Chapter 29
Jameson
The whole ride home, I prepare myself for what I’m about to walk into.
My imagination is far better than reality.
I push open the front door and am immediately met with the sounds of my mother yelling, pleading actually. It sounds like she’s being held hostage.
I quickly cut a glance at Billy, who looks just as concerned as me.
Luke’s truck is in the driveway, but maybe someone got to him? A million scenarios play through my head.
Has word about my old man already gotten out?
Did he have someone after him that I don’t know about?
Have they come to collect when they think we’re weak?
My steps move faster as I quickly pull my gun from the duffle bag, keeping it tucked at my side.
I stop short in the kitchen, taking in the scene. The floor is covered with broken dishes, chairs tipped over, the space utterly destroyed. My mother is in a chair, with her arms tied behind her with a dish towel, her back to me.
My hand on the gun twitches, but I keep it lowered until I know what I’m dealing with.
I look around the room, searching for Luke, and find him leaning against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest, a bruise blooming above his right eye.
“What the fuck is going on?” I spit.
“Jameson,” my mother forces out. “Oh God, Jameson, you’ve gotta help me.”
Luke moves toward me, broken glass crunching under his boots.
I swing my attention back to him. “I need you to explain this real fucking quick.”
My mother rocks her chair, trying to turn in my direction.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter. “I’ve only been gone since last night.”
“Let’s go into the living room to talk,” Luke says, lowering his eyes to the gun in my hand. If he’s surprised to see it, he doesn’t show it.
He says my name, but I can barely hear him over my mother’s ranting. Her words are blurring together, and I only catch pieces of what she’s saying.
“… Levi would kill you if he saw what you’re …”
“… he never liked you, anyway, you fucking …”
“… Jameson, I swear to God, if you don’t …”
My eyes are locked on her hands, and I take a step forward. Everything inside me is screaming to untie her. She shouldn’t be …
“Let me talk to you where it’s quiet,” Luke pushes gently.
My gaze stays fixed on my mother, his words slipping past me.
“Watch her, will you?” he tells Billy before placing a hand on my shoulder. “Jameson?”
I shrug off his touch. “Yeah, okay,” I answer, my voice taut.
“You can’t just leave me in here!” my mother screams.
Luke takes a tentative step back, dropping his eyes to the gun at my side. “Why don’t you put that down, huh?”
“I’m your mother, Jameson; don’t you fucking forget that!” she continues, her words pressurizing around me. “I don’t have to listen to you,” she says, her tone turning hysterical. “You have to listen to me!”
My hand flexes against the gun, the weight of it comforting.
My mother continues to rant, her words a jumbled mess of threats and pleas.
“Jameson,” Luke says, his tone stern in a way I rarely ever hear it. “Give me the gun. You’re not …” He shakes his head. “Just give me the gun.”
I blink, the fog around me clearing. “I’m fine,” I tell him. “Let’s go.”
Without waiting for a response, I turn and head for the living room, Luke following behind me.
He watches as I place the gun in a drawer before shoving it closed.
“All right,” I say. “What happened?”
He hesitates for a moment, as if trying to gauge my state of mind.
Fucked. My state of mind is fucked.
But I don’t have time to deal with that right now. Not when my mother is the way she is, her cries carrying into the living room.
“I thought she was asleep,” he starts. “She was inconsolable after you left. Barely knew what was going on, just kept repeating his name over and over again.” He pauses, shifting. “I coaxed her to the bedroom and got her to lie down. She cried herself to sleep not long after.”
I watch as he begins to pace in front of me. “I thought she’d be out for a while after she wore herself out like that, so I came back out here to the living room.” He wrings his hands. “I wasn’t gonna sleep in case … just watch some TV.” He glances at me. “I’m really sorry, Jameson.”
“For what?” I straighten. “You do something to—”
He slows his step. “No, no, of course not. It’s just … I …” Guilt washes over his features, and he’s really starting to freak me out. “I told you I’d watch her, and then you come home to this.”
“It’s fine,” I tell him with a sigh. “I know how she can be.” I drag my hands down my face, hoping it’ll help the steady pounding in my head.
I’m so fucking tired.
“I know, but—”
“We don’t have time for this,” I snap, my exhaustion making the words come out harsher than I intended. “Sorry,” I mutter when I see the dejected look on his face. “It’s just … I can’t … I can’t leave her tied up in there. You’ve gotta tell me what happened so I can go deal with it.”
He swallows. “No, yeah, you’re right. Sorry.” He looks toward the kitchen then down to the floor.
As I watch him, it occurs to me how different he is than my father. Than me.
He folds under pressure.
He can’t handle his shit.
And as much as my old man’s methods were crazy, he really did prepare me for what he left me with.
“How’d she get where she is now?” I question, forcing my voice to be calm for his sake.
“I, uh … I ended up falling asleep,” he confesses. “The sound of her smashing things woke me up. She was … belligerent.”
“Drunk?” I ask.
He nods. “Not sure if she took something, too. She wouldn’t tell me.”
“So, why’s she tied up?”
Luke motions to his face. “I couldn’t get her to calm down. She came at me, and … I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid she was gonna hurt herself.”
“How long has she been like that?”
“Not long,” he answers. “Maybe twenty minutes.”
“All right.” I nod. “I’ve got it from here.”
“What?” He pulls his head back. “No, I’m not leaving you to deal with this alone.”
“It’s not your problem—”
“And it’s yours?” he cuts in roughly.
“It is now.”
“No, this is all too much.” He takes a step toward me. “Now’s not the time for you to push people away. You don’t have to carry this all yourself.”
“And how’s anyone supposed to help me, huh? I mean, really?”
I don’t mean to sound as harsh as I do, but he’s starting to piss me off. I get that he means well, but nobody can help. Nothing can make this better. It’s delusional to think otherwise. He’s delusional to think otherwise. And his words are just a reminder of how fucked up things really are.
I blow out a breath when his face twists, his expression so pained I look away.
“It’s just … there’s no fixing this, not really. It is what it is.” I glance back up at him. “Thank you for wanting to help, but I honestly don’t know how you even could.”
His gaze goes unfocused, like he’s caught up in the past. “I promised your dad that if anything happened to him, I’d be here for you and your mom.” His eyes go glassy. “Let me keep that promise.”
“There’s stuff I need to handle—”
Luke holds up a hand. “I know you’re more than capable of taking care of things yourself, but that doesn’t mean you should have to.” He watches me carefully. “Just promise me that if things get bad, you’ll come to me. Can you give me that?”
“Yeah.” I nod, trying to shove down the emotion his words make me feel, to bury it deep with everything else. “Yeah, I can do that.”
He pulls me into a hug. “You’re gonna get through this. You’re a tough kid,” he mutters.
“Thanks,” I say quietly, stepping back. “For everything.” I turn, glancing over my shoulder, toward the kitchen. “I should really …”
“I’ll come with you,” he says, following behind me.
Billy looks up from his phone as we enter the room. He’s sitting on the counter, facing my mother, who’s slumped in her seat. “She fell asleep a couple minutes ago,” he explains.
I push away the evidence of her outburst with my boot, clearing a path over to her chair. I crouch down in front of her and tap her leg. “Ma.”
Nothing.
I grip her shoulders and gently shake her, speaking louder this time. “Come on, Ma.”
Her eyes flick open. “Jameson?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
She darts her gaze around, taking in the space, and panic flashes across her face at the position she’s in. “What’s going on?” she questions. “What’d you do to me? Why am I tied up?”
“You got upset,” I tell her. “Destroyed the room.”
She looks around and sucks in a sharp breath. “H-he’s gone, isn’t he?”
I clear my throat. “Yeah, Ma, he’s gone.”
She blinks slowly, a tear falling down her face, as she says more to herself, “I’m nothing now. He said that if he wasn’t …” Her words fade, the sound of them all wrong.
The sight of her like this makes me want to crawl into myself. Disappear. I’d rather deal with her angry than completely shattered.
“I’m going to untie you now,” I tell her. “Okay?”
She doesn’t say anything, so I move behind her and unknot the dish towel around her wrists.
Once she’s free, she moves her hands into her lap, clasping them in front of her.
I don’t know what I expect her to do, but she just sits silently, her gaze locked on her folded hands.
I start to stand when she whispers, “My head is so …”
Crouching back down, I ask, “It’s what?”
She licks her lips. “I’m tired.”
“Okay,” I say softly. “Let’s get you up.”
I hold out a hand, and she takes it, stumbling as she stands. “Wrap your arms around my neck,” I tell her. “I’ll carry you.”
She doesn’t argue, and I scoop her up, her body too light in my arms. I move past Billy and Luke as I exit the room and start down the hall.
I set her on the bed, making sure she’s on her side, and within a couple minutes, she’s out again.
When I step back into the kitchen, Billy and Luke each have a trash bag and are clearing things off the floor. I move to help them, but Luke stops me.
“Why don’t you go shower or something? Give yourself a minute. We’ve got this.”
I glance over at Billy, and he nods.
After muttering, “Thanks,” I make my way to the bathroom and for the first time since it all happened, I’m alone.
The door shuts with a click behind me as I lock it, and for several seconds, I do nothing. Just stand here. Then, as if all at once, everything I carefully pushed away crashes into me.
Pain.
Sadness.
Grief.
Every emotion swirls around in my head.
And it’s too much.
Too much to feel.
Too much to deal with.
So, I grab onto the thing I’m used to. The emotion I know how to handle.
Anger.
It courses through me, burning everything in its path.
Until there’s nothing but a white hot rage.
How could my father leave me like this?
How could he do this to me?
He picked his pride over me, and because of it, he’s gone.
And Sam. He fucked her up, too. He took her brother away.
He took everything away.
All my fucking life, he’s taken everything.
He took my mother away. Made her a shell of herself.
He took my childhood and forced me to become something—someone—I don’t want to be.
And now he’s gone, and I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to feel.
Because I hated him.
Wanted him to die more times than I can count.
But he was my father, and for some fucked-up reason, I still loved him.
And now he’s gone.
I pace back and forth, the walls of the small bathroom closing in on me.
I rake my hands through my hair, pulling at the strands, the pain quieting the noise in my head.
And I want more.
I don’t just want it quiet.
I want it silent.
I don’t want to think.
With that as the goal, I whirl, smashing my fist into the wall. It breaks through, my arm buried in the drywall. I pull my hand out and do it again, and again, until my knuckles crack and pain slices through my thoughts.
Silent.
My mind is finally silent.
The door handle jiggles, and then a loud knock sounds.
“Jameson!” Luke’s voice is panicked. “Jameson, open the door.”
I stand there frozen, the sound of him pounding against the wood growing louder.
Just a few more seconds.
I close my eyes.
I just need a few more seconds.
My hand begins to throb as I count to three in my head. Moving slowly from one number to next, searching for more time in the silence.
One.
Two.
Three.
I open my eyes, and the noise slips back in.
The pounding of Luke’s fist suddenly seems deafening. A reminder that my fucked-up life is waiting for me on the other side of that door.
Mindlessly, I step forward and pull it open. Luke’s wild eyes meet mine before he drops his gaze to my hand, to the blood that’s dripping down my cracked knuckles. He then looks past me, his eyes roaming over the three holes that now decorate the wall.
I wait for him to say something, to admonish me, but he just moves back and waits until I step out of the room.
Billy lingers behind him, and once I’m in the hall, he shifts to the side, giving me space. I keep my gaze trained on the floor, not wanting to look at either of them.
“First-aid kit?” Luke asks.
“Under the sink.”
He grabs it and starts for the kitchen, me and Billy following behind him. The floor has been cleared and the furniture reset.
I move stiffly over to the table and drop into a chair.
“Let me see,” Luke says, sitting to my right.
I lay my hand out on the table in front of me and suck in a breath as I set my palm down flat against the wood.
Luke quickly glances away, like he can’t stomach to see what I’ve done to myself, and pops open the first-aid kit. “Get some ice,” he says to Billy.
Silently, he begins working on my hand. I’m glad he doesn’t push for a conversation.
Billy comes back with the ice and moves to my other side.
Minutes tick by as I sit between the two of them, trying not to let my mind wander. Trying not to think about how I’m going to get through this. All that’s waiting for me on the other side of today.
“You feel any better?” Luke asks once he’s finished wrapping my hand.
“Guess so,” I lie.
“It’ll get easier,” he says. “Time heals and all that shit.”
“Yeah.” I nod, trying to give him something, that sense of delusional hope he tried to feed me earlier. “I know.”
He looks relieved at my acceptance, but all I can think about is: how much time does it take to heal from a lifetime of pain?
And when do you begin to heal if you’re still in the trenches? Does the clock keep resetting each time another fucked-up thing happens? Because, if that’s the case …
I don’t think I’ll ever outrun the clock.