My throat locked up.
It was my fault.
It was my fault.
But I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t admit it. Couldn’t stand losing my brother when he finally found out what I’d done.
He’d gone to prison to protect me. Me. And while he’d been gone, it was me who had committed the greatest crime.
I backed away. “Just . . . don’t. Anything you’ve got to say? Save it. Because it’s done and over and there isn’t anything that will change it. I buried any pain I had with her, so don’t stand over there thinking that you need to come and save me. I have everything I want. Everything I need.”
Sorrow passed through Jace’s eyes. Grief and injury, not to mention the protection he’d always felt for me.
My knees rocked.
I forced myself to stand. Not to show the weakness that threatened to knock me off my feet.
“Is that what you want to tell yourself?” Jace asked, no challenge in his voice, just pity.
I wanted none of it.
I pointed at him as I took a step back. “You got your family, Jace. Reclaimed what you needed. What you wanted. Set your life up the way you’d always deserved. Why don’t you do me the favor of letting me live mine?”
Hurt blanketed Jace’s features, and I blinked, trying to block it. Unable to stand the thought of causing my brother any more pain. Of him being disappointed in me when the only thing I’d wanted to do was make him proud.
Be as good as him.
What a fucking joke.
“Just . . . I’m going to go home. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”
I swiveled toward Mack, throwing out a taunt. “Unless you have something to say about what went down in there and need to take me down to the station in cuffs?”
So yeah.
I was being a dick.
Dividing.
Distancing.
But I knew better than to allow myself to get too close.
“Come on, man, don’t fuckin’ be like that. We came because we care about you. Same as you’d do for either one of us.” Mack took a big step forward like he was going to wrap me up in some kind of pussy embrace.
Before he could get to me, I spun on my heel and started to walk away. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
This conversation needed to end.
“You’re hurting, Ian. I see it. Mack sees it. Faith sees it. You don’t need to suffer alone anymore. We all love you and want the best for you. Only thing standing in the way of that is you.”
Leave it to Jace to get in the final word.
I slowed for a moment, eyes pinned on my shoes, before I shook it off and headed up the alley without looking back.
He knew better than to think I was going there.
I left my Mercedes in the parking lot, not even giving a fuck that it probably wouldn’t have wheels come morning, and thumbed into my Uber app. A couple minutes later, I hopped in the back of it before it could even come to a full stop, and I slumped into the dingy seat. I didn’t say anything the whole ride, just tried to breathe through the memories that nudged at my brain.
Trying to take hold.
At my building, I jumped out at the curb, rode the elevator, and moved into the emptiness of my condo.
Darkness and shadows.
The memories followed me there. No matter how hard I tried to stop them, they pushed to the forefront.
Squeezing my eyes against the onslaught, I went straight for the bar and poured myself another drink.
Hoping I’d be afforded some kind of mercy. Hoping I could bury it deeper.
Cover and conceal.
Forget.
It was no use.
They came harder and faster.
Closer and closer.
Panic started to set in.
God, night after night, I couldn’t stop it. When would this bullshit end?
My lungs fisted, and I grasped my head in my hands, trying to refuse the images. The sounds that haunted me like phantoms stalking in the night.
I wanted to run. To scratch the fucking unbearable sensation from my skin. I stumbled into my bedroom. Such a fucking pathetic pussy because I went right for the desk and tugged open the drawer.
I pulled out the silver music box I kept hidden inside.
I lifted the lid, and the dancing angel popped up, one of the arms broken off and the entire body angled to the side, the music it twirled to warbled and distorted.
Just like the image I kept of my mother.
I turned the box over and ran my fingertips over the design engraved in the bottom. A full circle with a Roman Numeral one in the middle of it. It was the same design as she’d had tattooed on her shoulder.
It was the reason I’d gotten the date of her death marked on me the same way as she had this marked on her.
Because I’d never really known when she’d started living and when she’d started to die. If my father had been the reason for her spiral or if she’d been a junkie whore all along.
A rasp of agony left my lungs, and the room spun like a bitch.
And I hated.
Hated her for being so weak. For making promises she never kept. For allowing the sorrow and pain.
I hated that I’d been the monster who had ultimately destroyed her.
I hated myself most that I didn’t know how to stop loving her.
Forever and ever.
Seventeen
Ian
Four Years Old
Ian grinned and snuggled down under the covers. He loved the way his mama’s fingertips felt as she ruffled them through his hair. His mama was so pretty, the prettiest mama in the whole wide world.
Her voice was soft and made him feel warm inside. So soft as she read to him in the darkened room, on her knees on the floor next to the mattress where he slept. She almost sang the words of his favorite book, the one he begged her to read to him over and over again.
Love You Forever.
He’d accidentally ripped one page out, but his mama remembered the words, and she sang about how he would always be her baby.
Page after page.
Even when he was a big, big boy.
And when she finished, she sat up on the edge of the bed, and playfully she pulled him onto her lap before she breathed out a long sigh and cradled him close.
She pressed her lips to the top of his head. “Love you forever.”
“Wuv you more forever.”
She hugged him and then settled him back in his bed, and he smiled when she leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, the cheek, the corner of his mouth.
“Kisses are forever, too,” she whispered. “And they’re only for the ones you love most.”
Ian smacked a bunch of kisses all over his mama’s pretty face. “I wuv you most forever and forever.”
His mama sighed. “I have to go. Ms. Roseann will be here with you.”
As soon as she said it, his chest felt weird, like it was too big and too small all at the same time. “You got to go?”
She touched his cheek. “Yes, baby, I’ve got to go. Work is important. Mama has to make money to feed you so you can grow as tall as a tree.”
Ian tried not to cry, to be brave and big like she told him to be, like his big brother Jace was. But Ian didn’t like it when she went to work. When it was dark outside and he wasn’t sure she would be there when he woke up.
It made him scared.
She sent him a tender smile.
“Goodnight, Love Bug.”
“Night, night.”
She pushed to standing and slowly crossed to the opposite side of the room where she leaned down and tucked in Jace who was already sleeping, before she quietly inched back across the floor toward the door.
His Mama’s shoes were high and shiny, as shiny as the white dress she wore that he was sure was covered in diamonds, just as sure as he was that she must be a princess from one of his favorite stories.
With one last glance back at them, she stepped out and left the door open a crack. Ian strained to listen to the muddle of voices out in the living room, their apartment small enough that he could hear most anything.
The front door shut and Ms. Roseann turned on the television. She laughed from the other room, and Ian pressed his eyes together. Quick to fall into sleep.
* * *
Glass shattered, and Ian jolted awake.
Fear drummed in his heart. He tried to swallow, to press his eyes together tight and pretend he wasn’t there.
“You fucking whore. You do what I say, when I say.”