Burn (11 page)

Many times he’d
wondered if he would ever be able to put the mess with his parents behind him
for good. When he’d seen Tate that first night in the hospital hope had flared
inside of him, his light at the end of a very long and rocky tunnel. She was
what had been missing for him, what he’d been hoping to one day find again, but
it could’ve gone badly there, too. Luckily, it hadn’t. His plan to remind her
of what they’d once been to each other had worked, their connection still
strong if a little threadbare at first.

He’d been
through Hell to get to where he was now, and he deserved to be able to finally relax
and take a deep breath and get what
he
wanted instead of doing what his family needed. There were no regrets about the
way he’d handled things. Life was always going to toss out obstacles you had to
overcome. But having Tate’s love would feel like an absolution.

“It wasn’t
Dannie.” He rubbed her knee. “Think you’re ready to hear the rest?”

She nodded.

“Then its time I
filled in the blanks.”

****

Tate uncurled
herself from the knot she’d worked herself into and scooted closer to the edge
of the couch, reaching out to take one of Ryan’s hands in hers in a quiet show
of support.

He drew a deep
breath,
then
started to talk.

“About a month
before I left Atlanta, Dannie called me one night crying. She said her best
friend, Melanie, had been staying over a lot because her parents were having
some issues with their marriage. Melanie was fifteen at the time, one year
older than Dannie, but somehow in the same grade.

“So anyway one
of the times Melanie’s staying over, Dannie wakes up during the night, and
Melanie is not in bed. She goes looking for her, finds her in the kitchen with
my dad. Dannie said that he … he was kissing Melanie on the mouth, and he had
his hand under her shirt.” Ryan cleared his throat, staring down at their
clasped hands. “Dannie bolts from the kitchen, totally freaked out by what
she’d
seen. Melanie comes upstairs, says it’s no big deal,
and to please not tell anyone. The next day Dad pulls her aside, tells her he
knows it was inappropriate, but that it had only happened the one time—just a
kiss and a grope, nothing more. He begs her not to tell Mom because it will
only upset her, and he promises it won’t happen again. She called me wondering
what to do. She’s thinking if she squeals on Dad, my parents’ marriage will
crumble, and Melanie will be mortified and hate her, too.”

 
“What did you tell her to do?”

“I told her she
needed to tell Mom, no matter what Dad said, and that Melanie should not stay
over anymore.”

“I guess she
didn’t take your advice.”

“She waited too
long to decide. By the time she found the courage to say something, it was too
late. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have left it up to her to handle. I should’ve
called Mom myself the very next day and said ‘Look, something is going on with
Dad and Dannie’s friend, and you need to address it.’ But I didn’t. I left it
up to Dannie, a fourteen year-old kid, and that was stupid and wrong. I guess I
thought everyone would just deny it, based on what Dannie had told me. And I’m
sure part of me wanted to believe that my dad, this man I’d looked up to for so
many years, was incapable of doing something so horrible.”

“How did he get
caught?”

“Melanie’s
parents figured out something was
off with their daughter,
and when they questioned her, she caved and told them everything. Dad was
arrested and charged with sexual assault on a minor under the age of sixteen.

“My dad held a fairly
high-ranking position in one of Birmingham’s bigger corporations, so of course
he was immediately fired from his job. The company couldn’t afford to have
their name attached to a scandal, which is understandable. Meanwhile my mother
teetered on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The legal fees were astronomical.
They’re blowing through their savings, and she’s being shunned by everyone
she’s ever known. Didn’t matter that she knew nothing about what was going on. To
outsiders, she’s just as culpable as my father is. Even my paternal
grandparents refused financial help. My maternal grandparents are both dead, so
that left no one who could help her and Dannie survive the clusterfuck Dad
created.”

“Except you,”
Tate said simply.

“Well, at that
point I was fighting my conscience. Not about what Dad did—that was wrong, no
question. He deserved to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. What I
struggled with was accepting that the responsibility to get them out of the
mess fell solely on my shoulders. Part of me recognized the inevitable, but the
rest kept praying for a miracle. My classes were paid up through the end of the
semester. I had a little money in savings. After that I would have to apply for
scholarships and student loans to finish paying for school, but okay, it was
doable.

“Then late one
evening I was in the living room studying for a test. You had gone to bed, and
Dannie calls me again, hysterical. Mom swallowed a bottle of pills, and she’s been
rushed to the hospital.
 
My fourteen
year-old
sister
is a hundred and fifty miles away from
me, alone and terrified and…” Ryan blinked away the sheen in his eyes while
Tate squeezed his hand. “It felt as if the floor dropped out from beneath my
feet. Suddenly I was out of options.”

He lifted her
hand to his mouth, pressing his lips to her knuckles. “I stood beside the bed
watching you sleep while I ran through every scenario I could think of. None of
them worked, so I left.”

“Why didn’t you
wake me?”

“I didn’t know
what to say. I was furious and embarrassed over what my dad had done. And then on
top of that my mom is cracking up. My family was falling apart, and I didn’t
know how to fix it.”

“We could’ve at
least talked about it, tried to figure something out together.”

“That’s just it,
honey. My life had been turned upside down. There were no choices left for me, but
you
had them.
A
bright future.
You worked so hard to get into medical school, and I
wasn’t about to fuck that up. And it would have in
some way,
and I couldn’t do that to you. I knew my leaving was
going to hurt both of us badly, but at least it was a clean break. It left you
with no distractions.”

Tate gave his
hand a tug, and he slid onto the couch, wrapping his arms around her. “I
understand why you did it now,” she whispered, her throat swollen with emotion.

“I don’t think
you’ll ever know how hard it was for me to walk out of your life, Tate. I
picked up the phone a dozen times that night on the drive back to Birmingham,
but I just kept reminding myself it was for the best.
That
you deserved better.
You’d be confused when you woke up, then later angry,
probably hate me for it, and then more determined than ever to succeed.”

She laughed
softly. “You were right about most of that, but I never hated you.”

“I hated myself
enough for the both of us. Trust me when I say there were a few self-pitying
years where you would
not
have wanted
to be anywhere
near
me. I drank too much, despised the
world, even got in a fistfight or two before clawing my way through the
bitterness, determined to live for myself again one day.”

“What happened
with your family?”

He sighed
against her hair. “The Cliffs Notes version is Dad went to prison, Mom
recovered, and she and Dannie both received counseling, and they pretty much
lost everything they owned. I sold my car for something cheaper, rented a
very
modest three-bedroom apartment,
worked two jobs to pay the bills, and took care of Mom and Dannie.

“One of those
jobs was in a restaurant. I worked my way from wait staff to the kitchen and
discovered along the way I was a damn good cook, and it was something I
genuinely enjoyed. I managed to snag a job as a sous chef at one of the
trendier restaurants in town. Then last year Kevin came in for dinner and my
boss just happened to be gone that night. I was the lucky bastard who got to
meet him. Over a bottle of wine, we talked food and the future. When he
mentioned he was planning to open a restaurant in Atlanta, I told him I was
dying to get back here. Four months ago, I get a call from him, and the timing
was right for me to finally make the move. Dannie is finishing her last
semester of college and doing fine on her own, and Mom is mentally healthy
again. She moved to Mobile to be closer to her sister.”

“What
about the girl—Melanie?”

“Last we heard
she was attending Auburn University.”

“And
your dad?”

“He and Mom
divorced about a year after he went to prison. I haven’t spoken to him in over
three years, and even when we did talk, it was difficult. He writes to Dannie
once in a while, but I don’t have anything to say to him.”

“I’m sure he
regrets what he did, Ryan. It ended up costing him everything.”

“Eventually
we’ll find our way to forgiveness, but I’m still not ready yet.”

 
Tate sat back, toying with the buttons on the
front of his wrinkled oxford. “I hope you can forgive me for being so vile to
you when you first showed up in my ER.”

He cupped her
face in his hands and kissed her, taking his time, reassuring her with his
mouth that all was forgiven. When he broke the kiss, she chased him for
another. Her fingers worked at the buttons on his shirt, freeing them one by
one until he was forced to turn her loose so she could shove the material off
his shoulders. Ryan shrugged out of the sleeves,
then
reached for the hem of her t-shirt.
Both of them naked now
from the waist up, he pushed her back on the couch, blanketing her body with
his.
Tate sighed, making room for him between her legs.

The rough
stubble on his jaw felt delicious on her skin as he kissed her throat, her collarbone,
making his way slowly down her chest toward her breast. She
huffed
her disappointment when he lifted his head, bracing himself on his forearms.
She’d never seen his eyes look so warm and blue, like ocean water in the
tropics.

“I love you,
Tate. I never stopped. It was the hope of finding you again that kept me going
through the worst parts of the past eight years.”

She bit her
bottom lip to quell its need to tremble. “I love you, too. Maybe … deep down
inside I knew we weren’t really finished.”

Ryan smiled,
then
kissed the corner of her mouth. “We’ll never be
finished. I want to grow old and wrinkled with your stubborn ass.”

“Will you still
be making me chocolate chip muffins when we’re eighty?”

“Baby, I’ll even
feed them to you by hand.”

The End

www.authorjennylyn.com

If you enjoyed this book, you may also
like:

Board
Approved by Jessica Jayne

Propositioning
Her Brother’s Best Friend by Sam Crescent

Bedroom
Bully by
Avril
Ashton

Evernight
Publishing

www.evernightpublishing.com