A man stepped out of the car and whistled so sharply I thought it’d burst my eardrums.
The bikers all suddenly stopped and dropped their fighting stances. Even Jax froze, still gripping onto one of the bikers' jacket.
Jax’s fiery eyes went wide as the color drained from his face.
It looked like he was staring at a ghost.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
ONE SMALL LIE
Jax
Twenty-two years ago.
Jax’s breaths were coming fast. His skin was too hot. He was running with all his might, desperately hoping he wouldn’t get caught. But he was getting tired and his legs were beginning to feel a tingliness and burning in them. His chest felt sharp and achey. And worse of all, he knew the person chasing him was faster.
He looked to his left and saw a wall of gray not far off; he looked to his right and saw the same. He had nowhere to go except forward, but forward was full of big colors he couldn’t run through. He had to make a difficult choice: climb the big colors or try to run around them.
It would slow him down if he climbed, but Jax was good at climbing. He’d climbed up the huge tree in his backyard many times whenever he was scared because it was safe up there. There were a lot of leaves he could hide behind, and it was high enough that nobody could reach him.
If he continued running, he knew it would eventually be over for him.
I can’t get caught. I can’t let him catch me.
He dashed up the brown steps and lost one of his shoes. The sticky straps on both of them had broken off long ago. He felt lucky that his shoes had stayed on his feet for this long because they usually fell off quickly whenever he ran.
He didn’t look back or try to get it. He had to keep moving. He climbed another set of steps and raced toward the yellow and orange striped entrance he’d been looking for.
When he got there, he sank down to his butt, his nerves on fire. The noise in his ears sounded like roaring. His eyes widened as he looked down.
This is it. I’m going to make it. I’m going to get away. If I just push myself forward . . .
He pushed himself forward, but a strong grip on his shoulders stopped him.
"GOTCHA!"
Jax turned his head to look behind him and saw green eyes and a giant grin. He recognized the tiny spots across the boy’s nose and cheeks.
"Nooo!" Jax screamed, kicking his legs and flapping his hands in disappointment that his friend, Michael tagged him.
Michael laughed. "Gotcha. Cops win!" Two fingers pressed against the back of Jax’s head. "You’re under arrest!" he heard Michael cry followed by a spitty explosion sound as the two fingers fired.
Jax laughed and slid down the bright red to the bottom, all the while patting his mouth with his hand as he tried making the sound that Indians make.
Michael followed him with his hands raised in the air in victory and crying, "YIPPEEEE!"
Jax turned to Michael. "Okay, you got me, Michael. My turn now?"
Michael looked down at Jax’s feet and pointed to his sock with a hole in the front, large enough for the big toe to poke through. "Haha! Jax, you lost your shoe again!" Michael slapped his own knee and bent over, continuing to laugh.
Jax looked at Michael’s shoes. They looked clean, and they looked so cool because they had Transformers on them. Jax wished he could have shoes like those. Moments later, he went to get the shoe he had lost and came back to Michael.
Before they could start another game, there was a loud, screeching sound. Jax saw Mrs. Appleton blowing the whistle around her neck. "Okay children! Recess is over. Your mommies and daddies are here to pick you up!"
Michael cheered and ran to the entrance where his mom was standing. She had yellow hair and a big smile on her face. She hugged him when he got over to her. Then she gave him a cone with white swirly ice cream on top.
Jax saw his dad’s black car sitting on the other side of the street. He couldn’t see his dad inside because the windows were dark, but he was pretty sure Daddy was inside. He could tell it was Daddy’s car because Daddy’s car was always the one with the fins on the back so it looked like a shark.
As Jax was leaving the playground, he heard his name being called.
"Hey Jax!" Michael’s mom said. "We have an extra one. Do you want it?"
Jax’s eyes lit up. He nodded eagerly and rushed over. "Thanks!" he said as he took the ice cream.
After Jax and Michael said their goodbyes, Jax took a few licks. It tasted so good, he couldn’t imagine anything tasting better. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had ice cream.
Jax carried his treat as he walked across the street to Daddy’s car, careful to watch out for other cars driving by. He walked around to the other side and opened the door carefully.
He stood on the curb, staring at Daddy in the driver seat, unsure if he should get inside. Sometimes Daddy got mad when he got inside without asking first. But then sometimes Daddy also got mad if he didn’t get inside quick enough.
"Hi Daddy," Jax said, as a sort of question.
"Get inside," Daddy said.
Jax released his breath and hopped inside. It seemed like Daddy wasn’t in a bad mood right now, which made him happy.
"So, how was school?" Daddy asked.
"Awesome!" Jax cheered. "We made pictures. And we made them with wet, icky stuff that had a lot of colors. Mrs. Appleton said we have to let them dry, so I can’t show you today. But tomorrow I can show you."
Daddy chewed something in his mouth for a moment. "You play with that other boy?"
Jax put his finger to his mouth as he thought about his day and who he played with. "Um, who?"
"You know, the one with the mom over there," Daddy said pointing out the window. "That hot lady with the nice butt."
"Oh! That’s Michael’s mom! She gave me this!" Jax held up his ice cream.
Daddy kept his gaze out the window. "Yep, that’s the one." Daddy rolled down the window a little bit and spit brown stuff from his mouth.
"Yeah, I played with Michael. We played cops and robbers!"
"Who won this time?"
Jax hesitated. He’d had so much fun playing with Michael that he’d forgotten that he should’ve taken it more seriously. He thought about telling the truth, but was afraid of how Daddy might respond if he told Daddy that he lost. "I won, Daddy."
Daddy was quiet for a moment. "Are you telling the truth, Jax?"
Jax suddenly felt like ants were crawling all around in his stomach, eating at the few bites of ice cream that were there. He looked away. "I—I don’t know."
"Don’t lie to me, boy," Daddy said with a scary voice.
"I—I almost won."
"So you lost?"
"Yeah, but—"
Jax’s head smashed into the side window with a crunching sound. He cried out in pain as the world flashed bluish-green.
"I told you not to lie to me, boy. Why don’t you ever listen?"
Jax’s head pounded. It hurt so bad that he wanted to scream, but he bit his lip to avoid crying. Daddy didn’t like crying. All he wanted was to make Daddy happy, but he would always mess up and Daddy would get angry at him and have to punish him for being bad.
"Sorry Daddy," Jax mumbled, fighting back the tears in his eyes. He was so disappointed in himself. He deserved it. "I’ll try harder next time."
Daddy took a deep breath.
Just as Jax thought Daddy was going to calm down, Daddy’s arm shot out. Jax’s head slammed into the window again. And again. And again. And again . . . He didn’t know how many times he heard the crunching sound because after a while everything went from bluish-green to black.
When he opened his eyes again, he figured he had fallen asleep and just woken up. His head throbbed and ached all over. It felt like a T-Rex had played jump rope on his head while he was sleeping and now an Indian was banging on it like a drum. The ants were now crawling all over his eyes, making it hard to see.
He slowly turned
to look at Daddy in the driver seat and saw that Daddy’s face was no longer red and scrunched up. Daddy didn’t look angry anymore.
"Put on your seatbelt, Jax," Daddy said. "I don’t want you to get hurt."
The world was still fuzzy and spinning, and Jax wasn’t quite sure he understood the words that Daddy had said even though he knew he had heard them.
Belt. Seat. See what bells? . . . There are bells ringing in my head but I can’t see them . . .
After a few seconds, Jax somehow managed to do as he was told.
He looked down at his shirt and saw the ice cream had spilled all over it.
As Daddy started driving, Jax tried scooping the white ice cream mixed with red drops on his shirt into his mouth. He thought that if he ate enough, the ants would crawl out of his eyes and go back to his stomach, and then he would be able to see better. But after a few gulps, he realized he couldn’t eat anymore. The ice cream tasted like metal.
It made him want to cry even more. He bit his lip harder and balled his fists into his shorts. His eyes felt stingy and wet, but he wouldn’t let the tears come down. He wasn’t going to blink. He wasn’t going to disappoint Daddy and make him angry again.
Crying would just make it worse.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
BURN
Riley
The bikers had stopped fighting and turned their attention toward the source of the whistling—the man who had gotten out of the black Cadillac.
The man had wild shoulder-length hair, grayed with streaks of white. The maroon shirt he wore was unbuttoned, and beneath it was a stained beater that protruded a bit over his belt. His jeans looked worn. His face had bags and deep lines; he looked like he was past his forties, but despite his age, there was something about him that was striking. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
The man began walking over. "What's going on here?" he asked in a deep voice. His words lacked any trace of uncertainty, his question more like a command than an answer.
I looked at Jax. His brows were knitted together tightly, his eyes were wide, and his mouth was a thin line. He looked shocked, anguished even, as if he recognized the man coming toward us, and that the man was a ghost. A sudden dread coiled in my stomach.
The streetlamp began to flicker, casting menacing shadows along the empty street. With each step closer the man took toward us, it felt like the night air was getting thicker.
The group of drunk, half-beaten bikers backed away from Jax, each stepping to one of two sides, parting almost in reverence to make a path for the man. I hurried over to Jax to be by his side.
As the man approached us, his shadow eclipsed both me and Jax. I could see now that he was as tall as Jax, and his shoulders were just as broad, if not broader.
He came to a stop a few feet in front of us. "Huh?" he grunted, his dark eyes boring into each of us in turn. "Who the hell are you guys?"
"Darrel," Bandana said as he settled by the man’s side, "this asshole’s trying to look tough in front of his girl."
I moved closer to Jax, afraid something bad might happen. Although we’d been outnumbered before, Jax had been able to handle all of them by himself. But now, it seemed like their boss was here. Darrel sent off real bad vibes. I didn’t know whether it was in that look in his eyes that seemed like he was assessing you, identifying your weaknesses, picking apart your flaws, or in the confident way he walked, like a man who possessed no fear. Whatever it was, I could sense that he was a man capable of being extremely dangerous.
I touched Jax’s arm for security, but he didn’t so much as turn his head to acknowledge me; he just kept staring forward with blazing intensity, at Darrel, as if he sensed the same danger as I did.
"Oh?" Darrel stepped forward, narrowing his thick, gray eyebrows as he studied us. "What are you guys doing here?"
I looked to Jax for a response, but his jaw was clamped tight. He seemed to be trying as hard as he could to restrain himself from speaking. His mind must’ve still been on the fight.
"We were trying to leave," I said, in an attempt to defuse the situation.
One of Darrel’s brows raised. "Were you now?" He casually looked at the other bikers who were holding injured limbs and tending to open wounds. "Seems unlikely. In fact, it looks like you were trying to cause trouble in my neighborhood."
The hairs on the back of my neck raised at his accusation. And that he referred to this area as his neighborhood disturbed me. A part of me had hoped that the appearance of this man would stop the fighting for good, but I started to get the sense that his arrival had just made the situation worse. Much worse. I had to choose my words carefully.
"We didn’t mean to," I offered. "We were just acting in defense. We’re sorry."
"Don’t apologize," Jax growled, surprising me. His clenched teeth were bared, and his eyes were fixed on Darrel like a hawk. "We did nothing wrong."
Darrel didn’t look the least bit intimidated by Jax. He took an easy step forward, violating Jax’s personal space. My body tensed. Darrel studied Jax’s angry face for a moment. Then surprise gripped his expression. "That scar on your eyebrow . . . how’d you get it?"
Jax’s teeth ground audibly. His hands tightened into balls by his side. A spike of fear rippled through me from the thought that he was preparing to throw a punch. I grasped his arm, silently urging him not to. If there was a chance we could get out of here without having to fight again, we had to take it. I didn’t want anymore violence. I didn’t want Jax to get hurt.
"It's you, ain't it?" Darrel asked, his sunken eyes now wide.
Jax’s fists were coiled so hard they were shaking. But then I felt his leg tapping against mine and realized that his legs were shaking as well. I felt terrified and confused. I couldn’t tell whether Jax wanted to bash Darrel’s face into a bloody pulp or run far, far away from him.
Darrel smiled, the deep lines around his eyes and mouth twisting sinisterly. "After all these years, my good-for-nothing son that ran away from home has now come back. I’d been thinking that you would’ve been dead by now. Didn’t figure you’d last out there."
Son. The word Darrel used sliced into my brain. Oh god, Darrel is Jax’s dad.
The resemblance finally hit me. The two men were almost eerily similar. I could see it in their builds, in their facial structure, in the deepness of their voices, and most of all in the intensity of their dark eyes. Looking at Darrel was like looking at a future version of Jax, but a drug-worn, menacing version.
How long had it been since Jax last saw this man? Wasn’t he supposed to be in prison? If Jax had already run away from home by the time he was fourteen, it must’ve been at least ten years ago. My chest constricted as the weight of this unplanned reunion sunk in.
"I’m glad I could disappoint you," Jax snarled.
Darrel moved to within a foot in front of Jax, showing no fear of being hit by his son. "You've come to get back at me huh?"
I studied Jax’s reaction. I could see it in the tortured look on his face. He wanted to say no. He wanted to deny coming back here for revenge, to deny coming back to revisit the demons from his past. But the sight of his dad in front of him now, the man who’d tormented him as a child . . . a part of him did want to take revenge now. A part of him wanted to inflict all the things that were done to him back on to the man who did them.
"Look at you now," Darrel growled as he eyed his son from head to toe. "You’re a disgrace—a goddamn embarrassment. You make me sick, wearing those tight leather pants like some sort of faggot."
"Screw you," Jax roared. "You don’t know shit about me!"
"I know you’re weak," Darrel replied, staring Jax down. "Always were. Always will be."
"I’m not afraid of you anymore," Jax bit out, a swell of emotions billowing beneath the surface. "You can’t scare me like you used to."
Darrel’s eyes widened and his lips curved into a grin. "Oh, look at this. Seems like little Jacky boy has grown some balls on him now." Laughing in a way that s
ent shivers down my spine, he turned his head to look at the other guys. "The boy’s all grown up."
All the bikers laughed.
When Darrel turned back to face Jax, his arm came in a wide hook, bashing Jax across the face.
Jax, taken by surprise received the full force of the hit. He grunted in pain, inadvertently pushing me away as he staggered on his feet.
"Don’t you ever talk to me like that!" Darrel shouted, his eyes red with fury. "You hear me?! Didn’t you learn anything I taught you, boy? Respect your elders."
While Jax was bent-over, recovering, Darrel hopped a step raising his boot backward and kicked Jax in the gut. A gust of wind escaped Jax’s chest, and he collapsed to the ground, clutching at his stomach.
"Stop!" I cried, running to tackle Darrel before he had a chance to kick Jax again.
Just as I was about to tackle him, my head twisted violently.
SMACK!
For a brief moment, there had been enormous pressure on the side of my face, pushing my eye toward my nose until it felt like my eyeball was going to pop out of its socket. I faintly registered my feet lifting off the pavement and my body crashing to the ground like a rag doll. My cheek suddenly burned like a clothes iron had been pressed against it. Dazed, I faintly recalled the image of the back of Darrel’s hand coming out of nowhere and smashing into my cheek.
"Riley!"
I recognized the roar of Jax’s voice above the ringing in my ears. Through blurry vision I watched Jax stagger toward me, spitting blood from his mouth.
Two other bikers immediately pounced on him. They began punching and kicking Jax on the ground.
"Teach him a lesson, guys," Darrel hollered.
Suddenly the two men attacking Jax went flying backward, and I saw Jax rising to his feet, crying out in rage. The other four men ran toward Jax with their fists raised. Jax knocked them back one by one, but taking a few hits himself in the process.
When Jax turned his attention to Darrel, Darrel reached behind his back and pulled out a gun. "I wouldn’t do that if I were you."