“Thank God you were smart enough to realize that.”
His eyes were narrow slits of anger. “I wasn’t smart. If I’d been smart, I wouldn’t have become an alcoholic in the first place. I was lucky people loved me enough to want to help me and push me into realizing how bad I fucked up. I went to a treatment center, dried out, and got counseling. I haven’t had a drink since. It scared the hell out of me. I could have lost everything, all because I wanted to fit in and be popular. All because of one night all those years ago when I was fourteen. That started it all. So I’m sorry if you think what happened to Nathan is no big deal. To me it’s a big fucking deal.”
“But you don’t talk about it. Nobody knows you’re an alcoholic, right?”
“No. No one knows, and that was my choice. I chose not to make it public. I go to meetings and it’s done quietly. But I’m willing to take Nathan to a meeting with me if you think it might prevent him from making the same mistakes I did.”
“Mick, I can’t ask you to do that. Not for my son.”
“Isn’t he worth it?”
“Dammit, that’s not what I meant. Of course he’s worth it. Nathan is everything to me. I’d put myself in front of a bullet for that kid.” She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “But don’t put me in this position. Don’t ask me to risk you over my son.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not. What if someone sees you going to a meeting?”
He laughed. “I’ve been going to meetings for ten years now, Tara. That’s why they call it anonymous.”
“You’d do this—for Nathan.”
“And for you. Because I don’t want you to ever have to go through what I put my mother through.”
She laid her head on his chest.
It took him a minute, but he finally put his arms around her. She felt his tension, so she climbed onto his lap and raised her head, saw the anguish in his eyes.
“You’ve never told a woman about this, have you?”
“It’s not easy for me to trust people with the story. In the wrong hands it could go worldwide in an instant.”
She laid the palm of her hand on his face. “You can trust me.”
“I worried that telling you this might end things between us.”
Her eyes widened. “Why?”
“After you told me about your parents ... I wanted to tell you that night, but I kind of chickened out. Your parents were alcoholics. I’m an alcoholic.”
She palmed his jaw. “Oh, Mick. I would never judge you based on who and what they were. Look at how you changed your life for the better. They never did. Look how good you are with my son. I don’t want to scare you or want you to think I’m asking anything of you for the future, because I’m not. But you’ve done better parenting of my son in the short time we’ve known each other than my parents ever did of me in all the years they had me. So no, I would never judge you or compare you to them.”
He closed his eyes and breathed heavily. When he opened them, it was as if a giant weight had been lifted. And yet there was still a glimmer of uncertainty and pain there. Tara was surprised she hadn’t seen it before. Maybe it would always be there.
It was so quiet in the room—in the entire house—she only heard the two of them breathing. It was a surreal moment. What he’d shared with her was so raw and painful it made her heart hurt for him, for what he’d gone through and survived. Mick was nothing like the magazines portrayed him, nothing like the PR Elizabeth laid out. She knew him now as she never thought she would know another person, and she’d never wanted to be closer to him than she did right now. She wanted him to forget the pain and the sorrow and know only pleasure.
She leaned forward and brushed her lips against his, tunneling her fingers in his hair.
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him, deepening the kiss, his tongue sliding inside and taking possession of hers.
Tara sensed a need in him, and she fed on that need, wanted to give him everything tonight. And when he picked her up and laid her on the floor, coming down on top of her, she wrapped her legs and arms around him, needing the feel of his body. The hard ridge of his cock rode between her legs, and he surged against her, ratcheting up her arousal to a fevered state as he continued to plunder her mouth with deep, soul-penetrating kisses.