We pulled into the cemetery and parked after a moment. I held my breath as we got out of the truck and walked in the direction of where two heart-shaped sprays of flowers were located. Rip walked beside me the whole time, the tension still just pouring directly off him. It said something about how much I distrusted the people I was related to that I kept glancing over my shoulder to make sure none of them were following us.
I was pretty sure if I looked up the Miller family history, the word “backstabbing” had to have been stemmed from an ancestor somewhere down the line.
Luckily, I didn’t see any of them, at least not directly behind us. As we stopped at the gravesite, a hole that seemed too small for a casket, I kept my head aimed down, but I didn’t close my eyes.
Rip’s arm brushed my elbow as he settled in so close beside me I could feel the heat of his body. It wasn’t unwelcome. The size of him, the knowledge that he more than likely wouldn’t let anyone physically hurt me, even if he was unhappy about all of this—including finding out I was related to a felon—made me feel better. It was too warm for my long-sleeved shirt, and I could only imagine how hot he had to be in his jacket and dress shirt, but he didn’t complain or act in any way like it bothered him.
I had a feeling it was him there that kept me from walking off as I watched the three people I hadn’t seen in years approach slowly.
My sisters’ mom didn’t look at me.
But my cousin was staring. Beside him, the man who was half responsible for my existence acted like I was invisible.
I stood there and watched them both.
I wished that later on I could have looked back on that moment and been the bigger person. That I could and would have looked away from them while the chaplain or whatever he was said some more generic words about a woman he had more than likely never met. I wished I could have let myself focus on Grandma Genie and the few memories I had of her.
But I didn’t do anything like that.
As the man went on, I stood there and took turns staring at my cousin and the man that my birth certificate said was my father.
My cousin basically snarled.
My dad looked right through me with those green eyes I saw every time I looked in the mirror.
Rip’s arm brushed mine a few times, but I was too caught up in my own moment to worry about how bored he must be. Or how disappointed he might be in me for being related to these people. There were a million other things that he might have been thinking, and none of them were good.
It was only when the chaplain stopped speaking and the thirty other people around us approached the casket with mementos that I snapped out of it and took a step forward to drop the small picture of my sisters and me that I’d put in my purse the day before in the hole.
I was ready to leave, and it had nothing to do with the people on the other side of the casket.
I just wanted to go back home to the place that made me feel safe, to the people who made me feel loved, to the life that made me happy—that I swore from now on would only make me happier.
Turning to face Rip, who it seemed had his entire attention focused on me, I met his eyes and nodded.
He nodded back, his gaze flicking behind me for a beat, and we headed back toward his truck, avoiding old headstones and flowers.
Fortunately, I hadn’t been able to relax or let my guard down, because I heard the hurried steps coming and was partially expecting the hand that wrapped around my wrist, the holdtight and hurtful and mean, a second before it yanked at me.
Or tried to.
Because I didn’t let that happen. I’d spent years with Lenny at the gym so I’d know how to defend myself. That was how we’d met. She had taught a self-defense course I’d taken. Then kept on teaching me things after it ended. So I didn’t hold back when I threw my elbow as hard as I could backward, and in a move that would have made her proud, I kicked my right leg out, feeling it connect with a left leg. The second the person behind me stumbled forward, I grabbed their right arm and extended it across my body into a straight armbar position—a submission move that hyperextended their elbow—his elbow, if you wanted to be specific, because I knew who it was.
It was the same move that Lenny and I had worked on time and time and time again, so many times, I had gotten sick and tired of doing it. She had done it to melightlybefore and it had hurt for days. It had been totally worth it, I guessed, because instinct had just… kicked in, like she had said it would.
“What the fuck!” the voice I didn’t recognize anymore hissed.
“Don’t touch me,” I snapped at my cousin as I took in his face, tightening my grip even harder, knowing I was hurting him and not giving a single crap.
I had seen Rip out of my peripheral vision jerk to a stop and turn around, but I had this.
I had always had this. Even when I was younger. Because maybe I was an Allen now, but I had been a Miller, and being a girl, being younger, didn’t mean anything. I had gotten into fights with every single Miller kid around my age growing up, even some that weren’t my age. They were all bullies and jerks. Every single one of them.
This one specifically had been the first one who had knocked me around. I still had a tiny scar on my forehead from one of those times. As I looked at his own cheek, I could see the one I had given him when I’d been fourteen and had punched him right in the cheekbone as hard as I possibly could.
“Put your hands on me again, and I will break your hand,” I told him, dead serious.
His face, thin and oval, was pinched and in pain as he tried jerking his arm away, but there was no way he could. “Let me go, you fucking bitch.”
