Obviously not.
He wound his index finger around the lip of his glass and closed his eyes. “Look, would you understand what I meant if I said that my last time in lockup, the cocaine, was my pound of flesh?”
Eva frowned. “What?”
“A pound of flesh,” he repeated, lifting his eyes to hers. “Do you know what that means?”
Bewildered, Eva answered, “A debt that must be paid?” She paused. “You dealt cocaine to pay off a debt?”
“No,” he replied. “I was caught with the cocaine to pay off a debt.”
Eva rubbed her forehead in annoyance. “I’m completely confused.”
Carter exhaled and fingered the top of the cigarette box in his jeans pocket, needing the nicotine in his blood. He sighed and leaned his elbows on his knees, detailing the story of Max and Lizzie, from the moment Max pushed him out of the way of a bullet, to the day Lizzie left.
Eva waved her hand dismissively. “And you’re telling me this because …”
Christ, she was a tough one to crack. “Because sometimes things aren’t always what they appear to be.”
“And sometimes they are exactly as they appear to be. One act of stupidity does not change a damn thing.”
“Granted,” Carter conceded. “I know I’m an asshole, I’ll be the first one to admit it.”
“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?” she asked. “Have you any idea about the amount of sleep I lost when she began working in that … prison?”
“I can imagine.”
“No, you can’t!” Eva snapped. “You have no idea. Being a mother is not easy, especially when your daughter insists on making everything so damned difficult.”
“Kat didn’t take the job at Kill to make your life difficult,” Carter refuted. “She took the job to overcome her fears, to overcome what terrified her and kept her awake at night.”
“And what do you know about that?” Eva spat.
“Enough.” Carter pursed his lips in an effort to reel himself in. “Look, I know about her father. I know what happened. Her teaching criminals—”
“Animals.”
“—is her pound of flesh.”
“To whom?”
“To her dad.”
Eva’s face softened and her voice dropped in volume. “What do you mean?”
“The night he passed, she promised him she would give something back. She promised him she would become a teacher and help people, the way he’d done as a politician.” Carter glanced toward the door his Peaches had gone through. “She just wanted to keep her promise. To pay her debt.”
Eva sat back in her seat and stared out the window. The snow had started falling again. “I didn’t know that.”
“Like I said,” Carter murmured. “Things aren’t always as they appear.” He took a deep breath. “I’m in love with your daughter, ma’am. I’m doing this because I want to do everything right. I’m doing this because she wants to be with me, and I want to be with her.”
Eva’s back straightened. “You barely know each other! You think because she’s told you a few secrets, that you know her?”
“I know her better than you think.”
“Oh, please! You’ve known her, what, four, five months?”
A heartbeat passed. “Try sixteen years.”
Eva’s eyes flickered, fierce yet puzzled.
Carter stared right back, waiting for the penny to drop.
Yeah, it was a big ask, but, hell, at this point what did he have to lose? He hadn’t wanted his role in saving Kat to be the deciding factor as to whether or not Eva would accept him with her daughter, but the damn woman had driven him to it with her incapacity to see him without a list of misdemeanors and felonies tacked to his fucking forehead.
Jesus, he’d even brought up the fact that he went to prison for Max. He wouldn’t have mentioned it, if not for having his ass against a wall with no way out. Desperate for Eva to see past his mistakes, he had nothing else to lay on the table.
“How have you known her for sixteen years?” Eva asked slowly. “There’s no possible way. No way.”
Despite her words of conviction, her eyes told Carter the pieces were falling into place. Her stubbornness was the only thing stopping her from seeing what was right in front of her.
“We met … in the Bronx,” Carter said quietly. “She was nine. I was eleven.”
Horror washed across Eva’s features, but it changed swiftly to emotions that were as indiscernible as they were fleeting. She was warring with herself now, battling with what she believed—he was a hardened, dangerous criminal—and the actual truth—he’d saved her daughter’s life.
“The news,” Eva stammered. “It was all over the news. Everyone knows where they were that night. Everyone knows what happened.”
Carter carried on, ignoring her accusation that he was a liar. “I heard a scream.”
Eva closed her eyes.
“I was across the street and I saw everything: the punks with the bat, Kat, your husband. Christ—it happened so damned fast. He … Your husband was on the ground. They hit him with the bat, kicked him. He tried to fight back, but there were too many of them for one man.”