Page 30 of Tru Blue
“Yes, you do,” she said softly. “You know their birthdays. Thursday the fifteenth of September. The day you rescued them.”
He turned with tears in his eyes and a blatant lack of embarrassment that cut straight to her heart. He didn’t say a word, simply leaned forward and wrapped her in his arms, holding her so tight it was hard to breathe. He held her for a long time, and after he’d been so honest with her, it felt right to be in his arms. When he drew back, the tears were gone, the hard set of his jaw in place once again, and her stomach sank, realizing there was more.
How much more could one man endure?
He set a serious, and once again apologetic, gaze on her. She wanted to tell him there was no apology necessary, that they didn’t get to choose their parents. But that would mean speaking, and her throat was too thick with emotion to manage a single word.
“After Quincy was born, a string of men came in and out of our lives. Never for long, and not good men. Users, pushers, collectors, in for a day, a night, a week. My mother would come home bruised and high. She’d disappear into the bedroom with a guy and tell me to watch Quincy, which was a joke. That woman never paid him any attention. She’d shove a bottle in his mouth to shut him up, but that’s about as far as it went. I won’t bore you with the details of my shithole life, but I moved out when I was eighteen and tried to take Quincy with me. She sicced one of her crackheads on me. He had a gun and pretty much told me to stay the fuck away from the house. I didn’t listen.”
“Jesus. Your own mother did that to you?” She couldn’t hide her disbelief.
He nodded. “Bear Whiskey, a guy I’d met, took me under his wing and taught me to work on cars. When I moved out, he rented me this apartment. His family became my family. He and Dixie, his sister, run Whiskey Automotive, and they run the bar with their other brothers, Bones and Bullet.” He must have caught her curious expression, because he said, “Biker names. Anyway, I grew up across the bridge, and I was afraid of causing trouble for Quincy, so we worked out a schedule of sorts. Our mother would go out for hours, supposedly for work, but…”
He drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Anyway, for two years we saw each other every few days. I gave him money for food, bought him clothes, whatever he needed. And then one day I showed up and heard screaming coming from inside the house.”
Truman covered his mouth and closed his eyes, as if whatever he was going to say made him physically ill. His hand dropped to his thigh, and he turned so his whole body faced her.
“My only thought was Quincy when I barged through the front door.” His voice was low and contemptuous. He pushed to his feet, pacing the deck, rubbing his hands on his jeans, wringing them together, and raking them through his hair, every determined step heightening the tension rolling off him.
“Quincy was huddled on the floor with a gash on his cheek and blood on his shirt, shaking uncontrollably.” He gritted his teeth as he spoke, the veins in his neck bulging, his hands fisting so hard his knuckles blanched. “A man I’d never seen before was violently raping our mother. I tried to pull him off and he swung back, knocking me away. There was a knife on the table…”
GEMMA GASPED, TEARS streaming down her cheeks as Truman leaned his palms on the railing and his head dropped between his shoulders. Memories slammed into him, momentarily sucking the wind right out of him. He wanted to tell her he didn’t do it. That the knife was already bloody, the deed was already done when he’d walked in the door, but the words wouldn’t come—and he knew they never would. His brother might be fucked up, but Truman couldn’t give up hope that one day Quincy would find his way back to a cleaner, better life. And Truman would not be the man who fucked that up for him. He’d keep their secret until he breathed his last breath, no matter what the cost.
Lifting unseeing eyes toward the dark abyss before him, he said, “I wasn’t supposed to go to prison. The guy was involved in some big-time drug ring. The public defender called it a ‘heat of passion’ murder. But my mother lied in court. She said she wasn’t in any danger. For twenty-two fucking years she couldn’t clean up her act enough to be a proper parent, and she somehow managed to get clean for long enough to send her son to prison.”
