Young Buck: A Slow Burn Small Town Romance (Green Valley Heroes Book 5)

Chapter 33

This time, it wasn’t Louie I thought about as I jabbed at my punching bag. It was myself I wanted to punish for hurting Loretta; first, when I’d opened my stupid mouth before considering her situation, and again when she’d called me on it and I’d gone completely quiet.

It made me sick to replay the shameful moments. I’d been like a deer in the headlights when she’d asked me where I stood. Her question had been clear as a bell: Buck, are you against me having this baby? My lack of an answer was answer enough for her.

It wasn’t that I disagreed with it. I certainly hadn’t when she’d told me about her plan. I’d thought she was courageous and independent. The way I saw her hadn’t changed, but my perspective on the greater concept had. What had seemed so straightforward a month ago now seemed complex.

Still, I didn’t need Reddit to tell me I was the asshole. She’d deserved better than my thoughtless, unfiltered rant. I had wanted—no, needed—to do better. I was falling in love with this girl.

Half an hour later, my knuckles screamed and my wrists were going numb. There was more inside me, but I had to stop. I was off tonight, but I needed my hands to work tomorrow. Beating the shit out of my problems had reached a point of diminishing returns.

Walking from the garage to the kitchen took me from lamplight to dawn. The first light of morning peeked through my kitchen window. I stood under the shower so long, the sun through the bedroom windows when I emerged streamed brightly. I was on the hunt for eye blinders when the text chime sounded on my phone.

We need to talk about your mother. Man-to-man.

I didn’t recognize the number, but I could guess who it was from. The text had to be from Tim.

When? I texted back with some difficulty. I’d felt too undeserving of pain relief to use Loretta’s salve.

The sooner the better,he returned.

Send me your address, I wrote back. Because man-to-man talks didn’t happen over phone or text. I can be there in an hour.

One of the odd talents that came with being a firefighter was knowing how to go quickly from practically naked to fully dressed. I managed to get on sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a pair of slides in thirty-five seconds. It only took me another minute to find my wallet and my keys and fill a bag of ice for the hand that wasn’t driving. After that, I was on the road.

I cruised out of Green Valley on a series of synchronized green lights, driving as fast as I could without getting pulled over. The monotony of the road catapulted me back to the same repetitive thoughts.

I have an older brother.

My mother was forced to give up her child.

I still couldn’t fathom that kind of pain for anyone, let alone a woman who had showered me and Trevor with so much love. Annelise Rogers was naturally maternal. And Tim Riggins...not only was he not my biological father, he wasn’t the homewrecking, interloping villain I’d imagined him to be. All this time, he’d been helping.

Tim hadn’t sent me the address of a house. He’d sent me the address of his garage. The door was open before I could knock and he let me in without a word. Now that I wasn’t so preoccupied inspecting his features for resemblance we didn’t share, I saw him more clearly: a man who was treading through pain of his own.

“How is she?” My need to understand how my mother was superseded my discomfort at asking, even though Tim knowing more about her in that moment was strange. She’d made her excuses to my father and extended her stay in Nashville. She’d wanted more time with Adam, and to pull herself together emotionally before she had to go home and resume lying to my dad. Tim had stayed back, too.

“Relieved. Scared. Still in shock, I think.”

“Where is she?” I wanted to know.

“Back on Lookout Mountain. Rex started to get antsy about her being away.”

“My father . . .”

I held a strong suspicion he was the reason why we were here.

“Rex keeps tabs on your mother. And not in an innocent way.”

“No. He stopped that years ago,” I hedged.

It was standard for the families of public figures to maintain security details after they left office, but not for long.

“His excuse for ramping it up this past year is Trevor’s campaign. Coincidentally, he started again when your momma started talking about meeting Adam.”

“This past year?” The volume of my voice jumped as high as my eyebrows.

Tim looked me dead in the eye. “I know.”

My heart rate spiked. “If my dad’s having her tailed, why the hell did she think coming to Nashville to meet Adam was a good idea?”

“It hasn’t reached that point yet. His everyday surveillance is digital. He monitors her calendar, her phone location, and he keeps trackers on all her cars.”

It was strange, knowing my mother had confided all of this to Tim, and him still being such a stranger to me.

“I’m starting to get the sense that the things you know about my family could fill a book.”

He looked off to the side, like it took effort for him to not say what was on his mind.

“You said man-to-man,” I pointed out. “That means giving it to me straight.”

“That’s fair.” Tim’s gaze came back to mine, his eyes the paler blue he held in common with Adam. “But the things I tell you will be on my own behalf. There are things you ought to hear directly from her.”

“Alright, then.” I took the invitation he gave with his hand, a motion to finally sit.

“There’s no time for bullshit, so I’m just gonna say it. Your father’s a dangerous man. He’s gone to extremes to make me and Adam go away. He’s done it in the name of protecting his family from his political enemies, but, believe me—it’s personal. And I’m enemy number one.”

“What else has he done?”

The kind of behavior Tim described sounded like my father, but I wouldn’t admit that yet. There was only one person’s side I was on in all of this: my mother’s.

“For starters, Rex paid me visits to make sure I knew my place. The street names showed up a week after he offered to pay me off to stay away from Annelise.”

“The street names?” I didn’t understand.

“Rogers Boulevard used to be Main Street. Rogers Park used to be McGee. Rogers Square used to be Hinckley Square. Most folks think it was just those three, renamed after your momma seeing how she grew up here. But there was a fourth—Pear Street, the street that I live on—that one became Rex Place.”

“Damn.” Shame began to gnaw at my gut and I felt a greater kinship with my mother, for how it weighed on her to be around my father when he was at war. He wasn’t just insufferable. He was vicious. To get back at one man, he’d made it so an entire town couldn’t turn a corner without seeing his name.

“Then there was the time he burnt down my garage.”

I blinked at him wide-eyed, for confirmation. When I saw he was serious, my spine tingled with cold.

“How do you know it was him?”

“Apart from the fact that my insurance company suddenly decided to drop me after I made every payment on time for fifteen years? And that they canceled the policy two days before the fire?”

I didn’t even know what to say.

“That part, even your momma doesn’t know. It wouldn’t have solved anything to tell her at the time. She would’ve confronted Rex, which would have made things worse. I didn’t even tell her that anything had happened to the garage.”

“Because she would have suspected?” I prodded.

Tim shook his head. “Because she would have offered me money to help, and that would have only caused more problems in her marriage. Rex showing how far he’d go to keep the two of us away from each other was why I had to distance myself.”

I knew my father well enough to expect dirty dealings when he wanted something. But the question remained: why? Why would it spell catastrophe for anyone to find out about Adam? If it had ever been about my father’s own elections, why hadn’t he relented after he retired?

“Why?” I blurted inelegantly. “Why would he go so far?”

“Some parts of this story aren’t mine to tell.”

I hardly knew how to handle my next conversation with my mother. I didn’t want to add to her plate, but sorting this out required her participation. I needed to know more in order to keep her safe.

“The woman who was with you on Saturday...” Tim’s voice broke me from my musings. “I remember her from last week. She came into the garage. I’m guessing she’s your investigator. Only, that night at the club, the two of you looked mighty close. Which is it?”

“What difference does it make?”

“So you’re together, then.” Tim saw through what I’d meant not to give away.

I sighed, suddenly feeling as tired as he looked.

“Look, kid,” he continued. “I get that you don’t know me. And I know that he’s your father. You just had a bomb dropped on you and you don’t know what to think. I’m not an educated man, but I’ve got a PhD in Rex Rogers. He will come after her if he finds out she’s a part of all of this.”

“What do you mean, come after her?”

“Do her like he did me. Go after her for knowing too much.”

Tim looked deadly serious, and even a little scared.

“That’s Rex’s MO,” he continued. “He finds out what you care about, then he takes it away, just to show you he can. That’s why I called you—to warn you of how ugly things could get. Make sure Rex doesn’t know what you know until you have a solid plan. And keep your girl a million miles away from this.”