Return to Me (Breaking Free Book 2) Read online

  I go ahead and buzz him in through the front gate, then rush to comb my hair, and try and put myself together. It’s three in the afternoon. Why did I sleep so late? Why did I stay up so late? I need to at least pretend not to be fucked up because I don’t want my family on my back. I would’ve never taken anything if I knew he was due today. Maybe I should’ve ignored his buzz, or told him I’m sick, but it’s too late now.

  Planting a big smile on my face, I swing the door open. Nolan looks like I remember, tall, a little pudgy, glasses, and messy hair. He dresses just like a high school teacher, khakis, collared shirts. I know for a fact he makes enough from songwriting he could give up teaching if he wanted, but I guess he likes it. I used to think he was an idiot when he passed on that first contract from Arista. Lately I’m starting to believe he had the right idea all along.

  “How ya been, Trin?”

  “Can’t complain. How ‘bout you?”

  He comes in and drops his guitar and notebook on a table in the foyer so he can pull out his phone to show me pictures. He has three kids, two girls and one boy. If I had kept that baby, it wouldn’t be much younger than his first. I would have a six year old. I bet it would’ve had dark hair like Gabe, since that’s a dominant trait. We both have blue eyes, but his are a sharper, brighter blue.

  Why does my mind automatically jump to this? It’s a good thing I didn’t keep it though. I’m a fucking mess. What kind of mom would I be?

  This is why I hate kids, and mention of kids, and seeing pictures of them. But it’s not really the kind of thing you can say out loud to people - No, I don’t want to see pictures. Why don’t you just keep it to yourself - so I smile and nod. “They’re growing up.”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Do you want some coffee? I was about to make some coffee.”

  Nolan follows me through to the kitchen. I have a helluva time with the cappuccino machine. Why did I buy this stupid thing? I threw out my regular coffee maker for this monstrosity. I eventually remember how to work it, and I manage not to burn myself in the process while we exchange idle chit chat

  He eyes me over the edge of his cup. “Have you talked to your sister lately?”

  “Not since I’ve been back.” I’ve been dodging her calls. I don’t need another guilt trip. “Do you two still talk much?”

  Nolan nods. “From time to time.”

  “That’s nice. That’s good, but I’ve been busy, ya know?” Why did I come back here? I should’ve stayed at my place in California, but then I remember the creepy message from my stalker. That’s why I came here. This house is built like a fortress.

  “She’s been busy too, taking care of your mom.”

  “What do you mean, taking care of her?” I ask sharply. “What am I paying those nurses for then?”

  Nolan blinks at me a few times. “Faith wants to spend time with her while she still can. Maybe you should stop in and see her.”

  “Faith or my mom?”

  “Well, both really. Faith is there with her most days from what I hear, in the mornings when her daughter is in school. You could stop in for a visit, kill two birds with one stone.”

  “She doesn’t want to see me,” I say fast. “Not Faith. I mean, not my mom… My mom is the one who doesn’t want...” I laugh. Even when I’m not high, I have a tendency to laugh about things that bother me, and talking about my mother bothers me quite a bit.

  “Maybe it’s not my place to say, but… I lost my dad two years ago, and I would give just about anything for even an hour with him. He went sudden, and there are things I wouldn’t mind saying if I had that chance. You’ve still got that chance, Trin. From what I hear, she might not have a lot longer.”

  “You’re right.” I say, setting my cup down on the granite countertop island. “It’s not your place to say. I don’t pay you to come here and give me lectures.”

  Nolan’s mouth gapes. He wears an expression of a man recently slapped across the face.

  “Shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. We just have a complicated past, ya know? And I’m… I don’t really want to talk about her.”

  I wonder how close he is with my sister, how much he knows.

  The things my mother said to me when she found out I had that abortion were truly awful, but there were a lot of awful things before that too.

  She took the words of the bible quite literally. Spare the rod and spoil the child. It doesn’t say that word for word in the bible anywhere, not specifically, which I know because she drilled that crap into my head from the day I was born.

  He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes. I can’t remember which verse it is now. Proverbs something, and I wasn’t her son, and she didn’t use a rod. She used a belt, sometimes a switch from the bush that grew out from the back porch, and she washed out my mouth with soup, a bar of actual fucking soap, although I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the bible condoning that. I don’t think there’s anything in there about leaving your kid locked in her room for half of the day, and all of the night for the grievance offense of not finishing her lunch either, but that didn’t stop her. When I pissed on myself because I couldn’t hold it any longer, I got in trouble for that too.

  She never did that crap to my youngest sister Charity, who is autistic, and she never beat on Faith much, because my oldest sister never gave her much reason. My brother Joey was always pretty good too. He didn’t get a lot of it, but me, I guess I’m hard headed, stubborn, and prone to the ways of the devil.

  My mother ought to be glad I’m paying for those nurses so she doesn’t have to rot in a hospital, and I sprung for all those treatments, and had Brent make calls so she could get into some medical trial. If it wasn’t for me, she would already be dead, and all I got from her was a thank you card with a short hand written message.

  Trinity, I’m sincerely grateful for all of your help. You are beautiful, and talented, but I wish you would use those gifts to glorify God.

  There was no - I’m sorry, or I miss you, or I love you. She didn’t include anything about wanting to see me again either. The last time I saw her face to face, I was eighteen years old. She told me she was ashamed of me, that I was a disgrace, and that she never wanted to lay eyes on me again. From where I’m standing, I’m doing both of us a favor by not showing up there.

  Nolan gives me a feeble, downtrodden smile, and rubs his hands together in mock excitement. “You ready to get started.”

  “Ready when you are.”

  I’m not. I’m so not ready. I go to retrieve my notebook filled with little snippets. I thought I had something, but this all seems like crap now. The shit I write when I’m fucked up is garbage. Flicking through those creased pages decorated with little drawings in the margins, it’s plain as day that I’ve spent most of the past nine months fucked up. “I don’t have much, Nolan. And I don’t know what they want from me this time. They keep changing their mind.”

  “Who is they?”

  “You know, Brent, the record label.”

  “Well, what do you want to do?”

  My long peel of laughter dies out to a sigh. He really has no idea how this works. “I don’t know.”

  He reaches for my notebook. I’m almost ashamed to hand it over, but he’s here, and we have to come up with something. Brent wants me back in the studio in three months.

  While he’s flicking through the pages, I wander out on my deck to have a cigarette.

  The view from up here is amazing. Trenton looks so picturesque from this vantage point, the rolling mountains covered in autumn leaves. The thin strip of river that curves and windes through the center of town. Even if I wasn’t from here, Trenton isn’t a bad place to find oneself.

  I just wish I was a little less recognizable so I wasn’t stuck up here on this mountain. Maybe I should dye my hair. I could get a face life. I don’t really want to rearrange my features, but after this next record I could get a few things nipped
and tucked, change just enough so no one knows who I am.

  I could go by a different name too. Trinity is such a stupid name. I want to be an Anna or Melissa. Maybe Jennifer. That sounds nice and normal. I could go by Jen for short.

  I drop my cigarette into an empty beer bottle I left out here last night, or the night before, or maybe the night before that. It goes out with a hiss, and I reach for another cigarette just as Nolan comes through the french doors.

  “Since when do you smoke?” he asks.

  I’ve just accidentally lit the wrong end of the cigarette, and I shove it through the narrow neck of the bottle as well. “I don’t usually.”

  “It’ll ruin your voice.”

  I laugh. “It’ll ruin more than that, but it’s just an occasional habit.”

  I smoke occasionally when I’m high, or stressed. I’m both at the moment. Nolan’s eyes fall on all the empty bottles. If I had remembered he was coming, I would’ve cleared this all away. I have someone that tidies up every other week, but she’s not due until tomorrow.

  Nolan adjusts his glasses and stares at me. “Conner mentioned you were having some… difficulties on the road.”

  “Did he?” I laugh so hard my shoulders shake. “Did he also mention he-” I catch myself before the truth slips out.

  “He what?”

  “Nothing,” I mutter.

  What happens on the road, stays on the road. It’s an unwritten rule, and one I might need to remind Conner of the next time we run across each other.

  “Trin, are you doing okay?”

  “I’m just tired. I think I’m coming down with something. Maybe… Maybe we can do this another day? I need to get a hold of Brent, figure out what direction he wants to take.” Our last conversation on the matter is kind of a blur. “Whatever day is good for you, I’ll be here. I’m here all the time. We can… is that okay?”

  Nolan nods and gives me this concerned, sad look that makes me laugh some more.

  As soon as he’s out the door, I go to clean up. I start out on the deck, and make my way through the house. Why did I have such a stupidly large house built? Someone with ten kids wouldn’t need a house this big.

  I throw away the remaining beer in my fridge, and the half empty bottle of vodka. I dump the rest of those pills in the toilet, and flush them away. This has gone on for long enough. I know I’ve got a rough few days ahead of me, but I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

  On Saturday I start to feel almost human again, which is good because I need to run out and get my niece a birthday present. I’ve left it too late to have something delivered. I didn’t even know she was having a party until two days ago. I kind of wish I could skip it, but Faith has been harassing the shit out of me about it now that she knows I’m in town.

  Without makeup, bouncy blowed out hair, and half of my tits hanging out, I don’t really look much like Trin SINclair. I look kind of like a lazy slob in a pair of faded jeans, and an oversized sweatshirt. I pull my hair into a ponytail, and slide a ball cap low on my forehead. A pair of non prescription glasses completes my disguise.

  I still get recognized sometimes, but hopefully today I’ll get lucky.

  What do six year old girls like? I’m a shitty aunt. I barely know my niece Hope, but the toy store is sectioned off by age range and gender, so this shouldn’t be too difficult.

  If I’d kept that baby, it wouldn’t be much older than Hope. They would be cousins.

  Why does shit like that pop in my head to this day?

  I don’t truly regret that decision. Maybe sometimes. I don’t know. I definitely wasn’t ready to have a kid, then or now. I blame my mother for all this residual guilt, the shit she said to me after the fact, and all the crap she crammed down my throat the years prior.

  There’s really no sense thinking about it now. It’s a stupid thing to think about, especially when I can’t drink or take a pill to help me forget.

  I don’t have a clue what Hope likes, so I throw a bit of everything in the cart. Barbies, a scruffy, mechanical dog that does little flips, and some educational toys, a bunch of other random crap. Faith will probably bitch because it’s too much, but she can take back what she doesn’t want her to have.

  A little girl in a lavender coat darts between me and my cart to get to the display of dolls. I move forward a few steps to give her some space.

  “Sorry about that,” a man says in a deep baritone that has haunted me for years.

  I freeze at the sound of that voice. My heart stops in my chest, stutters.

  Don’t turn around, Trin. Don’t do it.

  If I was smart, I would just keep walking. He hasn’t seen me yet. I doubt he even wants to see me, but I am suddenly desperate to see him again even if it’s going to hurt like hell.

  It almost doesn’t look like Gabe. It’s those same electric blue eyes, same square jaw. His dark brown, almost black hair is shorter than he used to wear it. He’s taller than I remember, broader through the shoulders, and he has a bit of stubble along his jaw, like he skipped the razor that morning, maybe the day before too.

  There is suddenly a lot of white around the bright blue of his eyes. “Trin, is that you?”

  I press a finger to my half smile. “I’m incognito,” I whisper.

  “How’ve you been?”

  Miserable. I’ve been absolutely fucking miserable, and seeing him again just makes it worse. “I can’t complain.”

  He bends down to scoop up the toddler before she can dart off again. She has red hair like Leah, and blue eyes like Gabe. I knew they got married, but I had no idea they had a child together. I’m happy for him, I really am, but seeing that makes me feel even more miserable.

  “Since when do you wear glasses?” he asks with a lopsided grin that shows off his dimples. It really should be criminal that he looks this good now.

  “I’m incognito, remember?”

  “Yeah, I guess you get hounded all the time. Sorry. You must be busy.”

  I shake my head quickly. “I’m not busy.”

  What the hell am I doing? He’s married, and he must hate me, although he’s not looking at me like he hates me. But he is married, and not to me. I had my chance with him, and I blew it.

  “This is Rose. You wanna say hi baby.”

  She doesn’t. His little girl is flopping all over, trying to get down. She wants to look at the toys. “Hi, Rose. She’s beautiful. She looks just like Leah.” Maybe I’m not busy, but he has a wife to get home to, and I have a big empty house to go hide in. “It was nice seeing you again, Gabe.”

  “Y-You too.”

  I make it as far as the end of the isle when a woman pushing a cart in the opposite direction squints at me. She has a boy about Rose’s age riding in the seat of the cart, and there’s a phone pressed to her ear. She stops, and widens her eyes at me. “Are you… You’re Trin Sinclair, aren’t you?”

  Chapter 6

  Gabe

  I’m such a cliche. It’s pathetic. I’m the dad taking his kid to the toy store to make up for that fact that I haven’t seen her all week. I should’ve gotten a cart. I tried, but Rose didn’t want to get in it, and I don’t want to spend any of the short amount of time we have together fussing at her.

  When Rose bustled right over the feet of a petite blonde in a gigantic navy blue sweatshirt, I never in a million years could’ve predicted who it was.

  Trin is pale, and thinner than I remember. She looks more like the girl I knew than the airbrushed vixen I spied on magazine covers a few years back. Same pouty lips, same cornflower blue eyes. Her voice is just the same too, every word a sultry whisper punctuated with a hint of twang. Even when she’s not whispering, there’s just this quality to it. I bet she could read legal disclaimer or a passage from an encyclopedia and make it sound sexy.

  But it’s clear she doesn’t want to see me. She made that quite clear the last time we spoke.

  She wasn’t ready to have a baby, which I understood. She wasn’t ready to get married
right then and there either, which made sense. What I’ll never understand is how flippant she was about it. She laughed, and cracked a joke. She cranked up the radio in my old car, and said, “Let’s take a road trip, Gabe. Let’s get the fuck out of Trenton. I hate that place.”

  We had just walked out of that clinic, and even though I was there to support her, because I loved her, it’s not a choice I wanted to make. It wasn’t my choice to make anyways. It was hers, but the fact that I didn’t want to pack a bag and run away with the seventy five dollars we had between us was reason enough to hand me that engagement ring back. “Why do you have to be such a pussy about it, Gabe? Are you trying to make me feel like shit? Is that what you’re trying to do?”

  No, it wasn’t what I’d been trying to do, although I could’ve handled myself better.

  The gravity of it all hit me hard as soon as we were alone together in the car. I’m not a weepy guy, then or now, and it’s not as if I was sobbing like a little girl, but you’d never know it by the way Trin reacted. I guess that’s Trin though. She laughs, or gets pissed off. I’ve never once seen her teary eyed except for the day she told me she was pregnant.

  I watch her out of the corner of my eye while she slides off those glasses, and gives a tight smile alongside the woman who’s stopped her for a picture.

  She looks so sad. Maybe the woman thrusting the little boy in Trin’s arms for another photo doesn’t see it, but it’s as plain as day to me, I guess because I know her.

  But I don’t know her, I remind myself. I haven’t known her for a long time, and what would someone like Trin have to be sad about anyways?

  Turning my attention back to Rose, I help her select a toy, then I guess it’s off to grab a meal. I only have her for the day, since I have to work tonight, but I’ll be getting her some in the middle of the week when Leah has to work.

  So far she’s been pretty willing to compromise about things, for Rose’s sake, and I hope the trend continues. We have yet to sit down with a lawyer, or hammer out the details, but it looks like we’ll be able to part ways without too much drama.