Page 156 of Protecting What's Mine

Linc closed his eyes. His jaw was tight.

“Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not some victim,” she said sharply.

She wasn’t a victim. She was a survivor.

When he opened his eyes, the blue was blazing. “I can feel sorry for the little girl who didn’t have a hero,” he said. “And I can also struggle with the fact that I’d love to have shoved your sister down the stairs.”

Mack smirked.

“When I turned twelve, I was starting to get taller. I hit a growth spurt right around the time we did a self-defense session in gym class. I soaked it up like a sponge. The teacher gave me extra time after school. Looking back, I think she’d seen the bruises, had some suspicions. The next time Wendy tried to mess with me in front of her friends, I threw her on her back. They thought it was hilarious. It made her hate me more, but at least she knew I wasn’t going to just take it anymore.”

“How did you survive?” he asked. He reached to pull her into his side, but she held back.

“There’s more you need to hear first.”

“I’m listening.” His fingers interlaced with hers.

“Wendy turned from a bad kid into a worse teen. She shoplifted, dabbled in drugs, bullied people, stole things one too many times. She got picked up for I don’t even remember what now and was sent to juvenile hall. I still remember watching her leave. It was, to that point, the best day of my life.”

“Mackenzie.” He hurt for her. She could hear it in his voice. The man who’d grown up knowing nothing but the good of family and love.

“Anyway, when she got out, she was technically an adult and never came home to live again. As soon as I had my high school diploma, I was gone. I worked my way through college—pre-med, inspired by the nice doctor who fixed my ankle—and then med school. I stayed in Texas when I really wanted distance. But all Andrea had then was me. And I felt responsible for her. I still did until recently.”

“You sent her money?” Linc asked.

Mack nodded, embarrassed now. “I did. Every month like clockwork. It’s over now. I don’t owe her anything anymore.”

“Baby, you never did. You didn’t ask to be born. You didn’t ask her to be your mother.”

He tried to pull her down again.

“Oh, there’s more,” she sighed.

“I don’t want to rush you, but there’s only so much of you sitting there looking so sad that I can take, Dreamy. I need to hold you.”

She took a breath, let it out. “Okay, here goes. I was doing my residency in an emergency department in Dallas. Wendy and our mom had made up again. They were living together in this shitty little apartment where Andrea drank bottles of cheap gin and Wendy did God knows what drugs. Wendy had a boyfriend.”

Mack pulled out of Linc’s grasp and leaned over the side of the bed. She found the sketchpad in the nightstand and flipped to the last drawing.

“That’s him. Powell Coleman III. He had a Mustang and a trust fund. He also had a pretty serious drug problem. My sister, of course, found the whole package very attractive. I never met him. Not until the night he was wheeled into the ED on my shift.”

Linc stared hard at the portrait.

“He looks like a dickhead,” he said finally.

“Well, the dickhead took his Mustang with my sister in the passenger seat and drove into a concrete barrier at a high rate of speed. He’d also taken what turned out to be a lethal dose of heroin. I did everything I could, but I couldn’t save him.”

“Some people you can’t save, Dreamy,” he said, reaching up to tuck her damp hair behind her ear. “And you know that.”

“I know that now. And I think I knew it then. But I had to go out to the waiting room and tell her. Tell my sister that Powell Coleman III was never going to take her for a ride again. She attacked me. She was screaming and crying. Shouting that I’d murdered him. I killed her boyfriend, and she was going to kill me.”

“Mackenzie?”

“Yeah?”

“I fucking hate your sister.”

Mack was surprised when she felt the laugh bubble up. She let it fill up all the empty space inside her, let it carry her over into Linc’s warm, solid side. There was something so reassuring to her about the fact that his cock beneath the white terrycloth was still hard. He still wanted her.