Page 17 of Scarred Sunrise

Chapter 8

Smithy pickedup the book and read the title, The Key to Inner Peace. He sighed and chucked it on the couch beside him. He was all for making changes, the exercise and new diet was helping already but the book, he wasn’t so sure.

Peyton had made changes to his entire life, not just offering him counselling for his issues. However, he hadn’t opened up about how he was feeling. He wanted to get better; it was just hard to tell someone how he felt, but they’d started with the easy stuff, like his childhood.

At least he’d thought it was easy, but as he’d spoken about growing up with an alcoholic for a mother, he’d felt more and more conflicted about the past. Not knowing his father had been a big thing as a kid, wanting him to be a hero who rescued him from the hell of his everyday life. Then as he got older resentment surfaced for the man who’d abandoned him and broken his mother beyond repair.

His phone ringing brought him away from the dark thoughts, and he snatched it from the coffee table, tingles of electricity buzzing through him when he saw Lizzie’s name.

“Liz.”

“Oh, thank goodness.”

Smithy sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he let the warmth of her voice flow over him like a balm. “Liz, what’s wrong?” He stood, walking to the window at the front of his flat and looking out into the clear night sky, his muscles already tense as he waited for her to speak and tell him what was going on.

“Nazareli called and she wants to meet me.”

His neck began to prickle with the sense of looming danger. Moving to the kitchen counter, he grabbed his keys. “Where are you, sweetheart?”

“I’m at home.”

“Stay there, lock the doors, and wait for me. I’m on my way.”

“She knows where Mateo is. She knows I’m on my own.”

He could hear the fear for her son in her voice. “Where is Colin?”

“He went on a fishing trip.”

Smithy cursed. Leaving her alone was fucking stupid and he and Dane would be having words about it, but first, he needed to get her safe. “Stay on the phone with me. I’m in the car.”

“You best not be holding your phone.”

Her stern voice and her caring even now made him smile. A real genuine smile in the face of a crisis. That was Lizzie, always putting everyone else first. “I’m hands-free.”

“Oh, okay.”

He took the roads fast, hating the fifteen-minute drive that separated them, his hands gripped the steering wheel as he wondered about Nazareli.

“Tell me exactly what Nazareli said.”

He heard muffled movements and could picture her sitting at the kitchen table in her home. It had been years since he’d been there, and then only for short periods when nobody was home. He realised now how much he’d held back from her even then and added it to the regrets he had mounting up.

“Umm, she said she wanted to talk to me and when I said I couldn’t because I had Mateo with me, she called me out, saying she knew he was with his father tonight.”

“Did she threaten you?” He felt anger bubbling up at the thought of anyone threatening this woman ever again.

“No, nothing like that.” He could picture her shaking her head as she spoke. “She sounded kind of desperate. She said I was the only one she trusted, but I have no idea what that even means as we’ve never interacted with each other.”

Smithy pulled into her father’s driveway, the headlights sweeping over the house.

“I see you, let me get the door.”

He rushed to the door as Lizzie pulled it open and seeing her was like breathing after being underwater. All his senses sharpened as he pushed through the door. The urge to take her in his arms had his hands itching. This woman was everything to him, and he’d been too chicken shit to fight for her, not once but twice. It would serve him right if she never gave him another chance, but he desperately hoped she did.

Instead of hauling her into his body and holding her like he wanted to, Smithy walked through to the kitchen. “Where and when does she want to meet you?”

“In an hour and forty-five at the entrance to Haugh Woods.”