Page 173 of Ruptured
“Soft on the outside but strong on the inside,” Diesel said.
“She lets us do a lot more stuffs than Dad. I mean, stuffs that’s not about the MC.”
“She does.”
“You don’t want to talk about your mom because Mom reminds you of her?”
“My mother and Aunt Meggie look nothing alike. Aunt Meggie’s much shorter, blonde and blue-eyed. The woman who gave birth to me was brown-haired. A shade lighter and it would’ve been blonde. She also had brown eyes.”
“What was her name?”
Diesel swallowed and glanced away, then heaved in a breath. He’d tried so hard to forget everything about her, but she lived in his brain because he wanted to ask herwhy. Or how could she. Or any of the million questions on the fringes of his mind. “Theresa. Her name was Theresa.”
“Was she pretty like Mom?”
“She was very pretty.”
“So’s Mom.” Axel began swinging his legs again. “She’s not from Texas but she’s still beautiful.”
“She is,” Diesel agreed, the pain of remembering his mother rising up in him and catapulting him back to his childhood self. On his thirteenth birthday, his mother and father argued and she’d packed her bags to leave. That evening, the cheap icing melting on his homemade cake, Diesel begged her to stay and physically restrained her when it seemed as if she’d ignore him. She’d looked him in his fucking eyes and told him she didn’t want him because he’d been an accident who’d ruined her life.
She hadn’t left, though. An hour after the blow up, during which his father destroyed the fucking cake she’d labored over, she came to Diesel’s room and apologized.
She never mentioned running away again. Until he came home one day and found her gone. He’d kept vigil for two days, believing she’d change her mind. Even if she left Dad, she’d return for Diesel. It didn’t happen.
Clenching his jaw, he forced a smile, hoping his answers satisfied Axel’s curiosity.
“What was your dad’s name?”
“Skylar.”
“Why’d he leave?”
“He began drinking heavily after my mother deserted us. It devastated him. I went to school one day, came home, and found my father and his things gone.” He’d left Diesel in the same manner as his mother.
“He was a shitty chicken for that.”
“Chickenshit.”
“That’s what I said.”
“A shitty chicken and chickenshit are two entirely different things, Ax.”
“They’re both a chicken with shit, right?”
“One’s shit from the chicken. The other’s a chicken full of shit.”
Axel squinted. “So chickenshit don’t mean a chicken taking a shit?”
Laughing, Diesel shook his head. Axel confused words a lot, but he had a very good understanding of the world around him.
“Oh, brother,” Axel declared, slamming his palm against his forehead. “Anyway, I hate to break it to you, but your dad was both. He was also a motherfucker.”
“Agreed.”
“Why do you still love them if they left you?”
Diesel shrugged. “I don’t really love them.”
