Christina (Daughters #1) (5 page)

I stare in horror at his profile. How does he go from a mild case of making out to me getting raped? I mean, what girl at some point, doesn’t make out with a guy at a party? Yet my father thinks of it as me being raped. It’s really kind of horrifying how dark he can get. Always with the worst scenario.

“Dad. I’m not going to be raped.”

“Says every girl who has ever been raped. Do you think they ever imagine it’s going to happen to them?”

Okay reasonable point. But why does he always assume that?

I shake my head. “Dad, you overreacted tonight. I lied because I knew you’d respond like that. I lie not to break your rules, but to, once in a while, act
my age
.”

He continues to stare out the window. The cab is quiet. I’m not sure why we don’t go inside. It’s like a weird melancholy fell over us and is trapping us inside the truck. If we leave, whatever we’re trying to figure out here will end or something, and we’ll resume fighting like any typical teen and parent.

Dad starts talking in a really low, kind of almost distant voice. “When I was soldier,” he begins. My head whips up and I watch his profile in the shadows from the porch light. He so rarely starts a story with “When I was a soldier.” I’m kinda shocked. “I was sent somewhere to save this girl. She wasn’t much older than you are now. Twenty. She was only twenty years old. She got kidnapped, and held for ransom. I was supposed to get her out. Rescue her. And I did. I did it. I got her out and technically saved her.”

I have never heard this story. I am staring, opened-mouthed, at my dad. I can’t picture whom he is describing, or even him as a soldier. It sounds like the plot to a movie, not something my dad would be involved with. I mean, my dad owns his own business as a subcontractor, and earns a living by installing heating and air conditioning systems. He helps my sisters and me with our math homework, Melissa especially, every single night of the week. He’s home for dinner and on the weekends with absolutely boring regularity. He coached me for five years when I played softball. He’s starting to coach Emily now. He’s just… Dad. I mean, really? A soldier, coming to a kidnap victim’s rescue? I had no idea he’d done anything like that. Never. Not once has he ever told me anything like that. He tells me stories sometimes about his days in Afghanistan; but they are usually light-hearted or funny stories. Nothing like this. And nothing like the dead monotone voice he’s using. Goose bumps rise on my arms.

He shakes his head and rubs his fingers into his eyes. “But before I could get her out, they had her to themselves for three days. It doesn’t sound like anything. Three days, right? I mean that’s not very long to be held after being kidnapped and taken out of the country. Just an hour over the border in Mexico. She was taken from near the post where I was then stationed at Fort Bragg.”

Three days? Where is he going with this? I can’t imagine. I lean forward now totally captivated by his story and in rapt anticipation. His voice cracked when he said, “three days.” For some reason that seems to mean a lot to him.

“So? How did you find her?”

“I didn’t. The man—” his voice falters and he clears his throat, “The man responsible for it, which I didn’t know at the time, knew her location already. All I had to do was get into the secured building, find her, and get her out of there.”

“Secured building? Like, they had guns?” My hands start to sweat. I mean, I know this was like, forever in his past, but I just can’t imagine my dad doing that.

He glances over at me and a small, soft smile lifts one side of his mouth. “Sweetie, everything I did back then involved guns. I was a ranking officer in the United States Army. I was Special Forces. I… well, shit, I wasn’t the local installation guy for people’s heating and cooling needs. Do you realize what my job was?”

“N-not really. I just, I can’t imagine it. Do you hate it? Living here with us and being so ordinary?”

I feel heat rising in my cheeks as I wonder if I just completely insulted him by insinuating that now he was kind of boring. He shakes his head. His voice sounds heavy with emotion. “I love being here with you and your mother and your sisters. Back when I was what you’d consider
not boring
, I never imagined I’d have all of this. Perceptions change when you see the things I saw.”

“What happened next? The building?”

He shakes his head and rests his wrists over the steering wheel, again in his trance, and staring out the front windshield. “I shouldn’t tell you the rest of the story.”

My heart dips. That’s what he always does. He starts to tell me something about his past, and then, bam! It’s over. No more. Only a little, vague impression that maybe my dad was a long time ago, not quite so dad-like. “Please. You seemed to think it had something to do with tonight. Sometimes, I’m just trying to understand you. You know me. You raised me. Sometimes, I just don’t know you.”

He glances at me, his expression pained. “You think you don’t know me?”

I feel bad when he looks so upset by that. “No. No. I know you. I just sometimes don’t know about your past since you only
kind of
tell me about it. It sounds exciting and full of adventure and passion… everything I’m looking for. I don’t want to settle down when I’m young and try to be happy with a mundane job and family. I want the same stuff you had.”

“You don’t want the stuff I had. The stuff I vowed to protect you from. The stuff—”

“That’s just it, you have to start letting me go. You can’t protect me from life and growing up and making mistakes and just living. I get to do that too, Dad.”

He shuts his eyes and his face appears stoic. “I never thought beyond raising you. I was scared as shit to raise you. The first and only panic attack I’ve ever had was on the day your mother told me you were a girl. I had no idea what to do with a kid, but a girl? Then three girls? I never imagined this for my life, Christina. When I was your age… no, I never thought I’d want any of this. But now? It’s all I live for. That’s why I overreacted tonight.”

“I love you. But you do overreact. Please, tell me and finish the story. What happened at the building?”

He kind of nods and seems to set his shoulders back. “Well, I arrived there and got in without anyone seeing me. I was… good at that sort of thing. I was patient and quiet and resourceful. So I got there… and I found her. I found the girl.”

“And…” He pauses so often. This has to be one of his more memorable things from the Army, obviously.
Missions.
I think he calls them missions. I have an inner laugh when my dad talks like that. Like he’s a spy or something as exciting. It’s so hard to imagine he just might have been that way at some point.

“And what? Where was she? What was the building?”

“Drug cartel. They smuggled drugs through there.”

“What was the girl? Like, some clashing drug lord’s daughter or something?”

His gaze becomes vacant, almost lost, as he continues staring out the windshield. “No. No, she was just a lost, little girl who got caught up in something that wasn’t her fault.”

I wonder if he still sees this girl. His voice sounds so weird. Something stirs in my chest, something almost like jealousy on behalf of my mother. Geez! The tacit reverence he feels for the saved girl. I wonder if Mom knows this story.

“Dad?” I prompt. Why won’t he just talk? “How did you first see her?”

He doesn’t look at me. His jaw tightens again and his neck muscles kind of ripple with tension. “Being raped,” he replies, his tone completely neutral. “I first saw her chained to a wall being gang-raped.”

He blurts it out and turns his head from me. His hands suddenly grip the steering wheel and I jerk back, my head hitting the passenger window. Not what I expected him to say. I don’t know how to react. Or what to say. And suddenly, my callous disregard for how he worried and tried to protect me, makes me feel evil. I had no idea he ever witnessed such… well, oh, my God, I can’t find the words to describe how evil that is.

“Dad…” I whisper, horrified by what he said and completely unsure of how to react. “Wh—what did you do?”

“I watched. I was hiding up near the ceiling of the place. It was a warehouse and had huge ceilings with an HVAC unit hanging there, suspended from the ceiling. I was scouting it out when I spotted her. There was nothing I could do. I considered dropping a grenade and killing us all. It was the closest I’d ever come to losing it. I turned away eventually. It was… I’ve never forgotten a single detail of it. Not in over twenty years.”

Tears are streaming down my face. I’m picturing someone so young, like me almost, and my poor dad being there to see it. Witnessing it. I can’t even fathom that.

“How did you get her out then?” I whisper, now more respectfully. I just can’t believe he went through that.

He rubs a hand over his face and crosses his arms over his chest. He has big arms, muscled and ripped. More than one girlfriend has told me how hot my father is. I’ve heard him called a
filf
too many times to count, which sometimes makes my throat burn with bile. There was even a random poll going around on one of my social network accounts from school in which my dad won the category for “hottest” dad. It’s so gross. I mean, he’s my
dad.
But now? He feels so different to me. He looks big and menacing; and his expression is as unyielding as a stone wall.

“I found her cell and hid in it when they took her out temporarily. When they brought her back I was locked inside there with her. She was… not well, as you can imagine. I terrified her. She was terrified, period.”

“If you got locked in, how did you intend to get out?” I am riveted and my voice rises with excitement.

He coughs and kind of clears his throat. “I killed the guard who later came back for her. We made a run for it. I dragged her with me to the roof and down some outside stairs and we exited the building. It was an old piece of shit place. Not much security. I doubt they often had people running military ops against them. Just me.”

I killed the guard…
He glances at me with a swift, almost apologetic, lift to his mouth, and half-shrugs his shoulders. I mean, I guess when you hear your dad’s ex-Army, well, sure, I guess it occurred to me he could have killed someone. But… no, no I have never really thought about my dad actually hurting anyone. I mean, he never even once lifted a hand against our dogs, or cats, or the other dozen animals my mother takes care of on our acreage. He would never hurt anyone.

“You really killed someone?”

“Yes.” Nothing more. His mouth tightens in a grim line.

“What happened to the girl?”

“We flew home and I reunited her with her family.”

“No. I mean, how did she live with that? How could she live with that? How could you just leave her? What happened to her?”

Dad stares out and continues drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He closes his eyes and a shudder travels through his body. He’s remembering it. That poor, victimized, abused girl. He’s hurting. He’s telling me about this to make me understand why he’s so protective of me. Why he sees things in the world I don’t. I get that in one swift, obvious “aha moment.” My dad watched a girl being raped. He witnessed evil. How could he not react tonight, except the way he did? My heart fills with empathy for him and love and worship.

But I have to know. What happened to the victim? “Dad? Do you know? Was she okay ever?”

“I know what happened to her. I know she received the help she needed. I know that eventually, she was okay.”

“What happened to her?”

His gaze finally, after all this time, leaves the front windshield and shifts to me. His expression is filled with trepidation and something else, something almost as fierce as he whispers, “I married her.”

My world feels like it completely splits open and crumbles to the ground around me in a million little pieces.

That girl is my mother?

~Max~

I KNOW CHRISTINA WILL hate me. I dread it. But I promised her dad. I promised Will that if she were ever in trouble, I would call him. I respect only about four people in the world, and Will is one of them.

Did it have a little to do with me not wanting Christina to have sex with an asshole on a dirty bed right over my head? Yeah. Of course. She’s
everything
to me. I don’t care about anyone, not even Noah and Lindsey, my adoptive parents, as much as I do Christina Hendricks. My stomach roils, picturing how she’ll react to what I did.

I finally make it to my car, which is parked a half mile away. I always make sure I have a getaway so I never get stuck at these parties. Most fighters don’t take well to losing to me, so I hightail it the minute I get the first opportunity. Usually, that’s after collecting the money I bet that I could kick the other guy’s ass. Today is no different. I pull into the driveway of the house where I live and sigh when the downstairs lights up. It means my adoptive parents are awake.

I’m nineteen years old, and although I’m just graduating high school, I’m still well past the age when it should matter that my parents are waiting up for me. I had a hard start in life and didn’t go to school like I was supposed to. I repeated the fifth grade. It didn’t do me much good, and made me old for my grade.

My parents didn’t become my parents until I was thirteen years old. My brother dragged me from California, where my shitty past began, to this small, ranching town in Washington State. We stayed in this house. It belongs to Lindsey and Noah Clark, who bear no relation to me. They aren’t even friends of anyone who knows me. They were friends of the people who were helping my brother. Why they let me tag along and stay with them, to this day, I just don’t get. I would never have done anything so noble. I was thirteen and mean; and I fought all the time. I was nothing but trouble and headed for jail before I turned eighteen. I often wonder why they didn’t worry about that. Why didn’t they consider that I might rob them? Or bring bad people to do something even worse? From the start, they were simply nice to me, and fair to me, always, to this day. They even got married so it would be easier to adopt me. My brother, the good one, Derek, persuaded my birth mom to sign away her rights to me for a few hundred bucks. She’s a junkie. If she’s still alive today, I would be shocked.

I cleaned up my act. I mean, how could I not? These people took in a complete stranger and gave me everything they had to give. From money and food and health insurance, to all the speech and occupational therapy I needed. They provided structure and rules and nourishment for me. Regularly and without fail, every day and night, I received nourishment for my body and mind. When I first got here, that was a huge change. I’d never eaten with such regularity, or paid any attention to nutrition. Eventually, I earned their affection and love. The love part is the hardest for me to accept. I haven’t received much of it in my life. When anyone expresses it, it still startles me. I fight it hard and try to resist it, which I did with them at first.  I was every cliché out there. Angry, young kid. I tested them. I did bad things and tried to make them leave me before they chose to leave me. I got into a lot of trouble. I made their lives hell for a couple of years. Years they endured without ever giving up on me. Years that proved they still loved me. Lindsey used to say after surviving her first marriage, I was like dealing with a teddy bear. And she kind of acted like that too. I used my silence as a weapon. I never yelled or smashed things in their house. I simply refused to talk. Or interact. From age thirteen until fifteen, I only talked to Christina.

Christina.
I met her the first full day here in Ellensburg. She came to her aunt and uncle’s house, Noah and Lindsey. She came right up to me and asked if I liked to play video games. She was, and still is, itty-bitty for a girl. Smaller than me, even, which helped me be friends with her. I could just be myself around her. She talked (and still does) all the time. So I let her talk and interact and reveal all her personality, and she didn’t seem to care that I neither talked, nor had any personality to speak of. But her unwavering friendship probably saved my soul. If not for her, I doubt I’d have ever been convinced that Noah and Lindsey could really want me for keeps. Without Christina, I would not have found the motivation to want to talk. I’d have blown off all that lovely, nice, decent help that the Clarks were trying to give me. I wanted to stop feeling stupid around Christina, so it was purely from adolescent pride and ego that I even started to get the help I needed. It was strictly for her.

She also made me behave. She insisted that I be nice to her aunt and uncle as well as her parents and sisters. It was my crush on her that made me even remotely want to fit into this place. Her disdain and fear of my fighting taught me how to hide it better, when I was doing it, and I didn’t do it as often, about three fourths less than I used to. She probably saved my life, and all because she was my friend.

My friend,
who was now pissed off at me, and believed, (for I know how her dramatic brain works), that I completely betrayed her. Forever and ever, Amen. Or until she gets over it. I know she will. Still, I dread the near future and how mad I know she’ll be at me.

That leads me to right now, when I’m about to go and break my parents’ hearts. It killed them whenever I fought, although it was nothing to me. Really. I fight and get paid sometimes, and it’s done. All the rage that regularly percolates in my chest goes away as surely as if I’ve pinched off a running hose. Until, of course, enough time goes by, and the anger starts to rebuild. I need to let the water spew out again in another fight. That is my cycle. My thing. My way of coping. It hurts no one, really. Okay, me a little bit, and whatever mark I choose. But they always heal. Like I said, I’m careful not to kill them.

But Noah and Lindsey took my fighting to heart, like they had somehow irrevocably failed me. Like they were to blame because they couldn’t stop me from fighting. It made no sense to me why they’d think so.

I sigh as I exit the car they generously bought for me. They are over-the-top good to me. I don’t deserve it at all, and I know it. I try to be worthy, but I fail epically at it. And yet, they continue nurturing me.

With a heavy heart, I enter the front door, knowing it’s unlocked. Yep, there they sit in the large living room, waiting for me. The TV is on. Noah sets aside a magazine and Lindsey is asleep on the couch. At the sound of the door clicking shut, her eyes snap open and she sits up almost in an instant. She jumps to her feet and almost runs at me, but stops just short of hugging me.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She’s really upset and nods as if reassuring herself to believe I’m okay. She steps back and puts her hands on her hips. “Then what the hell were you doing?”

Noah comes out to the entryway and grabs Lindsey’s hand and pulls her towards him. “Why don’t you let him inside before you start your inquisition?” Noah is always freaky calm and totally rational. There is never getting one up on him about anything. He doesn’t raise his voice, or try to coerce me into feeling how he wants me to feel. Ever. He simply tells me what he thinks and gives me enough space that I eventually get around to thinking the same way he thinks. That’s usually what happens.

I sit on the couch and rest my elbows on my knees. I’m tired now and just want to fall on my bed and sleep for ten hours. Some of the fights really take it out of me. The adrenaline rush is overwhelming and afterwards, leaves me utterly depleted. That’s why I crave it so much; it allows me to find some peace. Peace eternally eludes me. I have so much going on in my head, it has to be released. I try to stay out of trouble, mostly for Lindsey’s sake because it upsets her so much. So the fighting seems like a good compromise to me. I don’t end up in jail or getting shot. It doesn’t really hurt anyone. But apparently, they don’t agree.

“First, is Christina okay?”

I nod my head. They are better than most at accepting my limited conversation skills. Guilt looms in my head. Christina was never really not okay. I just don’t want her to be having sex with the guy she was intending to. Instead, I ratted her out and now the entire family must get involved and show how much they care. They are a chatty family. From Lindsey to Jessie, Christina’s mom, and all of Noah’s family as well. They all consider Christina and me cousins. Family. Siblings almost.

Even though I do not.

Lindsey opens her mouth to speak when Noah cuts her off with a simple, “You ever think about channeling all your fighting prowess in a more productive way?”

Both Lindsey and I whip our heads up and stare in surprise at Noah. “What are you talking about?” Lindsey voices for me.

Noah shrugs and waves towards me. “He’s never really stopped fighting. I don’t buy it for a second. I’ve witnessed too many unexplained bruises and stiff movements. He likes to fight, Linds. I’m sorry, I don’t think you can yell him out of this. Or guilt him into stopping. I think he tries to hide it out of respect and not wanting to hurt us—you, especially. But it doesn’t really work because he doesn’t ever want to stop it entirely.”

I hang my head. It shames me, but Noah’s right. I don’t stop. I just hide it. I finally nod to acknowledge the truth.

Lindsey lets out a strangled breath. “What do you intend to do, Noah? Start setting up the fights for him? Charging a commission?” Her scathing tone and glare at Noah and then at me are brutal. I feel terrible for making them argue. And worse, for making Lindsey so mad.

I finally say, “I’m sorry… Lindsey.” Her face crumbles and softens like dawn’s light on a dewy morning. She longs so much to have my love. My trust. For me to be
her son
. I know she really feels like she is my mom. I’m not sure if I do though. It’s just not easy for me to express how I feel. It’s safer for me to call her Lindsey and not risk losing my mom again.

She shakes her head. “I know what you do. I can’t resist when you get all sad and contrite.”

“I am sorry. And I do consider you my mom. More than the woman who birthed me.”

“She’s a degenerate bitch.”

I finally smile. Lindsey always says something equally impassioned about my birth mom, even though she’s never even met her. Noah tries to admonish her, but I kind of like it. Lindsey nods at Noah, her expression less perturbed. “Where were you going with your questioning?”

Noah sighs. “I was thinking, why not direct that skill and passion for fighting somewhere useful?”

“Where could that be?” Lindsey’s head is tilted, and her eyebrows rise.

I’m wondering the exact same thing, completely puzzled. I was ready for a lecture, since neither of them really ever yell at me. It is even worse than that. They talk about what they expect and how disappointed they are in me. Their kindness and understanding punish me much more and make me more miserable than their anger. Anger I know. I respond to it with my own. Kindness and understanding? Make me nuts. It makes me feel smaller and even less deserving of them.

Noah leaned forward. “Why don’t you train for boxing, or some other kind of fighting where you can make a living and, at the very least, quit hustling people? I mean, that’s what you do, isn’t it? You hustle these kids?”

I blink. I mean, did he really just say that? Noah Clark is the epitome of a conservative man. He is a doctor, a veterinarian, a business owner, and a community leader. He makes a great living and never ever broke the law, or even a single rule. I assume he wants me to go to college, or do something equally respectable. He keeps sitting me down to discuss next year and what my plans are. I, to date, have none. I can’t even imagine it. Life after high school? I never thought I’d graduate, and now they expect me to have dreams beyond it?

Lindsey’s mouth drops open. I’m usually pretty good at keeping my cool, and appearing totally impassive.  But I feel the burn of embarrassment heating my cheeks in a blush. I never really thought about the
ethics
of how I fight. I mean, I pick the fights. But is it my fault they assume I’m going to lose?

“Don’t you?” Noah repeats. “Don’t you pretend you’re just a little, short guy with a big mouth?”

I nod finally. It’s the first time I’ve ever been accused of having a big mouth. “I don’t think it’s my fault if they erroneously assume that because I’m small, I’m not a threat.”

“Yeah, it’s called
hustling
. And you could get yourself killed someday if you run your con on the wrong person or persons. Look, I don’t love the fighting. It’s certainly not part of my dream for you. But I also realize there are things I can’t fully understand about your need to fight, now isn’t there? I didn’t live your life. I get that, Max. But I don’t think being a two-bit hustler is the path you want to follow as a career.”

Lindsey is still strangely quiet and simply stares open-mouthed at Noah. Like me, I swear she wonders about the man she married.

“I never thought of it as hustling.”

“Well, that’s what it is. At least, be honest and upfront. Show some damn honor, Max! You want to do this? Then do it right.”

I have no idea there is a right way to do it. I just do it to feel better. You know, expel my demons. How could I seek honor or nobility from freaking street fighting! How the hell does one do that?

“I know you’re nineteen and you could tell me to fuck off and walk out that door. I get that, Max,” Noah says, his eyes holding mine prisoner. My mouth drops open. Noah has never said
fuck
while talking to me. He rarely swears. I wait, captivated now by the man I’ve lived with for five years and considered the closest man to a father. “But I don’t think you will. I think you need us as much as we need you. So no more sneaking off to fight like this. You could get hurt. You could mess with the wrong crowd. What if you disappeared, or something? What if you were dumped somewhere, and were too injured to move? There are all kinds of ‘what ifs’ Lindsey and I stay up at night worrying about.”