Chapter 23 Puck
TWENTY-THREE
PUCK
I’d recognize that voice anywhere, even though her face had filled out since I’d last seen her. Plus, I hadn’t been called Jared in years.
“Mom?” I asked.
And the second she rushed to me to envelope me in a hug, I looked over at Brigid.
Who seemed rooted in shock.
“Uh, I hate to break up the party, you two, but we don’t really have time for a family reunion,” West said.
Frost hopped back onto his bike. “He’s right. We have to get out of here.”
Diego slung his leg over his bike as the fire alarms went off. “If we’re going to get out of here without being seen, we have to do it now.”
“Did you just say, ‘Mom?’” Brigid spat.
The sirens off in the distance pulled me out of my trance and I quickly dug my guest helmet out of the back compartment of my bike.
I tossed it to Brigid and nodded to the back of my bike before I snapped at Diego and pointed at my mother.
Helmets were exchanged and people loaded up, then one by one we revved our engines and vacated the premises of the rehab center.
Before Brigid’s voice came to life in my helmet headset. “What the hell is going on?”
I scoffed. “I could ask you the same damn thing.”
“Is that really your mother?”
I didn’t answer her question. “Just hang on until we can get back to the fucking warehouse.”
Anger took over my body as we sped back toward the overly crowded warehouse-turned-clubhouse-turned-last-chance-at-survival.
I was really growing tired of this game and wanted nothing more than to return to my old life where all I had were the guys and Ruby with my parents completely out of the picture.
Yet, as we came to a stop at a stoplight, I couldn’t help the question that charged forth. “Did you know?”
Brigid scoffed. “What? About Lori being your mother?”
My voice fell flat. “Yeah. That.”
“Do you honestly think I’d keep that from you if I knew?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know what you’d do, actually.”
“Says the guy who’s avoiding me because he’s afraid of a bit of judgment.”
I hissed at her. “It’s more than judgment and you know it.”
“Then be a fucking man and talk to me about it.”
I growled. “Not everything happens on your command, princess.”
She punched me in my back so hard it almost robbed me of my breath. “Call me that one more time and I’ll wreck you on this thing.”
We peeled away from the stoplight and followed West as he took some back roads to get to the warehouse.
And the rest of the way, I fell quiet and stewed in my silent frustration.
What in the absolute hell was I going to tell Stone once we got back?
That my drugged-out mother I’d lost all contact with just so happened to be the goddamn contact?
I didn’t even know she had been part of the Banderas Cartel in the first fucking place!
Back at the warehouse, I couldn’t get off my bike quickly enough. I shoved my helmet into the compartment and didn’t even bother helping Brigid off the back as I stormed for the front door. However, before I could get inside, someone gripped my arm.
Then they pulled me off to the side.
“Puck, just talk to me,” Brigid begged.
I shook my head. “Begging doesn’t look good on you. Don’t do it.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Then grow a sack and talk to me.”
I snarled at her. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“Then listen, okay? You don’t even have to say anything.”
I raised my nose up at her and considered whether it was worth the effort. But before I gave her an answer, she launched into a speech that sounded rehearsed more than anything else.
“Look, I had absolutely no idea about her connection to you. If I had known—if I’d even had an inkling—I would have said something to you. You have my word that—”
I held my hand up. “I can’t do this right now.”
“Jared?” Mom called out.
I turned away from the forbidden woman and focused my sights on someone I could have gone my entire life without ever seeing again. And as she walked up to me, I noticed that she looked stronger. She sounded stronger, too.
And as I studied her face, her red eyes and puffy cheeks told me everything I needed to know.
“Please don’t cry, Mom,” I said softly.
She wrapped her arms around my waist. “Can we talk somewhere? Please? Before this gets anymore out of control?”
I peered over my shoulder at Brigid, and she simply shrugged at me before making her way inside. Great. Just grand. She wanted to stick around when the world was centered around her, but not when my world was crumbling.
Maybe it’s better to leave her in the dust anyway if she’s that fucking selfish.
“Come on, Mom. There’s some seating around back,” I murmured.
I led her toward the backyard area that overlooked the trees that surrounded this place.
I helped her sit before finding a chair on the other side of the table, making sure to put some distance between us.
I had always been weak when it came to my mother.
Ruby made sure to never let me forget that.
So, with a steel gut and clenched fists, I cleared my throat.
“All right, say whatever you need to, Mom.”
She held her hand out. “May I hold your hand?”
I shot her a look. “No.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, sweet boy. I’m so beyond—”
“Stop.”
A tear streaked her cheek. “Please, let me say this.”
I shook my head. “I’m tired of your excuses and your apologies. At this point, they’re empty. I don’t want to hear them any longer.”
“Sweetheart, there’s so much that you don’t know about this situation. And I know we all wish that things could be different—”
I shot to my feet. “They could have been had you not fucked up your entire life while Ruby and I still depended on you.”
“And if you’d sit your stubborn ass down long enough, I’d give you the only excuse that makes sense: which is the truth.”
My eye twitched. “You’re going to tell me everything?”
She nodded at my seat. “If you sit down and shut that mouth of yours.”
There’s the mom I know. “Fine. But make it quick.”
I eased back down into my chair before she took a deep breath. “Your father isn’t in jail because he dealt drugs, Jared. He’s in jail because he covered for me when I got caught.”
My jaw unhinged. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
She shook her head. “I know it’s not enough and I know I can’t take back what happened, but my addiction problem didn’t start with you two.
And before you even say anything, I know you and Roo blame yourselves.
I know you think that I started getting high because I had you two and it was too overwhelming to have twins in the house.
But what you don’t understand is that at the peak of my issues before I started getting high, my doctor had diagnosed me with P.P.D. ”
I blinked. “You're kidding.”
She shook her head as her eyes unfocused over my shoulder.
“Your father was the light of my life for years. He was the one that convinced me to leave my last year of college and finish it online at a later time once we got pregnant with you two. And yes, he did deal drugs for a spell, but only to make sure we could cover our medical bills. Neither of us were insured at the time and your father was damn near unemployable because he refused to finish his G.E.D while I was pregnant, so he did the only thing he knew how to do.”
I sat there in silence as Mom wiped the tears off her face.
“He worked hard, too. We paid off all of our debt, including my school debt. We paid medical bills with credit cards that we immediately paid off and he quickly worked his way up in the cartel. But when Carlos himself figured out that I was stealing some of your father’s selling stash for my own personal use, he demanded that I sell for free to pay back what I had stolen. ”
I nodded slowly. “And that’s when you got caught.”
She hung her head in shame. “He took the fall for me without a second thought, and the police didn’t have any issues convicting him after finding the stash in the house.
Between that and his past in juvie, it was a no-brainer to them.
I promised him I’d get clean and stay off that shit so I could get the proper help I needed. ”
I stared off into the woods. “But you didn’t.”
She sniffled hard. “I tried my best, but after your father went to jail, the cartel came down hard on me. They kept feeding me drugs, having me test out new product free of charge. I didn’t see it until later, but they actively did what they could to keep me hooked on their products so that I wasn’t coherent enough to go to the police with what I knew.
And when I figured out what the hell they were doing, that’s when I left. ”
My entire body vibrated with anger. “Where did you go?”
“Canada.”
I licked my lips. “Canada.”
She sighed. “Jared, if I thought even for a second that the cartel would leave me alone while I was still with you guys, I would’ve taken the chance in a heartbeat.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wonder how you and your sister are doing.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t pray to any God still listening that you two are okay, and fed, and clothed, and happy.
But I knew that if I couldn’t get away from the cartel, they’d suck you two in as well, and I couldn’t let that happen to you guys. I just couldn’t.”
It made so much sense, and yet it did nothing to abate my anger. It grew and mounted until all I saw was the red that dripped over my vision.
“How did you find Pathways, then?” I said breathlessly.
She sighed as she leaned back into her chair. “Once the cartel stopped coming after me, I waited for two years. Two years, I went unbothered, so I figured it was safe enough to come home.”
I scoffed. “You’re never safe from them.”
“And that’s what I figured out very quickly.
I checked myself into Pathways because I knew it was a safe place to hide.
I’d stay clean, I’d get three meals, I’d have a roof over my head, and I’d have protection from the bulk of what the cartel could throw at me.
But they still found me, and they still tried to get to me. Had it not been for Brigid–”
I stood and held up my hand. “Don’t say her name.”
“She saved my life, Jared. Whatever it is you’re angry at her for, forgive her. She saved your mother.”
I looked down upon her and saw the red streaks tainting her face.
Her eyes were so puffy that they were almost closed, and it tugged at the small part of my heart that hadn’t frozen over yet.
If nothing else, I felt sorry for her. I felt sorry that she had fallen into a lifestyle that took everything away from her, and I felt sorry for the fact that my sister and I had to pick up the pieces of our lives that she shattered just to keep us safe.
And while I couldn’t forgive her for everything, I wanted to mend my relationship with her.
“Mom?” I asked.
She quickly stood to her feet. “Yes, sweet boy?”
“Could we just…start all—”
“Mom?!” Ruby shrieked.
She turned around and gasped. “Roo!”
My sister enveloped our mother in the tightest hug imaginable, and I watched as thankfulness and relief washed over her features.
Which made me wonder if she had ever been upset with Mom for everything she put us through.