I threw the last photo capturing Sawyer’s torture at the hands of the four guards, photos they had taken during each attack throughout Sawyer’s time in jail, in to the small fire I’d created at the side of my house sighing as it curled up and burned to ash.
“I’m getting rid of some stuff that’s been needing to get gone,” I told Dallas. “Why are you up so late?”
Dallas and Bristol were staying at his parent’s lake house while they were away on vacation.
Their parents had remarried by the Justice of the Peace a month ago with all their family in attendance; this was their second honeymoon of sorts. Something they’d refused to take until they’d attended their daughter’s wedding and saw her ‘treated right.’
Dallas smiled. “I’ve been kicked out by my wife because she wants to wrap my birthday gifts.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that tends to happen when they think you haven’t seen the credit card statements and know exactly what they bought you.”
Dallas and Sawyer had repaired the minor breach between the two of them, and their bond was even stronger now.
Dallas was over at my house, with his family, at least once a week when I got home from work, and vice versa.
And I was happy to see them happy.
Family was love, and you could never have enough love, especially someone like Sawyer.
“I never said thank you,” Dallas said after a few long moments of silence.
I turned my gaze to his.
“For what?” I asked, wondering what I’d done to earn a thank you from him.
“For helping her when I should’ve been there doing the same. For being there for her, showing her she was worth everything and then doing whatever it took to give it to her,” Dallas said softly. “I love her like crazy, and I thank God every day that she was okay after getting out of that hell hole.”
Dallas had been over one night, staying late to play a game of poker with me, when we’d heard Sawyer screaming from the bedroom.
Dallas had gone deathly white when he heard what she’d been saying in her sleep, and after that, he had made it his mission in life to get her the help she needed.
I hadn’t disagreed with him.
I’d been working on her for months to convince her to go talk to someone about it.
After a long, drawn out conversation with her brother on what was going on with her dreams, Dallas had finally been able to talk her into doing something that I hadn’t been able to accomplish in months of working on her.
He’d explained it after Sawyer had gone back to sleep.
“You just have to play the pity card. Worked every time when I wanted the last cookie,” he winked. “But it only works ‘cause I’m her baby brother and I’ve been working that card for thirty years now.”
“She didn’t break, and she fights every day. You were able to get her to go to counseling sessions when I wasn’t able to,” I admitted. “I could be telling you the same right now.”
His eyes clouded over, and I was sure he’d had something else to say, but a really shrill, “You didn’t tell me you were pregnant!”
I smiled and looked down at the fire in front of me while Dallas stayed silent at my side.
“God help you, man. Because I can barely handle the two of my own.”
And, for some reason, that admission from the man at my side didn’t worry me a single bit.
In fact, it only gave me the motivation I needed to be what I’d never been before…a good father and husband.
Something that my other children had never gotten from me, but something I would spend the rest of my life trying to make up to them.
Something this child, the one that Sawyer carried in her womb, would know from me from the moment he or she took their first breath.
A promise I would keep until I took my final breath.
COMING SOON
Right To My Wrong
2-3-16
Sometimes people are too chatty in the morning. And according to the Coffee Gods, it’s okay to kill those people. Slowly.
-Ruthie’s secret thoughts
Ruthie
“Shit, fuck, shit fucking hell,” I growled as I ran from my car to the convenience store where I worked.
The convenience store was one of three in the city of Benton, Louisiana, and I happened to work at the one in the harsher side of town.
But I liked it.
My boss gave me the hours I wanted.
I could go to school, and I could still work at my other job at Halligans and Handcuffs, seeing as it was the job that made me the most money.
Sterling and his three brothers, foster care brothers not club member brothers, came in every three days before they worked out.
Each would grab an energy drink. A Monster for Sterling, and Nos for his two brothers, and two Gatorade’s a piece. Only ever in the red. No blue, orange, or yellow for those guys.
Then they’d take turns paying.
I’d gathered over the last half a year that the middle brother was a baseball player, and the other two supported him during workouts and practice.
Or, at least, when Sterling was here, he did.
He’d been deployed about five months ago, and had just returned two weeks ago.
And I’d missed my time to see him if I didn’t hurry!
Shit!