32. Torren
32
TORREN
The house looks more rundown than it did last time I was here.
The siding is grimier. The roof is more slouched. The small front porch sags toward the middle, and each step groans under my weight as I climb them. The wood is probably rotting, and the next time I visit, I wouldn’t be surprised to find cinder blocks where the stairs once were.
Before I knock, I glance over my shoulder at Damon. He’s standing next to the SUV with his arms crossed, a stern expression on his face.
The buses are on their way to Miami, but Hammond insisted on Damon accompanying me instead of just letting me have one of the SUVs like usual. I do almost everything with Damon, so him being here shouldn’t bother me, but it does. I know that the likelihood of him finding the situation shocking or disturbing is slim, but I still can’t get comfortable with the idea of sharing any of this with anyone. It’s just another reason to resent Sav’s fucking stalker. My annual trip to my mom’s house is personal. It’s something I’d rather be doing alone. But now? Well, now I’ve got to do it with a babysitter.
“This won’t take long,” I call to Damon. He nods, but says nothing, so I turn back to the door and raise my hand to knock.
My knuckles hit the warped wooden screen door and rap three times, disturbing the cracked, faded paint. Once a light blue, it looks more like a dirty gray now. With every knock, the door bounces against the frame, amplifying the sound and adding in a squeak from the rickety hinges .
I wait for a few minutes and listen for any movement inside, but I hear nothing. There’s a beat-up truck and an old car in the driveway, and it’s too early in the day for her to be at the bar. She’s inside. She probably saw me pull up in the SUV and is hoping I’ll leave if she doesn’t answer.
“I know you’re home. Might as well open the door, ‘cause I’m not leaving ‘til I see you.”
I wait another minute before the inside door finally swings open, revealing my mother on the other side. Like the house, she looks rougher. Her long gray hair is hanging limply around her shoulders. Her eyes and cheeks are sunken in, both sporting sickly, haunting shadows. The wrinkles around her scowl are more pronounced, and she’s thin. Rail thin. My mother looks like the last year has been hard on her, and the cigarette hanging from her lips is just one piece of evidence as to why. Every time I see her, I tell myself I need to quit smoking, but by the time I leave, my nerves are frayed, and I settle for nicotine instead of something harder.
“Mom,” I greet with a nod. “Can I come in?”
She grunts. “If you must.”
My mom turns and heads into the house, so I follow. The whole place smells like cigarette smoke, and the old wallpaper has a yellow tinge to it.
“Called you on our birthday,” I say as she leads me into the kitchen.
“I know.”
“You could have answered.”
My mom gestures to the small round kitchen table. “I was busy.”
“Right.” I nod once, then narrow my eyes at her. “How are you?”
She takes a long drag from the cigarette, blowing the smoke out her nose before finally responding. “Fine. Don’t I look fine?”
I don’t answer. She doesn’t look fine. She looks like she’s one more forty-ounce away from the grave.
“That’s a real nice car you got outside. Only the best for a superstar like you.”
She sneers at me, nothing but resentment and jealousy in her expression. I take a deep breath, readying myself for the inevitable, and speak slowly. Calmly.
“You haven’t been cashing my checks. ”
She arches a thin, gray eyebrow. “We don’t need your pity money.”
“It’s not pity, Mom. I want to help.”
“You missed your chance to help, Torren.”
It’s the same argument we always have, and I should probably just give up at this point, but I can’t. Not yet. Just like I can’t stop sending the checks even though I know she probably just lights them on fire.
“How’s Sean?”
Her sinister laugh is more like a cough as she snaps back at me. “Don’t pretend like you care.”
“I do care, Mom. He’s my brother.”
She stubs her cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray on the table, then leans toward me.
“He’s doin’ great , no thanks to you. Seein’ a real nice new girl down the road. Probably give me some grandbabies soon. Got a good job, too. Sean is better.”
I swallow back the urge to ask prying questions like, how old is this girl he’s dating , and is the job legal, and instead force myself to smile. I nod, hoping like hell what she says is true.
“That’s great. I’m glad he’s doing well.”
Her eyes narrow in my direction, and she throws me a look of pure hatred that I should be accustomed to by now, but it still fucking hurts. She won’t ask how I’m doing because she doesn’t care. She wouldn’t be happy to hear anything less than massive failures.
I rack my brain for a change of subject when the air in the kitchen changes, feeling heavier and more daunting. I hear the floorboards behind me creak, and I know who it is even before he speaks. I have to work to contain my frown. I didn’t want him to be here. Visits with Mom are hard enough without my brother to act as an antagonist.
“Not dating that cunt lead singer anymore,” Sean says, his deep voice rumbling as if he just woke up. He must be living here again.
I turn my body so I can see him leaning on the doorframe, and I study him without making it obvious. Like Mom, my older brother is also looking worse for wear. His shirtless torso is covered in faded, cheap tattoos that stretch down his arms and hands. I’m certain he got most of the ink while he was in prison, along with the jagged scar on his bicep. Sean and I have always had the same black, curly hair, but he’s shaved his head recently, showing off another set of tattoos on his scalp. I don’t let myself look directly at them, though. I know they’ll only disappoint me.
“Savannah and I haven’t been together for a few years,” I tell my brother, and he snorts a derisive laugh as he heads to the fridge and pulls out a beer. I watch as he cracks open the can and chugs half of it. I attempt to change the subject. “Mom says you have a new job and a nice girlfriend.”
Sean snorts again. “Yeah, a real great job, Tor. Love it. Pays great. How many crates of nacho cheese you reckon I gotta deliver ‘til I’m makin’ what you’re makin’? Maybe I should boost a few more cars? Get there faster.”
I clench my jaw and bite my tongue on the need to defend myself. Sean laughs.
“Still the cunt bitch’s lap dog.” He drinks the second half of the beer, dropping the empty can in the sink before grabbing another from the fridge. “So nice of her to give you permission to come here.”
The resentment radiating from my mother and brother right now is enough to make my body quake and my eyes sting. I fist my hands and I take a few deep breaths through my nose, working to maintain my composure.
“I’m here because I wanted to see Mom. I wanted to see my family.”
Now it’s my mother’s turn to laugh. “We stopped bein’ your family the day you turned on us.”
“I didn’t turn on you.” I flick my eyes from my mom to Sean. “I didn’t abandon you.”
“Sendin’ checks every month isn’t the same as stickin’ with your blood, brother. You chose that cunt bitch’s band over me, and you think our forgiveness can be bought. It can’t.”
“Sean, your own actions are why you were asked to leave Heartless, and you know it. You agreed.”
“I didn’t agree to shit.” He spits the words through gritted teeth, nostrils flaring, and takes three steps toward me with his finger brandished in my face. “ You agreed. You . Because you give little miss Savvy whatever she fuckin’ wants. I should be on that stage with you. Gettin’ the same payout as you. I should be fuckin’ the women you fuck and snortin’ the coke you snort, but you took that away from me.”
I push to standing, but I never take my eyes off him .
“That’s not how it happened, Sean.”
“That’s exactly how it happened. You’re a shit brother. A shit son. A shit person. You only come back here because you feel fuckin’ guilty.”
I stare him down, seconds ticking by as I debate whether or not I want to go down this road again. Do I open my mouth? Defend myself? Repeat the fucking truth for the hundredth time?
Is it even worth it?
Because he’s right about one thing. I do feel guilty. I send the checks, and I subject myself to these miserable fucking visits because I feel guilty, and there is nothing I can say that will change that, even if what I say is the truth.
I sigh and break eye contact with my brother to look at my mom. I nod at her, and then I lie. “Always a pleasure, Mom. I’ll let myself out.”
The rickety screen door slams behind me, bouncing off the frame once before finally coming to a stop as I stalk back toward the SUV. I half expect Sean to come barreling out after me, but my guess is he’s not willing to get into another fistfight. Especially not if he’s still on parole.
I don’t know why I’m disappointed. I don’t know how I could have expected anything different. My brother’s revisionist history is what feeds his rage, and he’s always had my mom on his side, even when we were kids.
There was a time when I looked up to Sean. He practically raised me after our dad was arrested. He’d protect me from Mom’s drunken episodes when she’d get spittin’ mad and try to take it all out on me. Me, because I look just like my father. Sean was always her favorite. She always thought I was the poisoned one. But even though I got our father’s looks, Sean got his temperament, and by the time the truth was revealed, my mother was too set in her ways to care.
My mom is right. We stopped being family a long time ago. But she’s wrong, too. It was long before Sean was kicked out of the band.
I climb into the passenger seat and do my seat belt without saying a word. I put on my sunglasses and rest my head on the seatback, and mercifully, Damon doesn’t ask me anything. My blood is boiling, and my chest is aching, but with every mile closer we get to Miami, the more I relax. One mile closer to my band. To my real family. And to my Firebird.
One mile closer to the only things that matter .
The suite I’m sharing with Jonah is quiet when I finally get to the hotel, and I head straight for his room.
When I walk through the door, I’m expecting to see him sleeping, but instead I find him on the bed with a thick book in his hands. He arches a brow when he sees me.
“What if I was fucking someone?”
I smirk. “I didn’t hear moaning.”
That gets a little half grin out of him before his face grows stern again. “How was it?”
I sigh and sit on the side of his bed. “About how it always is, except this time she had company.”
“No shit? Sean?”
“Sean.”
“Fuck. He still a bitter asshole?”
“What do you think?”
Jonah grows quiet for a moment before I feel him sit up, the bed dipping from the movement. When I look at him, he’s looking right at me.
“You did the right thing. We all did.”
I roll my eyes. “I know. I’ve never doubted that.”
“Bullshit. You’ve felt guilty about it every year since we were signed. But we wouldn’t have gotten where we are if we’d kept Sean around, and you know it.”
I close my eyes and drag a hand through my hair. He’s right. I know he is. About all of it. Kicking Sean out of the band was the right move, but I also feel guilty as hell for it.
“Sometimes I wonder if he’d have ended up in prison if we’d let him stay with us.”
Jonah’s sardonic grin makes my stomach twist. “You think three directionless druggies and a self-loathing bisexual would have kept him from being a violent creep?”
I mean, when he puts it that way...
I don’t respond, and he sighs, his irritation evident. He’s tired of having this conversation with me. Truthfully, I’m tired of it too. But it doesn’t make me need it any less .
“I fucking mean it, Torren. We were a sinking fucking ship for years. No way we could have been watching after Sean, too. He’d have done something terrible, and he’d have fucked us over while doing it.”
I take a deep breath and stare at the wall, running his words through my head. Then I furrow my brow. “Mabel wasn’t self-loathing.”
“She was, dumbass. For a long time after Crystal cheated on her, Mabes hated herself and all of us, too. You were just too far up Sav’s ass to notice anything but your own pathetic obsession.”
I snort. “Fuck me, what a mess.”
“Yep. But look on the bright side. Mabel doesn’t hate herself anymore, and you and Savannah aren’t druggies. Woo-hoo for Therapy Thursday. Another win for Savvy.”
I don’t miss the way he only mentioned me and Sav. Not himself. That heightens my anxiety for a whole different reason. I know he thinks he’s a lost cause. I have a feeling if Sav wasn’t having everyone watch him so closely, he’d be doing a lot worse than drinking and smoking. He’d be backsliding. It’s got me wondering how much longer we have until he stops trying to keep his footing and just gives in to the fall.
“And how is Therapy Thursday going for you?” I ask tentatively.
Jonah groans. He’s been against the practice since Sav implemented it a year ago. All four of us meet with a personal therapist via video chat for an hour on the first Thursday of the month. No matter what country we’re in, we do it. Sav, Mabel, and me are pretty committed to it. But Jonah? He just does it to keep from being sent back to rehab.
“My shrink is a bitch.”
“You’re just pissed she won’t have video chat sex with you.”
He shrugs. “Potato tomato.”
“Has it helped, though? At all?”
He sighs and falls back on his pillow. “Yeah. It has.”
“Good.” I nod decidedly, and then he grows quiet once more.
When Jonah picks up his book, I feel myself slipping back into my thoughts. I replay the visit to my mother’s house, focusing on the depressing state in which she lives and the bitter resentment both she and my brother still harbor for me. But then I pull myself out of it and change the subject to the next thing that pops into my head.
“Callie wants us to fuck her. ”
He doesn’t react how I expect. There’s no smile. No shock. He just hums.
“That’s it? Just hmmm ?”
He closes the book and shrugs. “I’m not surprised. I could tell she was curious. It was only a matter of time before she gave in.”
I arch a brow. “And what makes you think I’m okay with it?”
Jonah smirks. “Because you’re a fucking simp, King, and you’re obsessed with her. Saw it at that music festival, and I see it now.”
My eyes widen in surprise. “You remember that?”
“Sure do. Not all of us are as lucky as you. Doesn’t matter how many fucking drugs I take. It all comes back the moment I’m sober.”
My eyebrows slant harshly as I consider his comment. I know he’s got a lot of demons to contend with. I know there’s a lot of shit in his head that he tries to escape from. I never realized how hard it was until now.
“When?”
I blink at Jonah, and he repeats himself.
“ When are we going to do it? When’s she down?”
“I don’t know. Whenever she’s ready, I guess.”
“And you’re sure you’re good with this? You’re not going to sucker punch me in the nose the moment I bottom out?”
Jealousy claws at my throat at the same time as my stomach stirs with arousal. I shake my head once.
“What if I kiss her?”
I shake my head again.
“What if I eat her pussy? What if I make her come all over my fucking face, and then I shove my tongue down her throat and make her taste it?”
I grit my teeth to stave off my anger, my cock hardening as I picture it.
“You can do anything she wants you to do. But it’s only happening once. We’ll do this once, and then that’s it. You’re on your own after this.”
He smiles. A rare, full smile, stretching slowly across his face until he’s flashing just a hint of white teeth.
“Guess I better make it memorable, then.”