Текст книги "Lovely Trigger"
Автор книги: R. K. Lilley
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Lovely Trigger
Tristan & Danika – 3
R.K. LILLEY
This one is for my husband. Thank you for caring enough to be even more stubborn than I am, when it matters the most.
CHAPTER ONE
A FEW MONTHS AFTER THE ACCIDENT
DANIKA
Physical therapy was hell on earth. It was pain, futility, and frustration, all with a feeling of hopelessness because I knew that it could only do so much. But I gave it my all. I had too much pure stubborn grit inside of me to do anything else.
I was only twenty-one, quickly approaching twenty-two, but I’d never in my life felt young before Tristan. With him, for a while, I’d felt young and carefree, with my life ahead of me. A promising life.
As though it had all been a dream, some kind of a spell, that careless joy disappeared from my heart again as quickly as it had come. I was back to being the oh so responsible woman that I was meant to be.
I never cried a tear of self-pity. That had never been my poison. Bitter was my poison, and it took every ounce of character I possessed not to let it consume me.
I missed him. I couldn’t even lie to myself about that.
I missed him dreadfully.
I convinced myself that it had all been passion, not true love. True love was a myth, a misdirection from the solid things in life. What I’d felt for Tristan had been big and all consuming, but I told myself, like a mantra in my head, that it had never been solid.
Even so, every little thing brought him to mind. We’d had too much together, been through too much, felt too much, and every feeling had a memory. So many songs, shows, and movies were locked away for me, never to be viewed again.
It was that kind of a breakup. The ruinous kind.
When the longing got truly unbearable, I fell back on pure survival mode, my mind going into that blank place I’d had to perfect as a sexually abused teenager. It served me well at those times. And luckily, those times always passed.
I kept so busy that I had very little time for dwelling, and no time for pining for a thing that was never meant to be. School, work, and plotting out my dream career was a very involved process.
I could throw my whole life into my ambitious future, in fact that was my only option, now that the possibility of ever having a family of my own had been ripped so violently from the table.
I did not feel whole for a long time, but I told myself, over and over, that I was strong. Strong enough to go on, with some bits of myself, or, if I was honest, some huge important hunks of myself, missing.
And I did.
TRISTAN
“Welcome to the floor,” my counselor told me, the first time I walked into his office.
I thought it was a good way to start things. I wouldn’t have been able to pour my heart out to him, if he didn’t at least have a good sense of humor.
He was a small man in his fifties. His hair was long, gray, and unruly. His glasses always perched right on the tip of his nose as he studied me.
And he didn’t even have a brown leather chaise lounge, as I’d feared. I got to sit up and talk to him like a normal person, not lie down like in the movies.
I sat in a comfortable chair on the opposite side of his desk, and, over time, told him everything.
“Do you ever blackout?” he asked on our first meeting, his tone idle as he looked down at his chart. I was a little fixated on that chart of his.
“Excuse me?”
“Blackouts. Periods where you were still functioning, but you have no memory of it.”
I liked the way he handled things, the way he made me talk without it being a big deal, and never made the tragedies in my life seem too big for a person to handle, with his calm reactions.
“Oh yeah. I call that the weekend.”
He smiled ruefully, but didn’t look up. “I assume this has wreaked some havoc on your personal life.”
That was the understatement of a lifetime.
It was the most bitter pill to swallow; how my own rock bottom had impacted her. I had always been the one to throw myself in front of a punch for my brother, my mother.
And my wife. My wife. I’d have done anything to take her pain, to bear her injuries myself. Instead though, I had caused them.
But I could not go back. I could not live on what ifs, if I had any hope of living at all.
“Well, yeah. I suppose that’s why I’m here.” I tried to make my tone idle, but I nearly choked on those words. “I have lost every one of the people closest to me. My brother, my mother, my wife, my unborn child. All of it was because of addiction.”
“You must be a stubborn one, that it took so much to get you here.” He grinned ruefully. “Stubborn is my specialty. We’ll get along just fine.”
And we did. Sometimes, though, I hated him, because he gave me the hard truths.
“You can’t ever expect to get her back,” he told me one day, when I’d been talking endlessly about Danika, once again. “This is something you need prepare yourself to accept. I can see it will be your biggest challenge, as you venture back into your life outside of rehab.”
I wanted to argue, wanted to fight him. Instead, I closed my eyes and attempted to accept.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he asked, his tone kind.
“I was thinking about the first step.”
“That’s good. Tell me what it means to you.”
“I am powerless over my addiction. My life has become unmanageable.”
“That is the textbook answer, to be sure, but that’s good. That one takes a while to process. Now, let’s look at the twelve steps as a whole. An overview, if you will. In essence, they teach us that we cannot play God. There are some things we do not have the power to change, not just as it pertains to using or not using. This also applies to past mistakes. You must accept that you cannot change her mind, and find a way to go on with your life and stay clean. Are you ready yet to accept that?”
“I would just like to talk to her. If I could just get her to meet with me, get her to see that I’m getting better, I think it would show her that I’ve changed, that I’m willing to do whatever it takes to be in her life.“
“Okay, I see that we still have plenty to work on here.”
And so it went. Little by little, I began to accept that it really could be over between us. Not as a break, but as a permanent affliction.
It was a very rough pill to swallow.
It was months before I could open up in group therapy. Months of hearing other people’s stories. Some of them didn’t seem too bad, but others were worse than mine were.
One lady, a heroin addict, opened up about neglecting her baby for so long that it died in its crib while she got high.
I processed that story for a while, haunted by the way she told it, as though it had happened to someone else.
Something in her disconnect really got to me.
Had I disconnected that much from my own life? And if so, how? How could I have been so selfish, so cruel, as to neglect the things around me for so long?
It was numbness I’d been looking for, what we’d all been looking for, and that numbness had turned us into monsters when we used.
I had to come to terms with the things the monster inside of me had done. And with the fact that I was that monster.
It was as I began to cope with that realization, to accept it, that I began to open up in group.
“I’m Tristan. I am an alcoholic and a drug addict. I’m here because using cost me the love of my life.”
I smiled sadly as I looked down at my hands. “I think I started falling for her the first time she called me a man-whore.”
It hadn’t been easy to set up the meeting. She wouldn’t talk to me directly, so everything went through a very slow filter via Jerry. We constantly met up with complications.
It took months just to get the ball rolling.
She wouldn’t even meet with me alone, as though I was some kind of dangerous criminal.
I tried not to dwell on that.
It messed with me, my sanity, my will to stay sober, but I had to focus on the positive.
I rounded up a few friends I’d met in rehab.
Trinity was a twenty-year-old heroin addict whose parents had already put her through rehab four times. Her current clean run was the longest she’d been sober since she was fifteen years old. She was a sweet, funny girl, and I had hopes that this time she’d pull through.
She was a compact girl, and wore a uniform black T-shirt and jeans. Her short red hair was only long in the front, long enough to cover one eye, but she still managed make good eye contact.
Todd was a twenty-five-year-old tattoo artist and a pain killer addict. We wound up in the same sober house after rehab. He was a small guy, skinny, with bleach blond hair and enough tats to make me look like a blank canvas.
I’d made the fastest friends in rehab, but unfortunately, many of them weren’t lasting friends. Nearly everyone I’d met had relapsed within the last eight months. The ones that stayed sober with me, though, were like a lifeline, very necessary for my own recovery process.
Trinity and Todd were both still staying clean after rehab, still fighting the good fight, like me. They were ideal company for me, going through the same things I was, and so they could understand how hard the coming meeting was for me.
They’d been in group therapy with me, so they knew all about my obsession with Danika, and all of the reasons she had to hate me.
We got there early, because I just couldn’t wait around any longer. I was jittery with nerves. Wound up so tight that I couldn’t sit still.
I’d been waiting, obsessed, tormented, consumed for this meeting since the last time I’d seen her. It simply couldn’t end like this. There had to be something more, something I could do to make amends.
Even if I couldn’t be her husband, I longed to have her in my life. In any capacity.
I’d take literally anything.
I wouldn’t be happy with less than everything, but I’d take what I could get.
Crumbs, scraps, a taste of what she once felt for me, as a salve for what I still felt in abundance for her.
Even that I would take.
My hands were shaking so hard that I spilled coffee on my hands as I tried to take a sip of the decaf coffee I’d ordered just to have something to do with my hands.
As we sat there and waited for her, the future so uncertain, no, so likely to turn out in a way I couldn’t bear, I’d never wanted a drink more in my life.
I shared this piece of information. It was part of the process, to reach out when you felt yourself slipping. It still went against the grain for me, but I was trying my best to learn a new way.
Obviously, the old way hadn’t been working for me. Not by any wild stretch of the imagination.
“Well, hell, man, let’s hit the bar then. It’s five o’clock somewhere.” Todd said it as a joke, and that levity was what I needed.
I burst out laughing and so did Trinity.
I was facing the door of the place, on lookout, and so I saw her first.
I froze. Every part of my body just seized up as I set eyes on her. At first it, was just at the shock, the sheer joy of seeing her beautiful face, even from several feet away, through a glass door.
Some man opened it for her, and I took her in for one heart stopping moment.
She wore a long black skirt that went down to her ankles, her pale pink blouse skin tight, showed off her perfect figure. Her hair was loose and shiny, her makeup heavier than I remembered, and absolutely striking.
She was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever set eyes on. I knew she always would be.
“Holy shit,” Todd muttered.
“That chick is gorgeous,” Trinity said.
Danika began to walk through the door, and my fists clenched.
“Oh my God,” Trinity continued, in dawning horror. “Is that her?”
I didn’t respond, couldn’t, caught up in my own personal hell as I saw her struggle to make it just a few feet to sit down at a table.
Have you ever felt like someone just reached into your chest and twisted a corkscrew into your heart? No? Well, that’s what I felt then.
It wasn’t fucking pretty.
I reeled for an endless moment, as I saw just what I’d done, and tried to cope with it, trying to breathe for even another moment, to live in a skin that I despised down to my soul.
I didn’t even realize I’d moved to her until I was at her table. My body had moved with no tangible communication to my brain.
She barely looked at my face, just one devastating, cursory glance before her eyes became glued to my chest.
Oh God. She can’t even stand to look at me now. I felt gutted by that. This was going worse than my most dreadful fears.
I stared at her for the longest time, drinking her in, willing her to just look at me.
Finally, I shook myself out of it. “Can I get you anything? Coffee or tea?”
The finest tremor ran through her, but it stopped between one second and the next. I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined it or manufactured it, since I myself was shaking.
“Some hot tea, thank you,” she finally answered stiffly.
I went to the counter and ordered two teas, watching her all the while.
She didn’t look at me once.
I brought the tea back to the table, and she nodded her thanks, staring down into her cup. She added a sugar packet and stirred it.
“Milk?” I asked.
She shook her head, adding more sugar. She didn’t drink it, just focused on it.
I shoved my own neglected tea to the side.
I put my hands on the table, fingers threaded together. I stared down at them as intently as she stared at her tea. I took a very deep breath, gathering my courage.
“I have many regrets, many bad things I must take credit for, but believe me when I say that the negative impact that all of my actions have had on your life is my biggest one.” I had rehearsed this speech. I doubted I would have been able to say it without breaking down otherwise.
Finally, I felt her eyes on me, but now I didn’t have the strength to meet them. I knew I’d find nothing I could bear in them.
I wished she’d say something, anything, but when it was clear that she wouldn’t, I continued. “I do not deserve your forgiveness, after all that’s happened, but I am asking for it.”
Begging, I thought.
Groveling.
“Know that I would take it all back if I could, and know that I hold myself responsible for all of the bad things that happened. I am so sorry that my hitting rock bottom the way I did impacted you. Any recompense you can imagine, anything you would ask of me, I would be happy to provide.” Please, I thought. Ask me for something, anything. Let me give and you take. Let me have some role in your life again. “I’m at your service. Always, Danika. And it is my most sincere wish that someday, perhaps over time, you might consider being my friend again.”
Her hand went to her throat, and she shuddered, as though in revulsion.
I shuddered in pain.
She was that disgusted with me now that even the idea of a friendship with me made her recoil?
“Tristan,” she said slowly, her voice hoarse. “Consider yourself forgiven. But please don’t think that I hold you responsible for everything that happened.”
I was filled, for the briefest moment, with the strongest feeling of elation.
“Things didn’t turn out how I could have hoped,” she continued. “But no one person is to blame for any of it. So yes, I forgive you for any and all of it.”
Joy, wonder, the biggest spark of hope filled my chest.
Her next words made pain, horror, denial, follow closely in their wake.
“That being said, I must decline your offer of friendship. Some things…what I mean to say is, some people, need to stay away from each other, and we are such a pair.”
No, no, no, I thought. Anything but that. Don’t cut me off completely. I can take anything but that.
But I saw the resolve in the set of her shoulders.
I saw the end in her downcast eyes.
The very least I could do is give her what she so clearly wanted. I did not have the right to fight her on this. Not after all I’d done.
“If that is how you feel, I must respect your decision.” Those words didn’t want to come out of me, but I forced them out.
“It is,” she said quickly. “But thank you for the apology, and I wish you all the best.” She spoke to my collarbone. “I’m glad you got yourself help.”
She was done. That was all she was going to say. I couldn’t quite believe it, but I made myself accept it.
Finally, I wrenched myself away.
It was an effort.
My body did not want to leave her any more than my heart did.
I did not know how I was going to move on, but it was clear that she already had.
“I need to stay busy. I need to stay on point today,” I told my friends when I’d sat back down at the table. I stared at Danika’s downcast face. How had it come to this? I had the clearest picture in my head, of the way she used to look at me, like I was her whole world.
I would have given anything to have that back.
To deserve it.
Though of course, I’d never deserved it.
“I am feeling a very strong desire to use.” My voice was succinct.
“We’ll keep you busy,” Trinity said gently.
“We’ll go watch a movie, then hit up the gym,” Todd suggested. “I know how you love your workouts.”
I nodded, then followed them out. We passed Danika, who seemed in no hurry to go anywhere, still looking down at her drink, her face blank.
I paused as we passed her, but Trinity grabbed my arm, tugging me away.
“She hates me,” I finally said, as I put my car in gear. “She said she forgives me, but she doesn’t want me in her life. Not in any way. She said we can’t even be friends. She could barely even look at me.”
“Oh Tristan,” Trinity said gently, and I could tell by her tone that she, too, had been hoping that this meeting would turn out better for me.
“I’m so sorry, man,” Todd added. “It’s a rough hand you’ve been dealt. But some things are just out of our hands.”
That was a hard lesson for me to learn, but I tried my best to learn it well.
CHAPTER TWO
NEARLY TWO YEARS AFTER THE ACCIDENT
DANIKA
I’d often noted the fact that much of the humor in my life had left with Tristan. The humor, the fun, and if I was brutally honest with myself, the joy.
Everything was serious these days. Work, even my social life. When I dated, it was very serious professionals, though nothing ever got far or lasted long. My heart just wasn’t in it yet.
I told myself I only needed more time.
I finished college, and James immediately promoted me. I moved to L.A. and managed the gallery there. Career wise, all of my dreams were coming true. James let me prove myself and gave me free reign over the gallery.
I missed Bev, Jerry, and the boys, but I had enough work to keep me busy literally every waking hour, and that’s how I liked it.
Bev and Jerry remarried in a very small ceremony in the Bahamas. I attended, and the amount of relief I felt when I found out that Tristan, for whatever reason, hadn’t come, worried me. He should not still affect me like this, I told myself, but there was no helping it.
It was a beautiful wedding. They both wrote their own vows, and they were so sweet that I cried like a sap through the entire thing, hugging the boys, who flanked me on each side.
Later, I found out that Tristan hadn’t come because he hadn’t been invited. Though he and Jerry were close, Bev hadn’t even considered it.
This was told to me by Bev. When I looked baffled by her revelation, she laughed and patted me on the shoulder.
“Oh, my sweet girl. If someone told you I don’t hold a grudge, they were lying.”
Her eyes and her smile were so unlike her, so bloodthirsty, that I just stared.
“You’re doing great now. You look spectacular, and I have every confidence that you will get what you want out of your life. I couldn’t be more proud of you, but there will always be a very clear picture in my head, my dear, and it is the stuff of my nightmares. I can close my eyes and remember how you looked, bleeding and broken in that hospital bed. Heartbroken and abused. Or of you those first few months after the accident. So sad and lost. I’m a loving woman. You know this. I love with all my heart, but a heart like mine works both ways, and there is a wrath in me. I will never forget the state that man put you in. You think I could enjoy a celebration if he was there, making you uncomfortable the entire time? That’s not how I operate. It will take more than a few paltry years before I can be civil to that man.”
It was hard to know what to say to that, but strangely, her words warmed me a little.
It would always feel good to have Bev in my corner.
I finally met my biological father face to face. It was one of the most awkward moments of my life, but I can’t say I didn’t feel a bit of satisfaction by the end of it.
Bronson Giles was attending a gallery showing in L.A. with his oldest son, Dermot. I’d heard somewhere that he was following in his dad’s acting footsteps. He looked like a perfect younger image of his father, big, blond, and very handsome.
With my same eyes.
I think I was too completely dead to the idea of feeling anything for my father to have a reaction to him. To see him, well, it was only a sort of vague discomfort.
Dermot, on the other hand, I had not expected.
The idea of a deadbeat dad was one thing. The concept of a half-sibling, one that had no inkling that I existed, was something else. It was very strange, but I found myself staring at him whenever he wandered close as they perused the art, trying to catch some kindness in him, some redemption. I didn’t want to hate him.
In fact, I quite wanted to like him.
I wasn’t sure if Bronson thought it was him I was staring at, or if I just happened to catch his eye, but he watched me even more than I watched Dermot.
Finally, Bronson approached me directly. I tensed up sure he’d caught the resemblance between me and my mother, who he’d obviously known well.
That wasn’t why he approached. Well, I suppose it was a twisted version of that. Marta was apparently his type, and being close to the spitting image of her, I suppose I was too.
His smile dripped with greasy charm even before he opened his disgusting mouth.
Before he even got a word out, I had the thought: Oh God, no. My own father is about to hit on me.
Please, please, please, I thought, make this not actually be happening.
Who the fuck else had this kind of luck?
I didn’t even catch the first little bit that he said, more heard his tone, my mind reeling in horror.
It was just too much. Even I couldn’t maintain my usual professional demeanor as I stood there and had the man that had sired me tell me how hot I was.
He didn’t even have good lines. He’d been relying on his fame and money for way too long.
“So what do you say?” He reached into his pocket, pulling out what looked like a hotel room key card. “I keep a regular room at The Beverly Hills Hotel. I can meet you there in three hours. In the meantime, feel free to make yourself comfortable, order some drinks. Charge it to the room.”
He said it all like it was just a forgone conclusion, even when I knew that the look on my face must have told him that I liked him about as much as something particularly smelly that had just gotten stuck to the bottom of my shoe.
He was that oblivious.
“You are just stunning. Where do you get that coloring from? A bit of Asian in there, right? I’ve always been a fan of the Asian girls. But the black hair with those pale eyes.” He whistled long and low. “So very striking. What a beauty. Hot little body on you too.”
I had to restrain myself from slapping him across the face. My voice was not quite steady when I finally found it. “What is your heritage?”
“I’m mainly Danish and English. Your turn, babe.”
My mouth shaped into a sharp smile. “My mother is Japanese and Russian, and my father is apparently Danish and English, though I just this second found that out.”
He gave me a strange look. “How so?”
“Bronson Giles, my mother’s name is Marta Markova. I assume that rings a bell?”
He at least had the decency to turn green then. “My God,” he whispered.
“I can see where that would be a problem, knocking up so many women that you can’t keep track of your offspring. And by the way, Bronson, you are way too old for me. Even if I wasn’t your daughter.” I made a face. “That’s just gross. If you’re going to be a philandering pig, at least be more age appropriate about it. Especially with all of the random women you must have gotten pregnant over the years. Maybe stay away from women that are young enough to be your daughters, or hell, your granddaughters.”
“My God,” he said again. “Do you want money from me or something?”
“I don’t want anything from you,” I told him furiously, my voice low and mean. “Not one thing. I manage this gallery. You are the one that came up to me, or did you not realize that?”
He blinked a few times, turned on his heel and strode away.
Dermot, who’d been about a dozen feet away for the whole thing, sent me one probing glance and followed him.
I thought that was the end of it, but about an hour later, Dermot was back.
He sought me out, waiting while I handled a sale. He smiled and held out his hand when I was free. “I’m Dermot,” he said warmly.
I smiled tentatively back, shaking his hand. “Danika.”
“I just wanted to apologize for my father. He’s…a throwback, and it looked like he came on a little strong back there.”
I studied him. “I’m not sure why you’re apologizing. You didn’t do anything.”
“I just didn’t want you to think I was like him. He’s my father, but I’ve known since I was a kid that he’s a creep when it comes to women.”
I nodded. That he was, and I didn’t know what to say about it.
“Listen, this is an embarrassing way to meet, but I’d love to make it up to you sometime. How does dinner sound?”
I made an effort not to smack my own forehead.
Seriously?! What the fuck did I do to deserve this?
I realized then and there that I had to tell him, had to bite the awkward bullet and just get it out. “The fact that your father is old and married isn’t the only thing that offended me about his come-on,” I told him, my tone matter of fact.
“Oh yeah?” he asked, smiling like I was about to tell him some funny joke.
Oh yeah, it was a real hoot.
“Bronson Giles is my biological father.”
His eyes widened comically, his mouth dropping open.
“I have no proof, though if I needed it, his reaction to me telling him who my mother is would have been enough. But if you don’t believe me—“
“No, no, I do. I just-I-I-I’m shocked. I am so sorry. I wasn’t hitting on you. I meant like a platonic dinner.”
He hadn’t, but I grasped onto that lame ass excuse just as strongly as he did. “Of course. I didn’t think you were.”
In spite of that less than promising beginning, we did sort of hit it off after that.
“I like women as much as the next guy,” Dermot told me over dinner, maybe the fourth time we’d met to catch up. “But if you can’t keep it in your pants, the least you can do is just stay single.”
“Here, here,” I said, toasting him. He was preaching to the choir.
“And seriously, he’s how old, and somehow never managed to grasp the concept of birth control?” He winced as he heard his own words. “No offense to you.”
I laughed. “None taken. I mean, I’m glad I exist, but I could’ve wished for a different father, say, one that was present.”
“How’s Dahlia doing? And how’s her boy?”
I launched into a story about darling Jack.
We always asked about the other siblings. We kept track, though no one seemed to have any urge to meet up face to face besides he and I. Dahlia had some weird resentment for our half-siblings, a bitterness for them that I couldn’t fathom, considering she’d wanted to have more of a relationship with our father. He was the one to blame. He was the culprit. I could well understand a contempt for him and the things he’d done, but our half-siblings were no more to blame for his actions than we were. Still, there was no talking her out of it.
It was her loss. Dermot was delightful, sarcastic, and fun. We’d decided early on that we’d gotten the same twisted sense of humor.
It was several meetings before he worked up the nerve to ask about what happened to my leg.
“The relationship from hell,” I answered.
This one time he didn’t share the joke with me. His face shut down, and for the first time I saw that my half-brother could be a bit scary. “Some man did that to you?”
I shook my head vehemently. “Bad joke. Sorry. No. It’s a long story, but the short version is that this happened in a car accident.”
He didn’t look convinced, but he did let me change the subject. It had to be easy to catch on that this wasn’t my favorite topic.
“How’s work going? Did you get that part you were auditioning for?” I asked him.
“I did. I start shooting next month. Also, I agreed to do a project with our dad.”
My eyebrows shot straight up. He’d always been vehement about the fact that he didn’t want to ride his father’s coattails to success. He’d never used his connections to get ahead in Hollywood. Until now, that is.
“Hey now, don’t judge me,” he said with an irrepressible smile.
“What? I didn’t say a thing.”
“You didn’t have to. You have very judgey eyes.” I laughed, because he’d gotten it right. I did have expressive eyes. “The fact is, the part is a dream, and I do think I’m perfect for it. I auditioned, and I think I would have gotten the part, regardless of who my father is, just based on that audition. I’d rather he weren’t part of the project, but that’s not up to me.”
“You don’t have to be defensive with me. I’m happy for you, and I’m excited to see how it turns out.”
“You still seeing that girl?” I asked, changing the subject again. He’d been really into some chick he’d just started dating the last time we’d talked.
He grimaced. “Nah, that’s done. I told you she was an actress, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, I learned something. Never date an actress. She was sleeping with the director of her TV pilot. The casting couch stereotype comes from something, I guess.”
“That sucks. How did her pilot do?”
He grinned. “Bombed, so there’s that. I wouldn’t have hard feelings, but she was lying to me for a while before I caught on. Now what about you? You seeing anybody? Did you go on a second date with that accountant?”
