Page 56 of Wreckage of Me
“She was mad,” Devereaux continues, unaware of the thoughts swirling in my head. “Told me if I just wanted to play with her, I should leave her alone.”
“So you just walked away?” I understand how hypocritical I sound, even if only to my own ears since Devereaux is not aware of my Becca situation.
“I was just starting my business at the time.” He looks pensive for a second, almost like he’s looking through time, back to when he and my mother had to have been a hot item. “Your mother didn’t have any family, no support.” I nod in understanding. It’s weird to say, but me and Wyatt never had grandparents. It was even weirder back when we were in school. People couldn’t believe it.
“I always wondered what happened to my mother’s parents,” I mutter, mostly to myself. “From what she said, they had been in a car accident.”
Once again, images of Becca slam into me. This time, she’s telling me about her parents dying in a car crash and how she ended up in charge of her little brother.
“She broke up with me,” Devereux brings my attention back to him. “We were both very young, especially her,” he smiles wistfully. “I was stubborn,” he chuckles in self deprecation. “I told her I was leaving, and she was free to do as she pleased. Your father was there to console her.”
“Fuck,” I rub the palms of my hands over my face. I had been so close to not having that fucker for a father.
“When I got back, it was four months later,” he explains, his voice sounding colder all of a sudden. “Arlene was pregnant with his baby. I beat the shit out of him.”
I let out a sarcastic snort and turn around. What a cluster.
“She then told me that he’d forced himself on her,” Devereaux continues talking behind me. “I offered to bring her to Montana with me. She felt guilty taking the baby away from their father.”
I take a moment to mull things over. “It’s ironic.”
Devereaux’s eyebrow goes up in question. “What is?”
“She sacrificed herself for me by staying with the fucker,” I explained. “And after I joined his club, I treated her like shit to protect her from him.”
“She knows why you did it,” Devereaux says, and now it’s my turn to raise an eyebrow in question, but he doesn’t give me any further explanation.
“So you decided to kill my father now, thirty-five years after he forced himself on Ma and got her pregnant?” Fuck, and now I’m being reminded that I’m going to be thirty-six soon. And what do I have to show for it other than a pile of rubber in the form of the clubhouse burned to ashes?
“I was able to communicate with Arlene after I left. She’d call me once in a while, cry…”
Fuck, I hate the thought of my mother being that miserable with my father from the beginning. It’s a miracle she survived it.
“You were about a year old when I couldn’t take it anymore,” Devereaux tells me, his tone most definitely lethal now. “He beat her and threatened to kill you. Make her watch while he did it.”
I’m not sure how much more of this I can stomach. The guilt over how I treated my mother for so many years is getting to me now.
“I was able to get her, and you, out,” he explains. “I was going to bring you both to Montana, get you settled here.”
“Why didn’t you?” I sound bitter and definitely unapologetic about it.
“Your mother found out about my wife,” he smirks, stopping me in my tracks.
I’m not one to judge anyone who cheats on their partner, but when my mother’s involved…
“You were married while fuckin’ around with my mother?”
“It was a marriage of convenience,” Devereaux shrugs. “I thought she’d understand. But she didn’t want to be the other woman.” The way he says it, it sounds just like my Ma, which brings home once again the point that he knows her very well.
“So she chose to stay with that fucker and ruin all our lives because you were married?” I thought she’d be smarter than that, to be honest. She had the opportunity to leave, and she chose to stay.
“Once I got her out,” Devereaux explains, “I got a call from home. My wife tried to kill herself when she found out she was pregnant with my baby. I had to rush home, I told Arlene to wait for me here with you.”
“Let me guess, my father found us.” This entire story is so predictable, it’s not even funny.
“Yes. But better,” Devereaux chuckles. “He actually had someone come here and poison my wife, tried killing her. Raped her first.”
My face is set in stone at this revelation. It does sound like something my father would’ve done, so I can’t comment one way or another. The fucker was devious when someone got onto his radar. He tried to eliminate me, his flesh and blood, why not believe he would’ve tried to kill a virtual stranger too just out of spite?
