“He hurt her?” Dad asks. His brows furrow together, and his expression is grim.
“No, she’s fine. He just wanted a little bit of history. Which, by the way, she gave him. I’m fucking worried because I don’t know how long she has until somebody else starts sniffing around and asking the kinds of questions that could get her killed.”
“It’s fucked up, I know. We’re going to do everything we can to keep her safe,” Wyatt says.
I hate to say it, but the way everything’s going lately, that doesn’t mean a hill of beans to me. Nobody is safe, especially not Gloria.
“How did Scavo react to the history lesson?” Dad asks.
“Like he believed it. Told her on the way out he had some shit to think about,” Ruby says.
“Okay, enough of this shit,” Dad says. His eyes cut a little too close to my direction as he focuses in on Duke. Quickly, I slide to my left to ensure I’m hidden behind the wall and hope Dad didn’t see my movement. “You and Nic figure out what you’re having? Holly keeps busting my nuts about buying baby shit. She needs to know—pink or blue.”
“A little asshole, judging from its parents,” Wyatt says. I peek back around in time to see him focus in on Dad as he smirks at Wyatt.
“Don’t know yet. Nic wants to be surprised,” Duke says. “But it’s fucking killing me. I just want to know already.”
“Sweets going on about baby shit is trouble for you, brother,” Wyatt says with his eyes on Dad.
Dad just shrugs like he doesn’t care, but I want to think he’s just putting on a front for the guys. “Best way to keep your woman happy is to give her what she wants. You might have one if you’d learned that lesson, Wy. Besides, she gets knocked up, I’ll just be busy when the kid cries. Worked with Layla when we had Chey.”
“How is the ex?” Wyatt asks. Ruby scoffs.
“Fucked up but breathing, which is about all I can ask for these days,” Dad says.
A smile finds its way to my face for a brief moment before a sinking sadness overcomes me, and I decide that I’ve heard enough. It’s not that I can’t talk or hear about my mom. It’s just that it reminds me that she’s not here. And even worse, I don’t even want her here. She doesn’t ride my ass about homework, she doesn’t watch movies with me that I know she hates, and she isn’t here for me to talk to about Jeremy and every screwed up thing that’s happening around town. She’s not a mom, but she’s all I had. Until Holly.
My head falls softly against the wall in front me as I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Tears sting my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall down my cheeks. I’ve cried enough over her and won’t let myself go down this road again. She’s ruined enough of my life. It takes a moment, but I pull myself out of that place I’d rather not be and stride down the hall and back into the garage.
My only exit routes are the garage or Dad and Holly’s room on the bottom level. I can’t really explain being in the parental unit’s bedroom, nor can I reasonably explain hanging out in the garage, but there’s an exterior door to the side of the house from the garage that can at least get me in the backyard where I can hang out for a while and make it seem like I was locked out of the house and had to go around front to get in via the security code. I don’t know if it sounds as good as I think it does, but it’s better than the alternative.
Darting across the garage and out the door to the side of the house takes but a moment. I’m heading for the backyard when the telltale sound of a branch cracking behind me alerts me that I’m not alone. I swing around quickly, a scream building in my throat as I prepare to swing at anything and everything within reach.
“Chill!” a masculine voice, not especially deep and not particularly confident, says. I calm my crazy eyes down long enough to see the Forsaken patch on the leather vest that rests on his shoulders. Beneath FORSAKEN is another patch that reads DETROIT. He’s young, can’t be more than twenty-five if I had to guess, and he isn’t an officer judging from the lack of additional patches.
Uncle Rig—this guy must have come into town with Uncle Rig.
“Sorry,” I say, now more than a little embarrassed. I smile apologetically as I appraise him. He’s tall and lanky but carrying a fair amount of muscle. He has light blond hair and a pair of kind blue eyes peer at me inquisitively.
“Detroit, huh?” I nod my head to his patch. “Escaped winter?”
His smile widens and his eyes dance with mischief. “Heard a lot about the fine women in California. Glad to see the rumors are true.”
His smooth talking causes a blush to rise to my cheeks. I’m so much more than the little girl Dad and my uncles want to think of me as. It’s nice to have a member of Forsaken appreciate my more feminine qualities. I’m not counting Jeremy since we’re the same age and all. This guy is definitely not a teenager.