Caroline

Chapter 21

Closing her eyes, Caroline thought of her mother learning the same truth. Her husband and her best friend... betrayal by cliche, complete with a child she had loved almost as her own.

With a sudden, startling thought, she began to pull away from Michael. "You're not...?"

He barked out a laugh. "No, Jelly. She's my half-sister, too."

She relaxed into him again. "And that's why you were upset?"

"They're our parents, the people we were supposed to look up to.  Mamma... " He stopped and twisted his mouth, trying to find the right words.  "At that age, to me, she was what every woman was supposed be:  loving, funny, beautiful, smart, ... loyal..."
He paused for a moment, then resumed.  "Daddy was always so strong and confident, a man, capable of anything he set out to do."

When he paused again, Caroline admitted, softly, "Your daddy always scared me a little bit."

Michael showed surprise at this..  "Why would you be scared of him?"

"He just seemed so... cold... all the time.  I don't think I can remember a single time he ever smiled at me."

"Daddy smiled," he said, defensively.

"Of course he did," she soothed.  "He just never seemed to have much reason to smile at me.  Oh, no.... did he know the whole time...?"

Michael shook his head.  "I don't think so.  You know, Hannah told me almost the same thing.  She never felt she meant as much to him as she did to Mamma."

She had known that, once upon a time.  "So you got mad because your mamma disappointed you?"

"They both did.  The woman who taught me about loyalty and honesty was running around with her best friend's husband, then brought the baby they made to her husband's home to raise like it was his.  The man who taught me about strength, about being a man, was being made a cuckold, and he had no idea.  When my respect for them left, my respect for anything else left with it."

After another silent pause, she said, "The last time I had a real conversation with Hannah was after you were arrested.  She was so scared for you."

He closed his eyes and leaned his head to rest against hers.  "I know.  Even after the shitty way I'd been treating her...  Because of my selfish immaturity, my whole family fell apart.  The truth of everything came out, of course.  Overnight, Mamma became the Whore of Babylon to anyone who knew who she was.  Daddy was... pissed.  He couldn't stand to look at any of us after that.  He left and never did come back.  He and Mamma did get a proper divorce, though."

"Oh, Mikey..."

He turned his head and kissed her temple.  "I like it a lot better the way you say it.  When Hannah calls me Mikey, she's getting ready to cut me a new one.  But could we keep it just between us?  I mean.... whatever 'us' is...."

She had to chuckle at that.  "Us is?  What would your Mamma say?"

"I hope she'd say, 'Hold on tight, son, just as long as she'll let you'."

"I still don't understand this," she whispered.  "You talk like you've been waiting for me all this time."

He rubbed his nose against the temple he'd just kissed.  "I haven't finished telling my story.  Did you know they wanted to try me as an adult?"

"For being young and stupid?"

"For being an accessory to murder.  Kyle was tried for murder, and he was found guilty.  The rest of us were tried as juveniles for lesser crimes.  All things considered  we were extremely lucky.  We served our time, and now we're out making our way, just like we were always supposed to."

"Thank goodness they reduced the charges, then."

"Actually, I thank a man named Terrence Duke... and your father."

"Daddy sent you Terrence?"

He nodded.  "At first, I didn't want anything to do with him.  I was angry with Mark; still saw him as the devil then.  But Terrence wore me down... got me to understand what I was doing to everyone else.  Then he worked that legalese magic he has, not just for me, but the other guys, too.  Kyle was the only one he couldn't help."

Caroline wondered if this action was meant to be part of the "reparations" Derek had referenced earlier.  Her father would have felt his guilt in this situation just as much as the other.  And again, he had taken pains to keep it all from her.

"What did you do once you got out?" she asked.

Her swept his arm around, indicating the room with its computers and gaming paraphernalia.   "Mark set me up.  I never would have managed this without him."

Baffled, she sat back to stare at him.  Granted, she had been learning things about her father that she hadn't known before, but this was different.  The Mark Davidson she knew would never set someone up to be a "hermit" and play games for the rest of his life.  "He bought you computer games?" she asked, incredulously.

Now he returned her dumbstruck look.  But then, that slow (and sexy, she now realized) smile appeared on his face.  "Jelly," he said, with a touch of mischief in his voice.  "What is it that you think I do?"

"I don't really know," she hemmed, feeling her blush taking her over.  "I didn't think it my business to just come out and ask.  But you do have a lot of games," she added, a bit defensively.

He let out a genuine, full laugh, then wrapped her up tightly in his arms.  "Most of what you see here is mine," he said.

"Well, I figured that."

"No," he said, still chuckling, "They are really mine.  I built them.  I designed them.  I made them."

There was no part of her now that wasn't blushing.  "Oh, God.  What you must be thinking of me right now."  Her voice sounded as small as she felt.

His voice was still full of humor.  "I'm more concerned about what you'd been thinking about me.  What in the world did you think I was doing to support my 'nasty habit'?"

"I didn't think about it.  It didn't matter.  You were making your way somehow."

"And what if I had been carrying on the way I did before?" he asked in a more somber tone.  "What if I had been stealing what I wanted, taking what wasn't mine and to hell with what it did to anyone else?"

She shook her head.  "I once knew an angry boy named Mikey.  It doesn't surprise me very much that he did those things."  She turned in his lap to face him, one leg on either side of his thighs.  "Now I know a strong, generous man named Michael."  She stroked his brow with her fingertips.  "He would never.  I know it"

He stared back into her eyes, searching for confirmation that she meant what she'd said.  She knew when he'd found it, as she was immediately tugged down into a scorching kiss.