He swallowed against the thickness in his throat. “One day when I was six, she took me to stay with my grandparents. She would leave me with them sometimes for a few weeks at a time. But she always came back for me. Until she didn’t.” Wes’s throat closed making his voice hoarse.
“My grandparents raised me after that. Then they didn’t come back either. They were killed one night in a car accident.”
“They didn’t come home either.” Cara’s breath caught. “Is that why you were so worried tonight?”
Had it been?
Not consciously.
Jin’s words prickled under his skin. He hadn’t worried when Jin didn’t come back at night when they lived together, and he didn’t worry when he hadn’t heard from Melody for days.
Only Cara.
Wes had sat up in the dark waiting for her because he needed to know she was okay.
This is not good!
Wes set her back from him, hands gently clasped around her arms. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“Thank you for sharing that with me.” She gave him a tremulous smile, and guilt stabbed him in his gut. Tell her about your role in her past, his brain screamed at him.
Cara lifted up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Did he imagine that she lingered, or did he only wish she did. “Good night.”
Wes was left staring at her closed door, thinking of all of the things he should have said.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
Wes’s door was open,the house silent when Cara finally crawled out of bed the next morning. The late night, combined with an emotional hangover, made Cara sleep in. Despite the hours she had spent in bed, she still felt bruised and exhausted. Her heart ached for the fifteen-year-old girl innocently naming her baby after her favorite TV character.
Her mind drifted to Wes’s face last night when she had crept in, the worry and concern that quickly changed to anger. She grew up with three protective brothers, so she understood that his anger was rooted in his anxiety. At first, she had been secretly thrilled that he cared about where she was, but then when she found out it stemmed from his childhood, she felt like a jerk.
Cara pulled a pillow over her head. She was losing it! Wes was her friend. She just needed to keep reminding herself of that fact and she’d be fine. Maybe she should put a rubber band around her wrist and snap it every time she thought about ripping his clothes off.
And then there was the Courtney situation.
Cara was almost definitely fired which was bad enough, but Declan was going to have a fit when she told him about her run in with Courtney. He loved Bloom Communications, and when he found out Courtney was cavalierly spending company assets to give her sons a project….
Did she have to tell him? Cara was weighing the pros and cons of calling her brother when she caught the rich, warm smell of coffee.
The mug she used every day sat on the kitchen counter. On it was a yellow sticky note with Wes’s precise handwriting.
Had an early meeting but will be home early afternoon.
Wes
Ps. See it goes both ways!
Warmth spread through Cara’s chest at the smiley face he’d drawn. But her smile dimmed as she filled the mug.
She knew he had grown up in foster care, but hearing the details of how he ended up there made it more real. She shivered. If her father hadn’t been who he was, what could have happened to her? Corinne wasn’t fifteen, but she had been very young when Cara was born.
Even with the money she made as an international supermodel, Corinne had never been interested in taking care of a child. Cara hadn’t said it last night, but she fully understood the sick uncertainty of a parent who was an addict.
The stomach-churning anxiety of not knowing who your parent would be from one hour to the next. She may not have lived in a trailer, but there were plenty of times that her mother had forgotten that, as a small child, Cara needed to eat.
Corinne’s diet mostly consisted of a handful of calories, cigarettes, and cocaine. If it hadn’t been for Siobhan and Anne... And then Wes had lost his grandparents, too! Grief for that young boy, alone in the world thrust into the harsh reality of a children’s home, made her chest ache. As much as her brothers made her insane, she couldn’t imagine life without them.
She would call Declan.
