Sucker Punched (37 page)

For the first time in almost two months, I feel like I’m finally whole.

Breathless, I pull back. “I missed you, too.”

He grins, touching his head to mine. “I can tell.”

Lacing our hands together, he leads me inside the restaurant. 

The hostess seats us at a booth and I slide in first, fully expecting Blake to sit across from me, but he surprises me by sliding in next to me. I watch him in curiosity as he takes the menus from the hostess, smiling politely at her.

I don’t feel quite so polite. She’s staring at him a little too much and her smile’s a little too flirty. I never considered myself a jealous person before Blake came along, but now I have an overwhelming urge to scratch her eyes out.

Blake turns to me and hands me a menu, effectively dismissing her.

I smile as I look it over, pretending not to notice him staring at me. “You make fun of couples who sit side-by-side like this.”

“I haven’t seen you in two months, Duchess. This is as much space as I can give you.” He leans over and kisses my cheek. “I’d ask you to sit on my lap if I thought you’d do it.”

My face burns as I bite my lip. I want to ask him where he’s been for the past month, but it’s really none of my business. None at all.

Ah, fuck it. “You got out of rehab a month ago. What have you been doing this whole time?”

He rests his elbows on the table and sighs, like he doesn’t want to answer the question. “Moving.”

“Moving? Like,
houses
?” I know I sound confused by the concept, but I’m not. I’m just confused why he would do such a thing.

He nods. “I sold my house and bought a new one in Upham’s Corner.”

“Why?”

Blake’s jaw flits under his skin. “I figured the old house would have. . .you know, bad memories for you. I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable or give you a reason not to come over.”

Wow. That’s. . .seriously considerate. “You didn’t have to do that.” They weren’t
all
bad memories. Some of them were really good.

For better or worse, that’s the house where we fell in love. I’m sorry to see it go.

“Declan bought it. Something about needing more space for the baby and blah, blah, blah. I stopped listening after he told me how much he’d pay for it.”

“So you’ve got new clothes and a new house. Anything else I should know about?” I’m mostly kidding, but a small part of me is worried about how much he’s changed. He didn’t have to do all that for me.

“Well you saw my car, right?”

“No.” I frown, thinking back to the parking lot. I didn’t see his Camaro anywhere—

And then it clicks. He’s talking about the Explorer. “You got a new car?”

“Figured the new and improved me should have new and improved stuff.”

“I thought the old you was pretty fucking great. I just wanted him sober.”

Blake frowns and huffs out a breath. “Look, I know how people like your parents must see me. I’m just a mechanic from Southie. I can’t afford to buy you a house in Back Bay or—”

I cut him off by pressing my lips to his, kissing him more than what’s probably appropriate for a lunch date. “I don’t care about any of that,” I say when I pull back.

He smiles. “I know. It’s part of why I love you so fucking much.”

The waiter chooses that moment to appear. After he takes our drink order and returns with two waters, we order our food and he disappears again.

Blake plays with the empty straw wrapper, his mood turning serious. “I have so many things I want to say that I don’t know where to start.”

I take a sip of my water. “I have all day.”

He balls up the paper in his hand, steadfastly avoiding my gaze. “I’m the reason my family fell apart.”

Frowning, I’m about to ask him what he means when he exhales a long breath and starts talking.

“When my dad went to rehab, my parents didn’t tell Declan and me. It wasn’t the first time he tried to get sober, and I guess they didn’t want us getting our hopes up. So my mom lied. She told us she kicked him out, but Declan and I knew that wasn’t true. He’d fucked up too many times and she stuck by him through everything. She loved him way more than he deserved and made it a point to tell us that he was sick, and when you love someone who’s sick, you stick by them through thick and thin. She’d tell us you don’t get to have the good times without the bad. That’s not how love works. So when she told us she kicked him out, we knew she was full of shit and it could only mean one thing. He left. And my mom—the fucking saint that she was—didn’t want us to hate him for it, so she made up this bullshit lie.”

He shakes his head, glaring at the empty bench across from us. “I was so mad when he left. I couldn’t believe he’d just bail like that, because for all his faults, he loved my mom just as much as her crazy ass loved him.” He pauses before saying, “Declan took it hard, but I think I took it harder. 

“I was thirteen when he left. Thirteen when I started drinking and sneaking out.” He chuckles wryly. “I was thirteen fucking years old when I lost my virginity to some drunk chick at a high school party.”

Holy shit. 

My eyes widen, but I quickly school my features. I don’t want him to think I’m judging him, because I’m not. If anything, I’m just realizing how fundamentally
different
our childhoods were.

“For two years, my mom knew I was sneaking out. She caught me coming home drunk more times than I could count, but she was a single mom working two jobs just to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. She was in way over her head and I didn’t help a goddamn bit.” He looks down at the crumpled paper between his fingers, his jaw tense and angry. “I have a lot of regrets in life, but that might be my biggest. I wish to God I could go back in time and tell myself to stop being such a little shit and quit giving her so much grief.” 

He flicks the paper across the table, sighing. “I snuck out and went to a party the night she died. The cops ended up raiding it and I got arrested for underage drinking. She was working that night at a twenty-four hour convenience store, so I called her work and told her what happened. She wasn’t even mad. Just. . .disappointed, which is so much fucking worse,” he says, shaking his head. “On the way to the police station, she got t-boned by a drunk driver. She died almost instantly.”

Shocked, my hand flies to my mouth. When my mind finally catches up, I know exactly where he’s going with this before he says it.

Blake turns to look at me, his face pinched in anguish. “It’s my fault she died. It’s my fault my dad lost his wife and fell off the wagon. It’s my fault my whole fucking family imploded.”

Tears spill down my cheeks as I shake my head vehemently. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t choose for that to happen. It was just a horrible, horrible accident.”

This explains so much. God, the guilt had to have eaten away at him for
years
.

“In rehab, we learned to face how our addiction affected our loved ones. This is how my drinking affected mine. It is what it is, and I can’t change it. The only thing I
can
change is my drinking. I can stop it from hurting anyone else. I can stop it from hurting you.” 

Blake reaches up and wipes away one of my tears with his thumb. I take his hand in mine, holding it tightly.

He swallows, his eyes flickering. “The last time I ever talked to my mom, she was disappointed in me. It stuck with me until it poisoned me. I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t worth loving. That I’d just be a huge disappointment to anyone who tried.”

“You’re not,” I say, getting choked up all over again.

He gives me a sad smile. “I know that now. But at the time. . .” He releases a pent up breath. “At the time I didn’t realize how broken I was. That night was a defining point in my life. It separated everything into before and after, and for the longest time I would’ve given anything to go back and change it so there
was
no after, only before. But in a weird way, something good came from her death. It brought me you.

“I never would’ve met you if I hadn’t snuck out and went to that party. I’d probably still be living in Philly and my family would probably still be intact, and even though I spent the last ten years hating and punishing myself for a stupid mistake I made when I was fifteen, I can’t bring myself to regret any of it because in the end, I got you. You’re worth everything I went through. You’re the light at the end of the tunnel, Duchess. You’re my heaven after a lifetime of hell.”

My tears are coming so hard I’m on the verge of ugly crying. Suddenly I wish we’d had this conversation in a more private place.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever let close enough to really see me. I was so sure you wouldn’t like what you saw that I pushed you away and sabotaged any chance of happiness I might’ve had, because deep down, I didn’t think I deserved it.”

Glancing down, he runs his thumb along my knuckles. “
I’m
the reason I drank, not you. I never should’ve put that on you. And I know I’ve still got a long road ahead of me, but I want you with me every step of the way.” The side of his mouth lifts into one of the most beautiful smiles I’ve ever seen. “I need you to give me directions when I inevitably get lost.”

Swiping at my tears, I laugh. “I’m horrible with directions, I hope you know that.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to get lost together.” He brings my hand to his mouth, kissing it.

I’m almost sold. I just need to make sure he knows what he’s getting into, because if we do this, it’s ride or die. 

No more breaks. No more being apart. 

We’re in it for life or we’re not doing it.

“If we do this, I want it all. Marriage, kids, the whole nine yards.” I bite my lip, afraid of what his answer might be. “You sure you’re up for that?”

Blake leans forward and kisses me, murmuring against my lips. “Duchess, I’ll take you to the bathroom right now and put a baby in you if that’s what you want.”

My solemn expression speaks for itself when I pull back. “What do
you
want?”

He cups my face, looking me dead in the eye. “I want you, and I want to be happy. I can’t have one without the other.”

Hope blooms in me, but I try not to let it spiral out of control. “I want to believe you. . .”

“But it’s going to take time, I know.” Blake tucks my hair behind my ear, grinning in a way that—I
swear
—makes my heart sigh. “It’s a good thing we’ve got the rest of our lives, then.”

“So,
Blake
.” Macy’s father says my name like I’m something he just scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

I do my best to let it roll off my back. A little attitude’s to be expected from the guy who got me out of jail, especially now that I’m dating his daughter. If I were in his position, I sure as shit wouldn’t be too thrilled to invite me over for dinner.

“Do you go to school with Macy?” he asks.

I take a sip of my iced tea and set it down. “No, sir. I wasn’t as lucky as Macy. I never got the opportunity to go to college.” Shit, I barely graduated high school, but I’m not about to broadcast that. Her parents probably think I’m as dumb as a box of rocks as it is. “I’m a mechanic.”

His eyes narrow on me. “How old are you?”

“Daddy,” Macy warns.

“It’s fine.” I smile tightly, trying to put her at ease. “I’m twenty-five, sir.”

Setting his fork down, he picks up his napkin and dabs his mouth. “He’s a little old for you, pumpkin. Don’t you think?”

Macy’s brother chokes on his drink. He covers his mouth with his fist while he coughs, but he’s not fooling anybody. We all know the little shit’s trying to hide his laughter.

Mrs. Dunham shoots her son the unequivocal “knock it off” look, and Macy. . .

Macy looks like she’s about to blow, and not in the way that’s fun for me.

She stabs her broccoli like she’s punishing it before smiling brightly. “No, Daddy. It’s not like I’m half his age.”

Damn. We should probably get him to a hospital stat, ’cause that was one sick burn.

Her dad’s mouth snaps shut as he flushes crimson. Apparently Macy’s blush is genetic. 

Huh.

I’d like to say the rest of dinner isn’t as awkward, but I’d be lying. The only thing worse than forced small talk is silence.
Deafening
silence. The forks clinking against the plates are the loudest thing in the room.

After dinner, Macy and I do the dishes. I rinse the soap off the square, white plate and hand it to Macy, who sits perched on the counter next to the sink. She dries it with the towel in her hand and stacks it on top of the others.

“That. . .could’ve been worse,” I say, holding out another plate.

Macy looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “The only way that could’ve been worse is if he took you out back and shot you.” She snatches it from me and wipes it down, sighing. “This night was a disaster.”

I turn the faucet off and dry my hands with the dishtowel on the other side of the sink. “No night I spend with you will ever be a disaster, pumpkin.”

Her mouth twists to the side, trying to keep from smiling. She fails spectacularly.