Chapter Eighteen
Rooster didn’t know if this was a great idea, he was still reeling from what she had told him about their unborn child. That had been the last thing he’d thought she’d tell him when he’d agreed to come here. Of course, he’d had a feeling that whatever it was, it was going to be big. This was much bigger than anything he could have ever imagined.
“Go ahead,” Doc Jones encouraged him. “You get yours out and then we’ll work through it all together. It’s better to just say it, and then we can take the ramifications one by one.”
“I quit the sheriff’s department after some things happened that I didn’t agree with. When I had to go to the camp, things changed and I became the do-gooder extraordinaire of the world because that’s what I had to do. For years, I was a dick to Heaven Hill and I acted like I didn’t even know who Roni was. There’s no doubt in my mind why she didn’t tell me about all this before now. I was trying to be someone I wasn’t.” He ran a hand through his hair. “That’s neither here nor there right now. Anyway, I came back into the Heaven Hill fold this year and got asked to work at the high school doing security because of an anonymous tip that was called in. The tip said that there were steroids being used on the football team.”
He heard the swift intake of breath beside him. Roni had probably already figured it out. This was bad, he was done hurting her.
“Not Drew.” She shook her head. She had hoped their suspicions weren’t founded.
“Yes, Drew and his buddy Dalton. They’re knee-deep in this shit,” he confirmed, dropping his head into his hand that rested on the side of the couch.
“Shit.” She rested her head against the back of the couch cushion.
“So now, I have a dilemma,” he told Doc Jones. “I’ve only been with this group of people for a short amount of time. I’ve just begun to find my foothold and place here, she and I are working on our relationship, and now I have to tell two parents that their teenage son is mixed up in drugs. What do I do? I can’t go back to the way I was livin’. I can’t do it.”
To his complete surprise, Roni reached over and grabbed his hand in hers. “Before you start, Doc Jones, can I remind him of something?”
“Please do, I’m still trying to process all of this and understand everything that’s going on.” She watched the two of them carefully. When a couple came in to see her, this is what she wanted, them to help each other with their problems. It looked like this couple was more than willing to do that.
Roni turned in her seat to face him. “You have to remember that Liam sent you there, he asked you to take a look at this because he’d gotten the tip. He wants to know what’s going on. That doesn’t mean he wants you to sugarcoat anything. Whatever this turns out to be for Drew, we’ll all deal with it. He’s a teenager and he’s going to do stupid shit. Liam’s not going to be pissed because you’ve done what he’s asked you to. He knew there was a chance, and that’s why he asked you to do it. Liam’s not an idiot.”
Doc Jones held up her hand. “Okay, let me make sure that I understand this. You and Roni had a relationship as teenagers and you were best friends with Liam. When the two of you were sent away—you came back different? He went right back to where he was going to go in the first place, and you took the opposite track?”
“Exactly.” Rooster nodded. “My parents…” he trailed off and chuckled, but it was uncomfortable. “Let’s just say, I spent all the time I did with Liam’s family because my home life, it wasn’t great, and even though Liam’s family was as dysfunctional as they came…it was still better than my own house.”
“Shit, you two.” Doc Jones wrote in her tablet.
“I know.” He nodded. “Fucked up, huh?”
“So, things have happened, now you’re back and you and Liam have worked out your friendship. You and Roni are working on your relationship. She’s just admitted to you that she had to have an abortion because of her own father and you’ve just admitted that her nephew, Liam’s son, is knee-deep in a steroid ring at the high school. Am I following this all?” She blew out a breath and ran a hand through her hair.
“You got it,” he told her, running his hands along his jeans.
“God, and here I thought Layne was fucked up. I’m gonna need a drink after you two leave here.” She shook her head.
“Just help us, help us deal with everything we need to so that we can have a normal relationship, I want that more than anything,” Roni told her.
Doc Jones took a couple of minutes to compose herself and make a few more notes on her notepad. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Rooster, you have to tell Liam about Drew. Roni’s right. He wouldn’t have asked you to take a look into it if he didn’t want you to be honest with whatever you find. If you’re not honest, you’re doing your newfound friendship with him a disservice. He needs to know what his son is doing, not to mention the potential fallout once you find the source of the drugs.”
“I kinda knew that’s what you were going to say, and in my heart I knew that’s what I should do, but damn, it sucks,” he sighed. “Out of all the years I was with the sheriff’s office and how many people I took in or had to tell their parents that they were doing drugs, this hurts.”
“It’s because you’re so close to the situation, and if it didn’t hurt, I would worry about you,” Doc Jones assured him. “Now, Roni, my God, girl. How you haven’t had a nervous breakdown before now is a miracle to me.”
“I thought I was going to a few times.” She said it off-handedly but everyone in the room knew that she was telling the truth.
“How do you feel now that you’ve said the words out loud and you’ve told Rooster your secret?”
She was quiet for a moment, searching for the right word to convey what she did feel. “Relieved. This has been hanging over my head for so long—it was something that William could hang over my head, I don’t know what life is like without it. I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off my shoulders.”
“That’s good, that’s a start.” Doc Jones made more notes in her yellow pad. “Rooster, how do you feel?”
“Shocked and angry, but not at Roni. I’m pissed at William. I knew he was a grade-A asshole. He showed a whole bunch of true colors once we got him behind bars. Things that I’d rather not discuss because it has no bearing on any of this, but suffice it to say, if I were still wearing a badge—he’d be a dead motherfucker.”
In the back of the room, an alarm went off, and Doc Jones got up to turn it off. “I hate to do this to you two, but I worked you in and I have another appointment in ten minutes.”
“I appreciate you doing what you could to get us in,” Roni told her, as she got up from the couch.
“I want to go ahead and make another appointment with both of you. If you feel like it, until then, I want the two of you to talk about the things you’ve told me here today. Not talking about it is what started this to begin with you. It’s time y’all have the hard talks, it’s time you put the effort into the relationship.” She leveled them with a stare. “If you find something come up that you can’t handle, here’s my card, it’s got my number on it. I’ll work you in again if I need to, but let’s go ahead and make a plan to meet at this time next week.”
“Sounds good,” Rooster said as he got up too and stood behind Roni, his hand resting on her hip.
They turned to leave as Doc Jones watched. She hoped they could make this work. They were facing a hard battle, but if they listened to one another and cared about what each other thought, then she knew they could make it. They weren’t young kids, they were adults now, and she hoped she hadn’t misread the looks between the two of them. They wanted this to work, and if they wanted it to work, she had no doubt that they would make it happen.