“Shit,” I hissed, dialing Jax’s number.
If I needed to be level for anyone, it was my brother. He needed me. After I’d gotten away from my father two summers ago, I’d reported the abuse. My brother’s, not mine. He was taken out of that house and put into foster care, since his mother couldn’t be found.
I was all he had.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out, not even waiting for him to say ‘hello’ when he picked up. “I’m here. What’s wrong?”
“Pick me up, will you?”
Yeah, not with the spark plugs yanked out of my car. But Madoc was still here with his car, probably. “Where are you?” I asked.
“The hospital.”
Chapter 3
“Excuse me, can I help you?” a nurse called behind me as I barged through the double swinging doors. I was sure I was supposed to check in with her, but she could shove her clipboard up her ass. I needed to find my brother.
My palms were sweaty, and I had no idea what had happened. He’d hung up after telling me where to find him.
I’d left him alone—and hurt—once before. Never again.
“Slow down, man,” Madoc chimed in behind me. “This will go a lot faster if we just ask someone where he is.” I hadn’t even noticed that he’d followed me in.
My shoes squeaked on the linoleum as I jetted down the corridors, flinging back curtain after curtain until I finally found my brother.
He sat on a bed, long legs dangling off the side and his hand on his forehead. I reached for his ponytail and yanked his head back to look at his face.
“Ow, shit!” he grunted.
I could’ve been gentler, I guess.
He squinted up at the fluorescent lighting as I took in the stitches on his eyebrow.
“Mr. Trent!” a woman’s voice barked behind me, but I wasn’t sure if it was to me or Jax since we both shared our father’s name.
“What the hell happened to him?” I wasn’t asking Jax. Others were to blame.
My brother was just a kid, and while he was only a little over a year younger than me, he was still younger.
And he’d had a life of shit.
His mother was Native American and barely legal when she’d gotten pregnant with him. While he sported our father’s azure blue eyes, the rest of his looks came from her.
His hair was probably black, but it looked a shade lighter and fell halfway down his back. Certain pieces were braided and then everything was brought back to a ponytail mid-skull. His skin was a couple of shades darker than mine, and everything was overshadowed by his bright smile.
A woman behind me cleared her throat. “We don’t know what happened to him,” she snapped. “He won’t tell us.”
I hadn’t turned away from Jax to see who I was speaking to. It could’ve been a doctor or a social worker. Or the police. It didn’t matter. They all looked at me the same way. Like I deserved a spanking or something.
“I’ve been calling you for hours,” Jax whispered, and I sucked in a breath when I noticed that his lip was puffy, too. His eyes were pleading. “I thought you’d be here before the doctors called them.”
And then I knew it was a social worker, and I felt like a dick. He’d needed me today, and I’d screwed it up again.
I stood between him and the woman, or maybe he was hiding from her view. I didn’t know.
But I did know that Jax didn’t want to go with her. My throat tightened, and the lump inside swelled so damn much that I wanted to hurt someone.
Tate.
She was always my victim of choice, but she was also in every good memory I had.
My brain flashed with the one place that was untouched by hatred and despair.
Our tree. Tate’s and mine.
I briefly wondered if Jax had anywhere he felt safe, warm, an innocent.
I doubted it. Had he ever experienced a place like that? Would he ever?
I didn’t have the first goddamn clue what life had been like for my brother. Sure, I’d gotten a taste of it during my summer with our father when I was fourteen, but Jax had had a whole lifetime of that shit. Not to mention the foster homes over the years. He was looking up to me like I was the f**king world, and I didn’t have the answers. I had no power. No way to protect him.
“Did Mr. Donovan do this to you?” the social worker asked Jax about his foster dad, Vince.
He looked at me before he answered, knowing that I would know when he was lying. “No,” he told her.
And every muscle in my arms and legs burned.
He was lying.
Jax wasn’t lying to protect Vince. He knew that I could tell when he wasn’t being honest. It was the way he’d hesitate and eyeball me before the lie. I always knew.
No, he wasn’t deceiving me. He was deceiving her.
Jax and I settled our own scores.
“Okay,” clipboard lady—who I’d finally turned around to make eye contact with—snipped, “let me make this easy for you. We’re going to assume that he did this to you and move you to a group home tonight until we find another placement.”
No. I closed my eyes.
“You f**king people,” I choked out, my stomach hollowing while I tried to keep my emotions in check for Jax.
All of his life, my brother had been sleeping in strange beds and living with people that didn’t really want him. Our father had carted him around from shithole to shithole, and left him at sketchy places all of the time growing up.
Enough was enough. Jax and I belonged together. We were stronger together. It was only a matter of time before what little innocence he had left decayed and his heart grew too hard for anything good to grow.
He was going to become like me, and I wanted to f**king scream at these people that I could love him more than anyone else. Kids didn’t just need food and a place to sleep. They needed to feel safe and wanted. They needed to feel trust.
Vince hadn’t taken that away from my brother tonight, because Jax had never counted on him in the first place. But Vince had made sure Jax would go back into a group home, and again, he’d put me in the position to remind my brother that I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t protect him.
And goddamn, I hated that feeling.
Grabbing a wad of cash out of my pocket, I yanked my brother in for a hug and stuffed the money into his hand. Without even looking at him, I spun around and walked out of the room as fast as I could.
I didn’t deserve to look him in the face.
But I did know one thing. I knew how to push back.
“Are we going where I think we’re going?” Madoc strolled up beside me, and I wasn’t surprised that he was still here.
He was a good friend, and I didn’t treat him as well as he deserved.
“You don’t have to come,” I warned.
“Would you for me?” he asked, and I looked at him like he was stupid. “Yeah.” He nodded. “I thought so, too.”
Madoc cruised up to the Donovan house a half hour later, and I hopped out of the car before he’d even stopped. It was late, the house was dark, and the neighborhood seemed lifeless, the deep rumble of Madoc’s GTO being the only sound.
I turned around to face him and spoke over the roof. “You need to go.”
He blinked, probably not sure if he’d heard me right.
The past month had resulted in more hell than I should’ve put him through. Sure, fighting was fun. Losing ourselves in girl after girl was moderately entertaining, too, but Madoc wouldn’t go over the cliff without me leading him there.
Would he walk to the edge?
Sure.
Peek over the side?
Definitely.
But he wouldn’t take the step. It was always me who pushed him or let him fall. One of these times, though, he wasn’t going to get up, and it would be my fault.
“No,” he said resolutely. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I gave a half smile, knowing it was next to impossible to get him to leave. “You’re a good friend, but I’m not dragging you down with me.”
I dug my cell out of my jeans pocket and dialed 911.
“Hello.” My eyes were on Madoc as I spoke to the police. “I’m at 1248 Moonstone Lane in Weston. Someone’s broken into our house, and we need the police. And an ambulance.”
And I hung up and looked at the wide-eyed expression on his face. “They’re going to be here in about eight minutes,” I told him. “Go wake up my mom. You can do that for me.”
Someone, probably a legal guardian, was going to have to bail me out.
Walking down the path leading to the tan and red brick split-level house, I could hear the T.V. going from inside. I paused before the steps, aggravated that I hadn’t heard Madoc drive off yet but also puzzled as to why my heart was still beating so slowly.
Why wasn’t I nervous? Or excited?
I may as well have been about to go into a restaurant and order a milkshake.
With Tate, I thrived on that little thrill of anticipating her. It was enough to satisfy me day in and day out. I hated to admit it, but she was always on my mind. I lived for that first glimpse of her in the morning and any interaction with her during the day.
I squinted at the vibrant light from the television screen coming from inside the house and took a deep breath.
The son of a bitch was still awake.
Good.
On the rare occasion Vince Donovan and I interacted, it was with mutual intolerance. He spoke to me like I was a punk, and he treated my brother the same.
As I climbed the porch steps, I heard Madoc drive off behind me. I stepped through the front door and walked into the living room, filling the doorway as I hovered there.
Vince didn’t even bat eyelash as he barked, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Grabbing the long, wooden stem of the lamp next to me, I yanked the cord out of the wall.
“You hurt my brother,” I spoke calmly. “I’m here to settle up.”
Chapter 4
“You didn’t have to bail me out.” I ran my tongue over the sweet sting of the cut at the corner of my mouth.
“I didn’t,” James, Tate’s dad, answered. “Your mother did.”
He steered the car through the quiet twists and turns leading into our neighborhood. The sun peeked through the trees, making the red-gold leaves glow like fire.
My mother? She was there?
Madoc and James had been at the police station all night, waiting for me to be released. I’d been arrested, booked, and ended up sleeping in a cell.
Word to the wise about waiting to be bailed out: Nothing happens until morning.
But if my mother had bailed me out, then where was she?
“Is she at home?” I asked.
“No, she’s not.” He turned a corner, downshifting the Bronco. “She’s not in any shape to help you, Jared. I think you know that. Your mother and I talked last night at the station, and she decided it was time to go to the Haywood Center for a while.”
James’s blue eyes were concentrated out the window, an ocean of things he would never say boiling underneath.
In that respect, he and Tate were one and the same. If James yelled, then you knew it was time to shut up and pay attention. He rarely said anything that wasn’t important, and he hated unnecessary chatter.
It was very clear when James and Tate reached the end of their rope.
“Rehab?” I questioned him.
“It’s about time, don’t you think?” he shot back.
I laid my head back on the headrest and looked out the window. Yeah, I guess it was time.
But apprehension crawled its way into my head anyway.
I was used to how my mother lived. How I lived. James could judge us. Others may feel sorry for me. But it was our normal.
I was never one to feel too sorry for poor kids or people in rough situations. If that was all they’d ever known, then it wasn’t suffering the way someone else would look at it. It was their life. It was hell for them, of course, but it was also familiar.
