“Coke for me, Fanta for him,” she said, and as soon as the waitress disappeared, she shook her head at him. “You can’t just scare innocent waitresses like that, Lucas.”
He frowned. “She spoke only to me even though you’re sitting right across from me. It irritated me.”
Anna laughed, the sound like a ray of sunlight slipping through the dusty windows. “Well, that’s because you’re hot,” she informed him conspiratorially…before returning her gaze to the door.
A tingle ran down his neck. He assumed she didn’t regard him as ugly, but it still didn’t suck to hear that she thought he was hot.
“And hot people are thirstier, or what?” he asked sharply. Her argument made no sense to him.
Anna snorted. “No, but they make waitresses hungrier.”
“Yeah, I’m not interested in that at all.”
“Of course not.”
“You’re changing the subject, Anna.”
She tore her gaze away from the entrance and fixed it on him. “Fine,” she murmured, grabbing her braid and letting it fall. “I’m meeting my father.”
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You have a father?”
He had assumed he was dead.
To his surprise, she laughed. “That’s an accurate response. Yes, I do. He’s mine and Dax’s dad. Temple Senior. He was an asshole. I was telling you about him the other day. Drinking problem. Gambling problem. Anger problem. The whole gamut.”
Fuck.
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” She waved her hand as if reading his thoughts. “He didn’t beat us, well, except for Jack, once. He just did a shitty job. Dax hates him like he hates penalty minutes.”
“What about you?” Lucas asked quietly.
Surprised, Anna glanced at him. “What about me?”
“You have a habit of always mentioning your brothers and their attitudes toward your family or each other, whereas you minimize your own opinions.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “Yeah, maybe. Most of the time, people just ask about my brothers.”
“I don’t care about your brothers,” Lucas stated dryly, placing his forearms on the table and leaning forward, facing Anna. “I hear their names far too often as it is. What do you think of your father?”
She smiled tightly. “I haven’t seen him since my mother’s funeral. I mirrored Dax, and haven’t been in touch. Not that he’sbothered to try at all. Maybe Dax told him he’d kill him if he called me again. It would be just like Dax to do that.”
“It wouldn’t have been his damn decision though, would it?” His voice was even darker than before because it was starting to irritate him how often Dax interfered in his sister’s life.
“No,” she stated simply. “But, at the time, I was glad to be able to put it behind me. The thing is…”
“You didn’t put it behind you.”
Tired, she smiled. “Do you ever put your childhood behind you, Lucas?” she asked in an exaggeratedly tragic tone. “Aren’t we all victims of our inner child?”
“Right now it sounds like you're the victim of a psychology podcast, Anna.”
Her smile broadened. “Well, it’s kind of true. He contacted me a year ago, sent an email saying he’d like to see me…” She sighed heavily. “Dax wouldn’t understand, but I want to forgive our father. I don’t know if I can. But I want to badly, so that this wound left behind by the people that I should have been able to trust blindly will finally heal. So that I stop expecting that something good will be followed by something terrible: a nice family dinner is followed by smashed dishes, calm followed by a storm. To the best years with Jack and Dax, years full of anger and bitterness. You know I became a doctor because I was good at patching up Dax and Jack, but also because I wanted to help people. When I hadn’t been able to help myself or…or us, all these years. Because I was too young, too weak, and too helpless. And now I know I’m an adult, strong and competent. But every time Dax and Jack try to protect me, they only remind me of who I was back then, that helpless girl who could only watch her family fall apart. Who couldn’t convince her mother to leave her father, and couldn’t convince their father to leave Jack alone. Who couldn’t convince her brothers to let her join them in theirfight.” Her eyes brightened and, clearing her throat, she looked away.
Lucas wished she wouldn’t do that, that she would look at him. Maybe his gaze could give her strength. By God, she’d done that for him often enough.
She sighed heavily. “It’s so vile, you know? That the bad things that happen to us stick with us so much longer than the good ones. That bad experiences leave larger marks on our hearts than good ones. That the smallest moments can have gigantic consequences while the long stretches in our lives leave almost no impression. Short-term happiness can leave long-term damage. Short-term damage can ruin long-term happiness. It’s…it's not fair.”
She lowered her gaze, nervously checking her watch while Lucas stared at her. He felt a bittersweet tug begin in his chest. It was as if a guitar had replaced his heart and Anna was plucking all the strings at once with her words, leaving behind off-key notes he couldn’t leave alone. These off notes, they were making her unhappy and that was hard to bear.
