He was too calm. Something was wrong. “When did you meet her?”

“I came by your house yesterday morning. She was alone and I had barely spoken a word to her when she went completely catatonic. She didn’t respond. She just sat there staring off in space. You’re a smart man, son. You don’t actually think there is a future with this girl?”

Yesterday. I’d come home and she’d been on the ground. Fuck. “Did you leave her there on the ground like that? You didn’t think to call me?”

My father shrugged his shoulders. “I wasn’t going to touch her. She could snap on me the way she did on her mother. I left. And I did some research.”

He had left her like that. Hate seethed through me as I stared at this man I didn’t even know. He’d raised me but I didn’t know him.

“Did she tell you the police found her with her hands covered in blood? She was sitting there beside her mother’s dead body rocking back and forth completely unresponsive with blood on her hands. The only reason she wasn’t locked up was because she had an alibi. Her neighbor said she’d been out with her all night. She’d apparently been the person to call nine-one-one.”

My stomach churned. Della had found her mother’s dead body. Holy shit. She hadn’t told me that. She also hadn’t told me she’d been a suspect in her mother’s death or how her mother had died. There was so much I didn’t know.

“I didn’t know she had found her mother. Shit.” I stumbled back and sank into the chair behind me. No wonder she was messed up. She’d lived with a crazy woman locked away from the world. Then when she’d gotten brave enough to escape when she could she had come home to find her dead. Blood on her hands. Holy f**k. I had to go. I needed to hold her. She might be okay, but I wasn’t. How much had she had to bear in such a short time?

“I have to go,” I said, standing up and heading for the door.

“As a parent I have to make decisions that are for the best. Remember that when you think I’m controlling your life. I’m helping you become the Kerrington you were raised to be.”

I didn’t look back at him. I didn’t care what he wanted or who he thought I should be. The image of my grandfather looking at my grandmother with so much love in his eyes came back to me. He’d said that he couldn’t imagine a world without her in it. I understood that now. I wasn’t my father’s son. I was his father’s son. The sordid screwed up heartless bastard who was my father hadn’t been something he’d inherited from his parents. They had been the reason I would find happiness in life. My grandfather had taught me what to look for.

Della

By the time Leo pulled into the driveway of Braden’s home, my wrists were raw and I had to pee so badly my stomach was cramping up.

“This is it,” I said through my teeth as I clenched them tightly against the pain.

He opened the door and got out then he opened my door and I didn’t wait for someone else to grab me and jerk me around. I was hurting too bad for that.

He didn’t say anything as he unlocked the cuffs behind my back. I felt like weeping from relief when my hands fell limply at my sides.

He moved to open the trunk and set both my suitcases on the driveway. With one small nod he got in the car and drove away. I went to pick up my bags and stinging pain shot up both my arms. I decided my suitcases could stay out here for now.

I walked to the door and looked up at the house I had helped Braden decorate before she was married. Her husband had bought it for them four months before their wedding so that Braden could get it fixed for them to move into once they were married. It had been romantic. I had stood in her house and wished that some man would love me that much one day.

I wasn’t meant to be loved like that. I couldn’t be. My desire to want that had been selfish. Reaching up, I pressed the doorbell and waited.

When the door opened it wasn’t Braden who I had hoped would be here so I could throw myself into her arms and cry. Instead, it was Kent, her husband.

“Della?” he asked his eyes going wide in surprise.

“Hello, Kent,” I said in a strained voice. My bladder was begging to be set free. “Can I use your restroom?”

He stepped back and let me inside. “Uh, of course, you know where it is.”

I walked past him and decided I’d take a minute to gather myself after I relieved myself.

Once I was finished I stood at the mirror and stared at my swollen red-rimmed eyes. I looked as pathetic as I felt. I washed my wrists with soap and water then dried them. The tender skin stung but at least they were clean now.

I walked back to the entryway to see Kent walking in with both of my suitcases. His eyes found mine and the sympathy and concern in them only made me feel even more pathetic.

“Thank you. I’m afraid I don’t have the car. I didn’t get to bring it back with me. I’ll find a way to get it though.”

Kent put my suitcases down and nodded his head toward the kitchen. “Come on. Let’s get you something to drink and eat if you’re hungry. I called Braden. She’s on her way home from work.”

I glanced at the clock. It wasn’t yet three o’clock. Braden would still be at school. She was a third grade teacher. I sat down on one of the tall bar stools that Braden and I had found at a boutique for a ridiculous amount of money. But she’d loved them and Kent never told her no.

“I know I’m not Braden. But you can talk to me if you need to,” Kent said while he went about fixing me some sweet iced tea. He hadn’t even asked me what I wanted. He already knew. I’d been a package deal with Braden. Kent had loved her and overlooked the fact she was so dedicated to me. He had once said it was one of the reasons he loved her.