“I love hearing you read,” she whispered when he came to the end of the chapter. “Your voice is …”
Carter laid the book down on the damp grass. “What?”
“It’s familiar to me, like I know it better than my own.”
Carter’s heart stuttered. Of course she knew his voice. It was all he had thought to use to keep her calm the night her father had died. “And that’s a good thing?”
“Yeah. It’s a good thing.”
Her smile was wide and honest. Carter allowed his arms to encircle her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder, breathing her scent.
“Will you tell me more about the statue and your parents?”
Carter shifted and exhaled a grumbled, uncertain noise. “I, um, I don’t—”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to,” she said. “I was just curious.”
Carter glanced at the statue again. He wanted to share with her. The only way they could possibly move forward with whatever the hell was happening between them would be if they knew things about each other. Hell, his family would be a good place to start.
He kept his eyes on hers, anxiety creeping up his spine, but all he saw was encouragement and affection. There was no judgment, no condescension, no trickery.
“My dad met my mom when they were eighteen,” he said through a long exhalation. “They were young, stupid, and from different sides of the tracks. My mom was from a very wealthy family. Her father—my grandfather, William Ford—owned one of the first communication companies in the country, WCS. James Carter, my father, on the other hand, had barely two cents to rub together and made what money he did have from playing music at clubs and painting.”
Carter rolled his eyes at the romance of it all. “That’s how he met my mother. She heard him playing piano one night and approached him.” He clicked his fingers. “That was that.”
Peaches played absentmindedly with the edge of his T-shirt; her silence encouraged him to tell her more, to tell her everything.
“To my mother’s family, my dad was never good enough. He was trouble, a bum, worthless, but my mother rebelled, and they stayed together. They got a cheap, crappy apartment after my grandfather cut off my mother’s money, and, within a year, she was pregnant with me.” Carter clasped the bridge of his nose, easing the tension headache that teased behind his eyes. “She hid the pregnancy for a long time.” Carter laughed without humor. He dropped his hand. “She hid me.”
Peaches’ hand found his chin and pulled his face up. “Hey. It’s okay.”
Exhausted with the tumult of emotion washing over him, Carter placed his forehead against hers. She leaned right back, strong and steady.
“My mother went back to her family,” he continued. “My father had no money and she ran back to them like a coward. My grandfather told her to give me up, and she fucking considered it. It was only because my father turned up at the family house, shouting and demanding his rights, that they relented. My grandfather didn’t want a scene or gossip for the family.”
“Carter.”
“Long story short, my grandmother—my mother’s mom—was disgusted with her daughter’s behavior. She fought for me and told her she had to face her responsibilities. A trust fund was drawn up for me, and full parental rights were given to my father.” He scoffed. In a small voice, he added, “The bitch didn’t even fight it. For me.”
“Unbeknownst to my grandfather,” he said with a self-satisfied smile, “my grandmother put her WCS shares in my name on the day I was born. She had lawyers draw up a secret, binding contract they’ve never been able to dissolve. My cousins are still trying to dissolve it and get me out of the company.” Peaches tensed. “They only discovered it the day she died. That was sixteen years ago, and even then her shares were worth a little under … fifty million dollars.”
He waited. Peaches blinked. “Fifty?” Carter nodded. “Million? Holy hell.” She shook her head, bewildered. “Carter, why are you here? You have so much going for you. With that amount of money, you could go anywhere, do whatever the hell you wanted, and start over.”
Carter shrugged. “I don’t have access to the bulk of it. It’s trussed up in shares and— I don’t care. It means exactly dick anyway. I don’t need their money.”
The Fords—specifically his cousin Austin—had managed to freeze his assets when Carter was first incarcerated. Fucker. Apparently, even as an adult, Carter was still gossip that was frowned upon by his family.
“Do you ever see your mother?”
Carter shook his head. “She died of cancer when I was eight.”
“Oh God, Carter, I’m so—”
“Don’t apologize for her,” he snapped. “She doesn’t deserve it.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I?” He took a deep breath. “All she did was deny me. She didn’t want me. The only reason she took me once every two weeks was because my grandmother ordered her to in her will. Ordered her to. She just liked pissing her father off. She went through a rebellious phase and got knocked up.”