had a vision of her perfect family and I ruined it.”

Toby harrumphed. “And what was this perfect vision?”

“A handsome husband and two strapping boys, all firemen, of course.”

He frowned, curious. “And how did you learn to deal with your mother’s… disappointment?”

A sly grin tugged at her lips. “By making it as obvious as possible that I wasn’t a boy, and by proving anything they could do, I could do better.”

Toby chuckled. “I bet you did.”

“I grew my hair long and took to wearing pink all the time, and I started working out with Michael and the guys at the fire station after school, and a weird thing happened.”

“Oh?”

“My confidence grew. And the more confident I became, the more I stood up to Mum. And the more I stood up to her, the less she picked on me. We fought more, though, and she still threw things at me when she was drunk, but one day I threw things back. I just got so angry with her and I smashed a coffee cup on the floor right in front of her and—”

“And what, baby?”

“I frightened her,” Lucy said, her voice dropping to a whisper, her gaze glazing over. “Truth be told, I think I frightened myself more. It was the first time I realised I was stronger than her, that I could hurt her more than she could hurt me.” She shook her head as if clearing away the fog clouding her eyes and pasted on a brittle smile. “I think she realised it too. At least, she stopped throwing things at me after that. And I stopped being afraid. I stopped a lot of things.”

“Such as?”

She offered him a small, sheepish smile. “I stopped censoring myself, both at school and home. And I stopped worrying about what everyone else thought of me. It was quite freeing actually.”

Silence settled over them again and Toby continued circling his hand on Lucy’s back. But there were questions left unanswered, and he had to know. He gave her another moment of quiet, then asked, “What happened with Michael? What did you mean when you said you killed your brother?”

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