Chapter 6 Ronan #2
I held my stare, but the defensive anger was melting away as I realized no one apart from my social worker had ever asked me about my parents.
She’d told me most people wouldn’t—that they’d be afraid bringing it up would remind me of my mother’s death.
As if I’d forgotten all about it until they said something.
As if I didn’t walk around with it all day, every day.
Or relive it in my nightmares every night.
I nearly told Holden to fuck off, but no one asked me if I was okay either.
“I don’t know,” I said to the fire. “I’m doing my best, I guess. And I’m done talking about it.”
Holden smiled—a rare, soft one with no sharp edges. “Fair enough. Let’s talk about something only slightly less painful and traumatic.”
“Like?”
“Girls. Not my preferred subject, obviously, but I confessed to you the depressing state of my love life. If you wish to unburden yourself likewise, I’m all ears.”
Shiloh’s perfect face with her smooth skin and full lips rose up in my mind.
I recalled the intelligence in her eyes as she focused her attention on whatever job was in front of her.
Like patching up a criminal like me. That was the gossip at school—Miller was the outcast, Holden was the vampire, and I was an ex-con posing as a high school student.
They were right, in a way. The stain of my father’s crime was all over me.
Just standing in Bibi’s house or sitting on the patio with Shiloh felt wrong.
Good but wrong. As if I’d broken into their perfect life and left bloody fingerprints all over it.
But when I tried to hold back, stay quiet, and get to work, Shiloh drew me out of myself.
I didn’t want to move so long as she was sitting across from me.
Holden was waiting for an answer.
There’s a girl, and I don’t want there to be a girl.
“Nah,” I said tipping back my beer. “There’s no one.”
***
At ten, Holden and I met Miller at the arcade. He got off his shift, and we walked the boardwalk, stopping for slices of pizza and to play a few carnival games. After, I walked home.
I walked everywhere. Luckily, the school, the shack, Shiloh’s place, and my apartment were all close enough to each other that I didn’t need a car. But it would’ve fucking helped.
I climbed the exterior cement steps up to my corner place, reaching for my keys. But the door swung open at the slightest touch, revealing a wedge of black that was deep and dark.
“Nelson?” I asked, my hand creeping toward my jacket pocket for the Taser I’d swiped from Frankie. “You here?”
I reached to my right, feeling along the wall to flip on the light when I sensed it. Him. Someone waiting…
The dark came to life, breathing and moving.
I lunged blindly, and something heavy whacked my wrist. The Taser went skittering across the linoleum in the kitchen.
Big hands gripped me by the neck and shoulders, and a cannonball of pain exploded as a knee drove up into my gut.
Another blow from out of the dark split my lip, and then I was shoved to the ground.
I was still trying to get my wind when the light flipped on.
A huge guy loomed over me, his back to my busted door. He looked to be middle-aged, wearing track pants, a T-shirt that stretched over his bulk, and a blue windbreaker. His reddish hair was thinning on top, and he had pale-blue eyes stuffed in a ruddy face.
I scrambled to my feet, rage burning up the pain and shock.
“You want to try that shit again?” I snarled. “With the lights on?”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” the guy said when I took a step toward him. He moved his blue windbreaker aside to reveal a holstered pistol at his waist.
His smile sent shivers down my spine. It was the same kind of sick smile my dad wore when he announced that my mother was “in trouble.”
“Ronan Wentz, right?” the guy said. “My name is Mitch. But you can call me Officer Dowd.”
Mitch Dowd. He looked and sounded deadly casual, but I could feel the readiness tensing in him, waiting for me to make a move.
“I could have you arrested for breaking my son’s nose, but I prefer to handle things personally.”
“Fuck you.” I spat a wad of red onto my carpet at his feet. “And fuck him too.”
Mitch chuckled, though his gaze grew flatter. “I read your file, Wentz. You’re a criminal. A degenerate, just like your father.” His eyes went to the Taser lying a few feet away. “A thief too, who steals police property. I believe that belongs to me, son.”
Christ, he sounded like my dad.
“I want you to go over there and hand it to me. Slowly. Slowly.” He rested one hand on the butt of his pistol, one hand outstretched, waiting.
I retrieved the Taser from the kitchen and crossed the small space to him, our eyes locked. Every muscle in my body was coiled tight, ready to spring. But something besides adrenaline zipped along my nerves like an electric current.
Fear.
He looked nothing like my dad, yet the resemblance was uncanny, catapulting me to another time. My breath came short. Mouth dry. I put the Taser in his left hand. It touched skin, and the blue of his jacket blurred as his fist slammed into my eye in a blow I should’ve seen coming.
My head rang, but I took the hit with a grunt and answered by throwing a right hook that connected with his mouth.
It would’ve knocked another guy flat, but Mitch hardly flinched.
I took a shot to the kidney, another to the gut, and then he was hurling me across the room.
I crashed, shoulder first, into the cheap wooden coffee table that splintered under me like kindling.
With a satisfied smile, Mitch ran his thumb under his lip, wiping a trickle of blood.
“This was a warning, Wentz,” he said, heading for the door. “You only get one.”
He went out, and I lay for a minute in the wreckage of the table, feeling drunk on pain and bloody memories.
Slowly, my head cleared, and I hauled myself to my feet just as Maryann Greer from downstairs poked her head inside.
“Ronan? Oh my God…”
I waved her off, but it was too late. She rushed in and put gentle, steadying hands on me as she guided me to the kitchen table.
“What in the hell happened? I heard a crash and saw a man leaving. Big one.”
“It’s nothing,” I said, slouching into the chair, keeping a hand over my eye that was already swelling shut. “You should go.”
If he comes back…
“Go?” Maryann stood over me, her blue eyes studying me. She wore jeans and an old sweatshirt, her dark-blond hair in a messy ponytail. “Fat chance. I’m calling the police.”
“He was the police.”
Gently, she moved my hand from my eye. “Sweet Jesus, what happened? And don’t say nothing.”
“It’s over. He came to settle a score. That’s it.”
“You have scores with cops?” Maryann rummaged in my freezer, found it empty, and checked out the fridge. “You have no ice. Hardly any food either.”
“I’m fine.”
“My ass. Stay right there,” she said, going to the door. “Don’t move.”
“Maryann…”
But she was already gone.
A flare of anger in me wanted more fight—a fair fight—but shame washed it away. A single fluorescent bulb lit my dim apartment. My coffee table was a heap of busted wood. A splotch of blood stained the carpet.
Sorry, Mom. I’m trying.
Maryann came back with a bag of frozen peas.
Instead of handing it to me, she stood over me and pressed the bag to my eye, her other hand gently holding the back of my neck.
For long moments, I just sat there with Maryann and her peas, her worry and concern wafting over me in warm, motherly waves. She smelled like lemon dish soap.
I closed my eyes and let myself have that for a minute, then stiffened to push her away.
“I got it, thanks.” I took the bag and held it to my eye. “You can go.”
Maryann pursed her lips, then sat in the chair across from me and rested her arms on the card table in a way that said I’m not going anywhere.
“You’re young, aren’t you?” she asked. “You go to the high school?”
“When I can get there.”
“Who takes care of you? Not your uncle,” she said darkly. “He doesn’t take care of sh—” Her mouth snapped shut, her eyes anxious. “I mean no disrespect.”
“It’s okay. He’s an ass.”
“What can I do?” she asked. “Because this”—she gestured at the smashed table—“is not okay.”
I knew Maryann Greer worked her ass off at an accounting company and took online classes to get a degree. To get a better job and make a better life for her girls. Weariness was written in every line of her face that made her look older than she was.
“I don’t need anything.”
I’m not taking anything from you.
“I disagree. Ronan, I—”
“Mommy?”
Lillian and Camille, her six-year-old twins, were peeking their heads inside, sleepy and curious.
“I told you both to stay in bed,” Maryann said.
“We couldn’t sleep,” said one.
“Yeah, it was loud up here,” said the other.
They had Maryann’s blond hair and blue eyes. Both wore little nightgowns with butterflies on them and an initial, C or L. They looked at me and then at the smashed table, eyes wide.
“They shouldn’t see this,” I said to Maryann in a low voice.
“Agreed. But this isn’t over yet,” she said and rose to her feet. “Girls…”
Too late. The twins had already rushed into my place and surrounded me at the table. Their energy filled up my small dark space and made it brighter.
“Are you okay?”
“Why do you have peas on your face? Is your eye all gross under there?”
One peeked under my T-shirt sleeve. “You have an owl on your shoulder! Ew, yucky bruise too.”
“Were you in a fight? Is that why?”
“Ronan was…wrestling,” Maryann said.
Instantly, the girls’ faces lit up, and they exchanged excited looks.
“Really?”
“No way!”
Maryann leaned into me. “They love WWE women’s wrestling. Just go with it.”
“Yeah, I was wrestling,” I said. “Practicing for a match.”
“That is so cool!”
“Did you do a pile driver? That’s my favorite.”
“I like it when they fly off the ropes.” Lillian glanced around with a frown. “I don’t see any ropes…”
Maryann held up her hands. “Okay, Cami, Lily. Let’s leave Ronan alone. Back to bed.”
They both sagged with disappointment. And so did I. A little.
The bag of cookies from Bibi I’d taken the other day was still on my kitchen counter, untouched. “Do you guys like chocolate chip cookies?”
Their little faces lit up again while Maryann shot me with a Don’t you dare look in her eyes.
I pretended not to see it.
“A lady made these,” I said, keeping the peas on my eye as I grabbed the cookie bag. “She’s a grandma, so you know they’re good.”
I handed the bag to Cami, who immediately pulled out a cookie, gave it to her twin, then took one for herself. “They look so yummy! Can we, Mommy?”
Maryann crossed her arms, shaking her head ruefully at me.
“They’re from one of my jobs,” I said. “Good people.”
She relented with a sigh. “Okay, but just one each.”
“Yay!”
“What do you say?”
The little girls flew at me, hugging me around my bruised ribs, though I hardly felt it. I held my arms up, not daring to touch them until they let me go.
“Thank you, Mr. Ronan!”
“Thanks a lot!”
“Okay, okay.” Maryann herded them to the door, shooting me a puzzled look over her shoulder. “Go back down, girls. I’ll be there in a minute.” She watched them descend the stairs to make sure they got in safe, then turned back to me. “They like you,” she said.
“Must be the wrestling.”
“Or the chocolate,” she said with a dry smile. “You sure you’re going to be okay?”
“Fine. It’s over, I swear,” I said, even as I wondered what would happen if Frankie decided to test me and fuck with Miller again. Or Holden.
I’d beat his ass if he touched either of them.
But I’d already brought Mitch Dowd here once, too close to Maryann and her girls.
Fuck.
Maryann read my dark expression. “Put those peas back in the freezer, then get some sleep. Use it again tomorrow. You have something for the pain?”
“I’m good.”
She nodded slowly, then reluctantly moved to the door as if she didn’t want to leave me alone. “Good night, Ronan.”
“Yep.”
The door closed behind her but wouldn’t stay shut.
The locking mechanism was busted. Dowd must’ve pried it open somehow.
I tossed the peas in my freezer and dragged one of the cheap kitchen chairs to the door and wedged it under the knob.
After Lily and Cami, the silence in my place was thick and heavy.
I went to the bathroom and inspected the damage. My lip was split—not too bad—but my right eye looked like hell. Swollen, blue, the cheekbone puffed and dashed with a small cut where he must’ve got me with his ring.
I lifted my shirt and sucked in a breath. Already, my torso was a patchwork of bruises. My right shoulder, which took the brunt of the table, was stiffening up, and more bruises colored my skin beneath the owl tattoo. It stared at me in the mirror as if to say, What did you expect?
I couldn’t go to school like this, and I sure as shit couldn’t go to the Barreras’, even though Shiloh needed that shed. If my eye wasn’t better Monday, I’d wait, then work twice as hard and fast to get it done for her.
Then you won’t be over there anymore, interfering in their lives.
It was early yet, not even 1:00 a.m., but I was too stiff and sore to walk and no good to anyone anyway. I lay down to sleep, knowing the nightmares were going to be worse and tinged with real pain.
And I was right.