Free Better (Stark Ink Book 2) by Dahlia West Page A

at the houses themselves: one-story Ranches, two-story Victorians, and the split-levels that were so common in the area. A basement for himself, a home office for Zoey, attic storage space. Not here, he’d decided one night, but out past the city limits, with space and a view of the hills. As he drove now, he looked toward the edge of town, smaller lights shimmered way off in the distance. It seemed like another world entirely. Somewhere out there was the life he and Zoey should’ve had. Somewhere out there his hand was just fine, their house was warmed by the fireplace he’d built, their baby— his baby— was filling her belly.
    If she didn’t have it with Dalton, why didn’t she have it with somebody else?
    “Why’d you marry him? I mean, him of all people?”
    Zoey traced the drops of mist on the window with her finger. “My parents liked him.”
    “Liked his money, you mean.”
    Dalton had never met Grant, never heard of him, knew virtually nothing about the man, but he didn’t need to. If Elaine and Lyle liked him, that meant he had money, and for the Connors that was all that was important. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t value other traits, for surely they did. Dalton had at least spent enough time with them to know that while their rigid ideas about class were both wrong and annoying, they weren’t necessarily bad people. They simply thought that money gave you manners, that money somehow made you a better person instead just a richer person. But Dalton understood at least one thing that Zoey’s parents didn’t: if money couldn’t buy happiness, it sure as hell couldn’t buy a conscience either. Patrick Grant clearly didn’t have one and the Connors, who did — even if it was often misguided— didn’t know what to do about that or even how to accept it.
    Zoey understood, though. She’d looked at Dalton and, in the beginning at least, had seen a good man if not one flush with cash. Zoey didn’t care about money and certainly didn’t place as much importance on it as her parents did. Dalton knew that once Grant had tried to hurt the baby, that was it for her. No amount of money could make that okay.
    “Fucking rich people,” he said shaking his head slowly. “I mean, I’m sorry Zoey. I know they’re your parents, but Jesus. What the fuck?” He turned to look at her fully. “How did you ever manage to escape being like them?” he wondered aloud.
    “I had you.”
    Neither of them was ready to discuss that further, so they both turned away from each other at the same moment.
    “I’m sorry about your mom,” she told him quietly. “I heard she was sick and I thought about calling you, but then she was gone so fast… Was it horrible? Did she… was she in a lot of pain?”
    Dalton stared at the road, trying to think about how to answer. Adam had cared for her, for the most part, and, while his older brother never talked about it, Dalton suspected that Mom had suffered quite a bit in the end.
    “She didn’t linger,” he finally replied, not putting too fine a point on it. Mom had died relatively quickly, he supposed, but then again, Dalton’s three days in the white-walled detox room had been both agonizing and seemingly endless. He was pretty sure that was only a fraction of what Mom had gone through in the end.
    Adam had spared all of them from seeing the worst of it, it was the least Dalton could do now to spare Zoey from hearing about it.
    “It was quick,” he lied.
    She smiled sadly. “Well, thank God for that.”
    “Yeah.”
    Dalton didn’t say that he wasn’t sure how much God had to do with it. If He did, He was taking Saints and Sinners alike these days. Worse, actually, since He’d spared Dalton for some reason but not Mom.
    “Still,” Zoey said. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to the funeral.”
    “It’s okay,” he told her. “I’m not sure I would have remembered it if you had.”
    “I’m tired,” she said.
    He nodded. “Me, too.”
    He finally headed