Strength In Release (The Charistown Series Book 5) Read online

  “Young man!”

  Sebastian chuckled. “Gram, I’m thirty-nine years old. Hardly a young man.”

  “Are you older than me?” A twinkle that he hadn’t seen in ages danced in his grandmother’s eyes as he shook his head. “Then you’re a young man. It’s time we had a talk.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

  Heaviness replaced the sparkle in Florence’s features as the older woman slowly moved her hand, palm up, toward Sebastian’s. Clueless as to where the conversation was headed, he placed his large hand in her frail one and waited for her to speak.

  “Pop and I… well, we failed you, Bastian—”

  “Gram, are you crazy?”

  Her fingers tightened around his. While the squeeze wasn’t hard, the message was clear. “Time to stop talking and start listening, boy. Did we love you? Hell yes. Couldn’t have loved you more if we tried. I’m not fishing for compliments; I know you felt our love every day of your life. No, that isn’t where Pop and I messed up.” Florence took a shallow breath and shifted her eyes away from Sebastian’s.

  That small move set large warning bells off in the pit of his stomach. After all, Florence Gage prided herself on making eye contact at all times.

  “We should have told you sooner, but you were too young to understand. Then as you got older, you seemed happier, so we decided to keep it to ourselves. After everything went down with Angie, there was no freaking way we were going to add any more fuel to your fire, honey. Pop and I were scared you might actually combust.”

  Sebastian’s insides churned as he racked his brain for what his grandmother could possibly be referring to. “Gram, stop with the riddles and spell it out for me. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your mother.”

  His body turned to stone as his grandmother stared at him. “What about Carla?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  “I know we never discussed her. Pop and I figured we would only talk about her if you brought her up. Since you never did, we kept our heads buried in the sand like a couple of ostriches. Fools. We were fools, Bastian. And in the end, our cowardice hurt you.”

  Feeling no malice toward his grandparents, Sebastian willed himself calm. “You guys couldn’t have known that that selfish bitch was capable of blackmailing my girlfriend, getting her to carry on a relationship with me under false pretenses, and accept my fucking ring with the intention of robbing me blind once we shared the same last name.” Sebastian felt his nostrils flare as fire inched through his veins. “Nobody would have expected that kind of venom from their own mother.”

  After sixteen years, that anger still haunted him. Not because he’d lost the girl—hell, his mother had probably done him a favor by showing him Angie’s true colors—but because he’d allowed himself to be vulnerable to the wrong person for the wrong reasons. During that time, he and Max weren’t speaking because Max’s first wife was a lying, cheating sociopath who made Max choose between her and his best friend, and Sebastian had been lonely and lost. The debacle with Angie cured him of that.

  “Bastian, I need you to hear me.” Florence brought his attention back to their conversation. “Pop and I knew your mother had that kind of nasty in her. We knew. We… just kept it from you.”

  “What?” No, don’t use that tone with her. She doesn’t deserve it. “You knew Carla was blackmailing Angie?”

  “Oh, God, no. That said, there is so much you don’t know. So much we should have told you. Your pop and I had hoped that after everything blew over with Angie, you would eventually find your way to happiness. But years have gone by, sweet boy, and… you haven’t.”

  “I’m fine, Gram.” He felt anything but fine. With his mother still around he could never be fine. “Like I said, business is booming, I’m working alongside Max, which makes every day fun. I’m happy.”

  “Yeah, happy,” she said softly. “So happy that you haven’t dated anyone since her. And don’t insult me by claiming that any of those women you take to bed are dates. I may be old, but I’m not stupid. For a little while I thought there was a young woman you were interested in—Lily, was it? When you told me about her, your eyes lit up. But then I never heard about her again.”

  “Lyla.” God, it had been a couple of years since he told Gram about her. “And there’s nothing to discuss. I have no interest in getting serious with anyone. Now, as you used to say to me, stop changing the topic and get back on task.”

  “Right. Of course. I’m gonna tell you the whole story. And if you want to walk out the door and never speak to me again, I’ll completely understand.”

  As if that would ever happen. Her hand in his, Sebastian listened as she explained in detail how his parents met, married, and went on to have him. All were details he had already learned during his own research. The rest was the stuff of Dateline stories.

  He didn’t have any memories of his father, except for the stories he’d heard from his grandparents over the years. He knew his dad had loved him beyond reason and wanted to make the world a safer place for his son to grow up in. What Sebastian didn’t know was only a few weeks after his birth, Carla left without a word to anyone. Only a letter saying she needed a break and would come back when she felt better. Steven searched for her using his police contacts, but other than work, he never left his son’s side. After two months, Carla returned with no apologies and no information as to where she had been.

  As they say, love is blind and Steven Gage was madly in love with his wife. He begged his parents to forgive and forget, claiming the most important thing was Sebastian was well cared for and Carla did come home where she belonged. Florence explained how she and Peter did their best to include Carla into the family fold, but unless Steven was around, she kept her distance.

  The night Steven was shot, Carla was out with friends. Florence and Peter had a neighbor come to babysit a sleeping Sebastian, and they rushed to the hospital. Before Steven died, he made his parents promise to not only take care of his boy but to always look after his wife. It was his dying wish.

  Within weeks of Steven’s death, Carla packed up herself and Sebastian and told her in-laws that living in their guest house was too painful. The memories made her ill. She asked for money in order to start over somewhere else. Devastated over having just lost their only son, they begged their daughter-in-law not to leave, but she was not to be swayed. With a hefty amount of money deposited in her bank account and the promise to visit soon, she took her son and left Charistown.

  For more than two years, the only information Florence and Peter had about their grandson’s well-being came from phone calls Carla made when she insisted on getting more money stating that his childcare was expensive and she didn’t trust anyone else to care for her son. When they demanded to speak to little Sebastian, he sounded happy, if a little reserved, so they continued to send money in monthly increments.

  When Sebastian was almost five, Peter demanded he and Florence see him or money would stop being sent. Carla agreed to come to Charistown.

  “Oh, Bastian,” Florence croaked. “Seeing you after all that time was the happiest and most tortuous day of our lives. Our sweet, bright-eyed, chunky baby boy was no more. We don’t know what she did to you—you always said she didn’t hurt you—but you were so skinny. Your hair was matted, your clothes were either too big or too small, as if she had gotten them from a second-hand store—of course there’s no shame in that, but honey, we had given her hundreds of thousands of dollars. She appeared perfect and you… you looked as if you were suffering.

  “Your mom was drunk off her ass within an hour of arriving, and it seemed as if that was no big deal to you. When she would drop something, you would rush to pick it up. When she tripped, you would hurry to kiss her ‘booboo.’ You told us that was what your nanny did when you got hurt.”

  “I had a nanny?” Surprise must have registered on his face.

  Florence nodded. “Not the trained professional she had led us to believe our m
oney was paying for. The girl was barely a teenager your mother paid to raise you while she was out getting drunk.”

  Was it possible for that woman to disgust him more than she had all these years?

  “You seemed quite fond of Trudy. I think that was the only thing that kept your pop from ripping your mother apart piece by piece. That said, we both knew that afternoon that we would never let her take you from us again.”

  Scrolling through his mental Rolodex, Sebastian realized for the first time that they had done it. They had kept him in their custody even though Carla had always threatened to take him away. “How? You kept her from taking me. I want to know what you had to do in order to make that happen.”

  He knew the answer before Florence uttered one word and that answered his earlier question—yes, it was possible to be more disgusted with his mother. Ice crystals of detest formed on his bones as his grandmother explained the way she and Peter paid in order to keep Sebastian under their roof. It started with quarterly installments that quickly escalated to monthly demands. When Carla didn’t get her money, she would breeze into town, pack Sebastian’s things, and threaten to take him away. Those were the memories that haunted him. Constant fear of leaving the one place he truly felt wanted. In the end, he always watched his mom leave with barely a good-bye to him, a satisfied smile taking up her face. He remembered it hurting at first, then he remembered the way his body relaxed when she would finally leave. Her disappearing brought him peace.

  “She was going through money like water, and there was no way we could continue to pay her off and live our lives, so we hired a private investigator. We learned that Carla was using the money on alcohol, gambling, and men. So when she came back, threatening to take you away if we didn’t pay her, we shared the information that we had with her. We explained that courts didn’t take kindly to mothers who neglected their children for gambling and alcohol, not to mention using child support to purchase sex from men. She threatened to go into rehab just long enough to get you away from us and disappear forever.”

  As if listening to someone else’s story, Sebastian hung on every word. “What’d you do?”

  “We agreed on one final payment. A large lump sum in exchange for her signing away her custodial rights to you. We didn’t think she would do it, Bastian. We hoped she wouldn’t, but she saw the number we offered, signed the papers, and left.”

  Jesus Christ. But wait… “I know there were long stretches of time when she was gone, but she would always show up eventually. What happened then?”

  “Nothing. She never asked for money, and we never offered. At the time, we didn’t understand why she bothered visiting. She didn’t seem interested in you, and you weren’t yourself when she was around.” Florence’s gaze captured his. “With hindsight being twenty/twenty…”

  “She wanted to make sure she had some sort of connection with the money,” Gage supplied, mentally piecing together everything that had happened with Angie and all of the unpleasant run-ins he’d had with his mother in the years since. The woman’s sense of entitlement blew his mind, but knowing the rest of the story, the fact that she would ask for so much as a stick of gum infuriated him.

  “I’m so sorry, Bastian. Pop and I both are.” Florence’s words were no longer free-flowing as they had been while she shared the stories of the past. Almost as if finally letting go of what shamed her had physically drained her being.

  “Gram, you have nothing to be sorry for. You did what you thought was right. For lack of better words, I’m sorry I came with such a financial burden.” Florence opened her mouth, but Sebastian interrupted her. “Stop, don’t say a word. I know you both would do it a hundred times over, but I wish you never had to go through any of it in the first place.”

  “A thousand times, Bas. But our cowardice has made it so you see love as a twisted ugly thing. Something you can’t trust, don’t want, no longer believe in. Love exists, boy. I saw it every day when I looked in your pop’s eyes. I saw it when your father looked at your mother, regardless if she deserved it, and I see it every time you step foot in this house. You may be big, but you can’t hide your feelings behind your muscles forever. I may be small and dying, but my vision sees more than just your handsome face. Move on from your past and let yourself grab hold of a future.” Florence let out a yawn before sandwiching Sebastian’s hand between hers and closing her eyes.

  “Very nice, Gram.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to the thin skin of his grandmother’s forehead. “Poignant speech punctuated with a yawn just before fading off to sleep. Award-winning stuff there.”

  “Dreamed of being an actress in my younger days,” she mumbled before sleep actually claimed her.

  Chapter Six

  Thirteen Years Ago

  “I’D LIKE TO think it’s my mere presence that’s making your eyes sparkle, but I know it has more to do with the fries and shake than it does me,” Rachel McDavis teased before she took a swallow of her own shake.

  Lyla may have rolled her eyes at her foster mother’s playful comment, but the truth was, she cared about the woman as much as she could care about anyone. “You know that as much as fries dipped in mint chocolate chip shakes is the best combo ever, I’m really freaking thrilled that today was my last appointment with Doctor Wells.” Lyla popped another fry in her mouth.

  Four and a half years of counseling, gah! The therapy sessions were the one requirement Lyla’s foster mother had never wavered on in all the years they had lived together. The biggest concession Rachel ever made was allowing the sessions to go from weekly to twice a month, and that had taken months of begging from Lyla and personal reassurance from the good doctor herself.

  Rachel sighed. “Honey, Doctor Wells is a wonderful therapist. You said so yourself. While I know if you had your choice, you would have stopped going to the sessions years ago, I also know that deep down, whether or not you wanted to admit it, you weren’t ready.”

  “I’m ready now?” Lyla lifted her gaze from the old-fashioned shake glass and stared directly into the warm hazel eyes of the woman who, over the years, had come to be not just a guardian but a lifeline, not just a mother figure but the closest thing Lyla had to a confidant.

  At eighteen years old, Lyla had no real friends, and she was comfortable with that. She couldn’t be herself with her peers, so unless she was expected to participate in group activities for grades, she kept to herself. From the way people reacted to her, with warm smiles and kindness, she assumed she didn’t come across as weird or snobby so much as quiet and guarded. At school, boys flirted with her to the silliest of extremes, but the way she ignored their interest so completely made the other girls like her instead of being catty and jealous. Now at the end of her high school career, Lyla had gotten through with good grades and little drama. After her childhood, drama-free was heavenly.

  “Lyla, honey, did you hear me?” Rachel reeled Lyla’s attention back into the conversation as she had done hundreds of times since the two had met when Lyla was just halfway through her thirteenth year. “You’re graduating high school in three days, you’ve been formally released from Doctor Wells’s care, and you’re heading off to Pitt next week for freshman summer session.” Rachel’s voice was thick as she tucked a strand of hair behind Lyla’s ear.

  “I know, Rach. Lots of people do it. In fact, my graduating class has over eight hundred people. It’s not a big deal.”

  Rounded eyes narrowed, Rachel’s stare bored into Lyla. Uh oh. Lyla watched as Rachel pulled in a breath and released it slowly. The seconds it took for her foster mother to speak felt like minutes, and in that time, Lyla prayed the conversation would avoid any sort of emotional crap. It didn’t matter how many years of therapy she had had—emotions would always be something she’d prefer not to dabble in. They made a person nothing but weak and vulnerable.

  Go ahead and cry, pretty girl. I love it.

  “You’re so wrong, honey. It’s a huge deal. What you’ve accomplished…” Frustration
wound through each syllable that left Rachel’s mouth.

  Judging by the determined look on Rachel’s face, Lyla knew that after close to five years together, the woman who had saved her and loved her fiercely was finally peeling off the kid gloves. The woman who had spent years speaking in whispers with pleading eyes was now approaching her like a mother would her own child—one who needed not just a sweet pep talk but a less-than-gentle push back on the right path.

  “Look, Lyla, I haven’t brought this up in years because, honestly, you don’t need me to remind you of the past. You lived it.” Compassion swirled in Rachel’s eyes. There was no reason to discuss Lyla’s past when it replayed itself so often in her dreams. Rachel had spent years holding her tightly until the nightmares had faded and exhaustion had pulled her back to sleep. “Not everyone does what you’ve done, overcomes what you’ve overcome. You are a strong woman, Lyla Paige. So many others, less determined, less motivated, would have faltered, sunk… failed. But not you, my angel. You have risen. You have strengthened. You have won.”

  Lyla’s throat tightened as she saw tears forming in her mom’s eyes. Shit. She swallowed then swallowed again, refusing to let even the first tear form. It had been years since she’d cried, and she’d be damned if she would ever again.

  Instead, Lyla attempted to break the tension and gain some measure of control over a situation that had escaped her. “Come on, Rach, as if I had any other choice but to succeed? You’ve smothered me with hugs, introduced me to raspberries and chocolate, and taught me everything you know. I had no chance for failure.”