Page 49 of Mile High With the Bikers
“Please?” Her ash gray eyes are pleading for me to let her in.
Something tears in me. Something that might take a lot of fixing to patch back up again. I pull her with me over to the shade of one of the trees near the clubhouse. “Here. Sit with me.”
“Okay.”
My chest grows tight, a feeling I haven't felt in many, many years. “When I was real little, things were good. At least as far as I could tell, but… something happened to Dad. I think he lost his job, but I was too young for them to bother explaining, sothey didn't tell me shit. All I knew for a while was that he was an asshole, but after a while he stopped bothering to hide the bottles, and he went from mostly never home, to there all the fucking time. Looking back, I don’t know if life turned him into an alcoholic, or if the alcohol ruined his life, but it didn’t much matter when he started hitting.”
“Oh no.” She wraps herself around me, but I can’t bring myself to do the same, not until I get it out.
“Age old story, right? It lasted for fucking years. Most of the time it was Mom that took the heat, but when I got bigger, I’d piss him off on purpose to distract him. Sometimes it worked. That bastard made our lives hell. Fuck, I hated her for not leaving. I fucking know in my head she was a victim, but I don’t know if I can ever forgive her for not just picking me up from school and driving to anywhere but home.” I draw a racking breath, hating to go back to the place these memories live. But damn it, she wanted the whole fucking truth, right? “That was my life from when I was probably eight years old until a week after my fourteenth birthday. New Year’s Day.”
She blinks. “Wait, your birthday is Christmas Eve?”
I nod. “Every damn year. He'd blown way more than we could afford on cheap champagne and started popping bottles when—you know how they stream countdowns from around the world? He started as soon as the first fucking tiny island most of the way around the world celebrated. By the time it was dark here, he was fucking smashed. I don't even know what Mom did to provoke him, but he just—shit, he broke and I thought he was really going to kill her.” My heart's racing, I can feel the adrenaline like I'm there again, the images of Dad flashing like a slow motion movie across my eyes. “I broke, too. Grabbed the cast iron pan off the stove.”
Rory’s hand on my side trembles. I can hear her breathing change, but I can’t look at her or I won’t finish.
“I don't think he ever believed that I'd do it. He fucking laughed at me when I closed on him. It was the first time I fought back and the last thing he ever did. I hit him over the head as hard as I fucking could, and he dropped like a popped balloon. Mom screamed for me to stop, but I couldn't. I just kept hitting him and hitting him and hitting him until I could barely recognize his face. There was so much fucking blood. I thought they were gonna lock me away for sure.”
“I don't—” she starts.
“Shh. Let me finish. The whole thing was a blur. My brain fucking checked out, but Mom took over. After taking his shit for years, she cleaned me up, told me to follow her lead and then wiped down the handle to get my prints off and I’m pretty sure got in a hit of her own before she called 911. When they came, she confessed to the whole thing. And I sat there and let her.”
“You were fourteen! Of course you let her. She was protecting you. Just like you're protecting me. If it was your child, wouldn't you have done the same?”
“Yeah. Probably. No, fuck, of course I would've. I lived with some relatives who I’d never seen before in my life while she was in prison. He messed her up pretty bad before I got him, and his reputation was well known. The courts believed it was self-defense but ran her in for excessive force. Probably because his face was mulch. But that was my damn fault too.” My fists are so tightly clenched they hurt. Now I'm just waiting for the moment where she realizes how fucking trash I am.
“Is she out now?”
“Yeah. She only served a couple years and she’s got a little place out in the sticks now. We don't talk much. I think we remind each other too much of what happened. Not just the end, but the whole fucking time. Like your Mom, cards for birthdays and Christmas. Mine's lucky, she can do both with one.”
She squeezes me even harder. “I can't imagine. It must hurt so much to carry around those memories.”
“What do you mean? I don't think you get it. I fucking killed my own father and let my mother go to prison for it.”
“You were a kid! It was self-defense. He was hurting your mother. That's not your fault. You did what you could, but there was no winning solution there. She knew she would get more sympathy and didn’t want you to have to live with that on your record. She wanted to give you a future.” Getting up on her knees and leaning in, she places a kiss on my lips. “Diesel, I don't hate you.”
Fuck. “I?—”
“Diesel!” I look up past Rory to see Hawk waving at me from by the gate. “There's a guy here called Mason, asking about your girl.”
Rory stiffens, then pushes herself to her feet. “Mason? It's got to be about Dad.”
Dad? Fuck. I chase after her. “Not without me.”
She stops just long enough to smile back at me, even if it's a little sad. “I'm counting on it.”
25
RORY
Mason waits patientlyfor me outside the gate, in his dark suit and scrolling on his phone while the guards keep an eye on him. Hawk and… Reaper, I think the other one is called. There are too many faces and names to know everyone yet.
“Can you let him in?”
Hawk shakes his head. “Against orders. Eagle-eye is still pissed about the whole threat to our security thing.”
Mason glances up. “Rory! Good, I was getting worried.”
