Chapter Sixteen
Ty
It’s been over two weeks since she left. Two weeks since I saw her face or heard her voice, and she’s still haunting me like she’s right by my side. Getting drunk hasn’t helped, and neither have the couple of fights I deliberately started. All that did was leave me with a split lip and bruised ribs.
I haven’t even gotten laid. The thought of taking another chick leaves me cold, and I don’t care if my brothers think that’s fucked the hell up.
If it wasn’t Dad’s birthday today, there’s no way I’d be standing outside my folks’ house. Mom always makes a big thing of birthdays, and, just like every other year, he’ll blow out the candles, eat a slice of cake, and then get hammered tonight with the guys at the club.
Another bike skids to a stop beside mine and the others parked on the driveway. Cade dismounts and strolls toward me. “Okay, bro?”
“Yeah, I’m great.” I haven’t even told Zach the whole story. What’s there to fucking tell? Jas walked out on me.
For the second time.
Cade raps on the front door, and even though I have keys to the place I don’t bother using them. Sav opens the door and gives me a pointed look. “Hey, stranger.”
I grunt and march down the hall. So I haven’t stopped by in a while. Big fucking deal.
Everyone’s on the deck, and the table’s groaning under the weight of all the food. Sav saunters over to Kat, who’s hanging out with Grace and Amelia and a couple of the older guys’ old ladies. They all look right at home.
I grab a beer and swallow half before approaching my old man. We exchange the usual insults before falling into a companionable silence. Although I haven’t swung by since Jas left, we’ve connected a couple of times at the club. He’s watching Mom as she does the rounds, making sure everyone has a drink and enough to eat, acting the part of the president’s wife like she’s an Oscar contender.
Is she acting? I take another swallow of beer, considering. Strange, that’s never occurred to me before.
I rake a hand through my hair. I’m on edge because of Jas. Even though she left me, and I’m mad as hell at her, there’s a part of me that’s still pissed at the way Mom looked at her that last day. And although I understood why Jas said I guess that’s not what you expected from me, what the hell did she mean by You, or your brother? What does Viper have to do with anything?
“Your mom said you hooked up with Jas O’Brien again,” Dad says.
I’ve been waiting for that, but since he never mentioned it at the club, I thought I’d dodged the bullet. After the fall out ten years ago, when I told my parents they were a pair of fucking dicks for treating Jas like shit, only to have her dump my ass days later, I should’ve known better.
“That’s right.” I finish my beer and take a second one.
“That girl’s bad news.”
I grip my bottle with more force than necessary and breathe out between my teeth. If there’s one thing we don’t do in the Bastards, it’s interfere in each other’s sex lives. Guess that unspoken edict counts for nothing when you’re the president’s son.
Right on cue, Mom strolls over, like this is an ambush. “Ty, great you could make it.” She kisses me on the cheek. Seriously, like I had a choice. The only excuse for not attending one of Angie Jenson’s get-togethers is if you’re dead.
“So, Jas flew back to Florida?” It’s not an unreasonable question, but I hear the subtext. She screwed you over again, didn’t she?
“She was only here for a week.”
“And she’s not coming back?”
It was a mistake downing a beer so fast on an empty stomach. “Probably not.”
She exchanges a glance with my dad. “Just as well. You don’t need her hanging around, messing with your head.”
“Messing with my head?” There’s a warning in my voice, and anyone else would shut the fuck up. But not my mother, not when she’s on a roll.
“I know you’ve never gotten over her, but now you see what she’s like. She’ll never stay, Ty. She just doesn’t have what it takes to be your old lady.”
“Don’t.” I try and slam down the anger. She’s my mom, after all. And I sure as hell don’t want to cause a scene and have everyone know my business. “Don’t talk that way about her.”
“Ty.” My dad doesn’t raise his voice, but he doesn’t need to. I know. And I don’t fucking care.
I turn on him and stare him straight in the eye. “What?” That’s all I say, and it’s enough. He frowns, as though something is only just occurring to him.
“You still serious about her, son?”
“Jesus, Jett.” There’s a barely disguised note of exasperation in Mom’s tone. “She dug her claws into him and never let go. And before you start”—she rounds on me—“it wasn’t just because of who her mom was. You’ll take over from your dad one day. You think it’s easy, being the president’s old lady? She doesn’t have the stomach for it. She’d hold you back. That’s why I never wanted her for you.”
I turn my back on her and place my empty bottle on a table. If I open my mouth now, the whole fucking street will hear what I have to say. I take a couple of deep breaths, but it doesn’t help the black fury seething through my blood.
“Deep down, you know I’m right, baby.” Mom’s voice is soft, and it’s the final trigger. I swing round, and something in my expression makes her back off damn fast.
“You don’t know shit about her, or what she can handle.” Her dad helped to put her through college, but she won a couple of scholarships against tough competition, no matter how she tried to downplay it when she told me about it the other day. That’s not the actions of a quitter, or someone who falls apart under pressure.
“All right.” Mom lowers her voice, since several interested glances are being thrown our way. “I didn’t want to tell you this, but since you’re still so sure the sun shines out of her ass, I guess I don’t have a choice.”
That does it. “I’m leaving.”
“Ty, wait.” She grabs my arm. “You remember that night when you told us Jas was the only girl for you?”
Since that night is scorched into all of our brains, it’s a fucking stupid question to ask, and I don’t give her the satisfaction of responding.
She releases me and folds her arms. “Viper said he’d go see her. Find out how serious she was about you. If she’d had any backbone, she would’ve told him to fuck the hell off. All she did was pack her bags and jump on the next flight out of L.A.”
What the fuck?
“You didn’t tell me that, Angie.” Dad sounds pissed, but I ignore him.
“Viper went to see Jas?” She never told me that. Why didn’t she tell me? “What the fuck did he say to her?”
“I just told you. She didn’t fight for you, Ty. You need a strong woman by your side, not a frightened little girl.”
My heart’s thudding against my ribs, and there’s a weird echoing in my head. I forcibly unclench my fists. Keep it together.
“She was seventeen.” I grind the words between my teeth.
“That’s old enough. I was that age when I moved in with your dad, and I never took shit from anyone.”
I never liked him. He gave me the creeps. That’s what she said when she found out he was dead.
I didn’t tell you everything.
Why would she keep Viper going to see her secret? What else didn’t she tell me?
“When did he go see her?” I don’t even remember taking a step toward her until my dad’s hand on my arm holds me back.
“How am I supposed to remember the exact date?” Mom glares at me, then reconsiders. “It was the night after you spoke to us about her. Viper had you go help at the junkyard so he could be sure of speaking to her alone.”
It’s like a rock compresses my chest, and the buzz of conversation around me fades. All I can hear is Jas on the phone, crying hysterically. The night I dumped work and jumped red lights so I could be with her. Too fucking late.
For ten years, I kept my word to her and never told anyone about our baby. The reasons she wanted it kept quiet have long passed. I can’t keep my mouth shut, anyway.
“That night?” I shove Jett’s arm off me. “That’s the night Jas lost our kid.”
“Fuck,” Dad mutters.
“She was pregnant?” Mom sucks in a sharp breath. “Why didn’t you tell us the night before? God knows you said enough.”
She was pregnant. She was alone in the apartment. And when I arrived…
She was curled up on the floor of her mom’s bedroom. Details I never thought twice about before thunder through my mind now. The messy bed. Her tangled hair. Her rumpled clothes.
I catch sight of the snake on my arm. During our week together, she kissed every inch of ink on my body. Except for that one tat.
My gut churns. No.
Jett grips my shoulder. “That’s why she left. Poor kid.”
I couldn’t stay here after what happened. I thought she was talking about the baby. But it never sat right with me. Did she need therapy for something else that happened?
I back up and hit the wall. What the fuck am I thinking?
“I’m sorry that happened.” Mom doesn’t try and touch me again, though. “But it had nothing to do with Viper going to see her. They just talked, Ty. Well, he talked. She didn’t say anything. You can’t blame—”
Noise rushes back in, blasting through my head, a soundless roar of horror and denial. I don’t want to think it. Can’t believe it. He wouldn’t have dared, not with my girl. It’s the only thing that makes any fucking sense.
“Talk?” I don’t recognize my voice. I don’t recognize me. “That’s all, huh? You’d put your life on the line and swear that your brother didn’t touch her?”
The silence is electric. The blood drains from her face. She knows what I mean all right.
“He wouldn’t,” she whispers, but it’s hollow. Means nothing. Because I knew that son of a bitch, too, and there was a cold, hard core that ran through him. A great asset since he was the Bastards enforcer.
Evil aura. Jas’s strange comment jars my brain, taking on a life of its own and crippling me from the inside out.
If Viper decided on something, he was capable of doing anything.
I swipe my hand across my mouth and grip my jaw. Jett’s talking, fuck knows what he’s saying. I’m suffocating. If I don’t get out of here, I’m going to lay him out.
Without a word, I stumble through the house and somehow make it to my bike. I double over, hands on my thighs, and the viper tattoo is all I can see.
There was no reason why Jas was in her mom’s room that night. Not unless she’d been dragged in there. She barely spoke to me after that night. Never let me touch her. And I put it all down to grief, without ever asking her why.
My guts heave, and I vomit until all I can taste is blood and bile and bitter, useless guilt.
When I was a kid, I idolized my uncle. After Jas left, he stuck by my side, put up with my black moods, and like a gullible jerk I thought it was because we were on the same side.
If he weren’t already dead, I’d kill that fucking piece of shit rapist.