That’s what she’d been trying to tell him, right? Show him? That she was resilient and unafraid. Daring and strong. While James had only seen someone hell-bent on harming themselves. How he could miss Lita’s message when he only ever looked at her baffled James. God, he’d been blind.
Well, he wasn’t now. And there was no way to come back from calling a woman like Lita weak. No way to repair four years’ worth of damage. He’d done the worst of it inside that very Mustang, could still feel the ghost of her sadness in the passenger seat, haunting him.
James shut off the ignition and stepped out of the car, into the hospital parking lot. His father was being released tomorrow and enough was enough. He’d respected the man’s wishes not to visit since arriving in town, but James’s resolve not to go after Lita was taking a rapid nosedive. He missed her like fucking hell. Missed her wit. Her cocky smile. And now he knew what she felt like beneath him, knew the bliss of being inside her. So going to her and begging until his face turned blue had become seriously appealing, especially since his return to Los Angeles was imminent. In order to prevent himself from going straight to her doorstep, he needed to go look his father in the face. And see himself reflecting back. James needed a reminder that Lita had a better future than one with a man like him.
A man who needed too much control. A man who needed to dominate her in an extreme way to get off. A man with violence in his blood. Lita might believe she loved him, but as he’d proven with his misjudgment, he wasn’t worthy of love that forgiving. He wasn’t worthy of a woman so strong when he couldn’t even overcome his own weaknesses.
James strode through the sliding glass hospital doors and walked straight into the waiting elevator. Since he’d been handling the insurance paperwork for his mother, he knew exactly where to find Malcolm Brandon in recovery. When he walked into the dimly lit room, one would have thought his father had been expecting him for the lack of surprise on his face. Malcolm had aged a lot, although since James hadn’t seen him in so long, it wasn’t apparent how much the stroke had to do with Malcolm’s pallid skin, new wrinkles. But his father’s eyes were exactly the same as he remembered. Steady and calculating.
“I don’t want to see you.”
James leaned against the far wall and crossed his arms. “Yeah? That’s too damn bad.”
Malcolm snorted. “Still not afraid of me.” At once, his father looked weary, his head flopping back against the pillows. “You never were.”
“No.” James waited for his father to start shouting, waited for his hands to fist in the bedclothes. To transform into the man of his memory. “I’m going back to Los Angeles tonight. I just needed to know some things before I went.”
After a heavy moment, his father waved a hand. Go ahead.
It took James a while to formulate exactly what he needed to say. He hadn’t walked in with a plan, only knew that he couldn’t let the opportunity to learn more about himself pass. “How did you stop?” He paced to the window without taking his attention from his father. “How did you learn to control the…violence?”
Malcolm’s face twisted. “What is this?”
“Just answer the question.”
His father’s shock faded in degrees. “I stopped feeling sorry for myself.” James hadn’t been expecting that answer at all, but Malcolm pushed on before he could question him. “Not all of us excel at whatever we set our minds to. Look at you, waltzing in here from Los Angeles and increasing my profit margins in the space of a month. Fifteen years ago, I would have hated you for that. Because I couldn’t do it. Still can’t do it.” The older man rubbed at the gray stubble dotting his jaw. “I would’ve felt how…smug you were. Even if you weren’t smug at all. And I would’ve felt the rage build and build at you, at myself. Until it took me over.”
A pushing started behind James’s eyes, someone prodding him with a fork from inside his head. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all. Wasn’t how he’d envisioned this conversation going. He’d expected to relate to his father on some unsettling level, but none of what Malcolm said sounded remotely familiar.
“It always went back to me feeling…less than. And it took me a lot of years to admit that.” He encompassed the room with a sweeping gesture. “I still feel less than once in a while. Why do you think I didn’t want you to see me like this?”
James stared out the window but saw nothing. “I thought you were still upset over all those times I called the police. Or what came after. The fighting.”
“No. You did the right thing.” James turned to his father, saw his face was a mask of shame. “Thank God your mother forgave me or I’d have nothing.”
The fork behind James’s eyes twisted, visions of Lita’s smiling face in the forest dancing in his head. “So the violence…it was always about you. Not the person you focused it on?”