Chapter Ten. Holden
TEN
Holden
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
Grief might be never-ending, but bills are still due on the first of the month.
Life moves on even when yours has stopped.
Some of Mom’s clients gave her a few weeks off from cleaning their houses. Others fired her for not being able to make their scheduled days. Only one paid her even though she didn’t show up.
I stare at the help’s entrance of the Westmore Country Club.
It’s a reflection of this entire fucking place and the members who belong to it.
The front entrance is a sight to be seen with its brick pathways, white columns, lush greenery, and ornate trees.
Pretty at first sight but the closer you look, you can see the ugly it tries to hide—mold staining the bottoms of the retaining walls and the bug traps hanging on the backsides of each tree.
The back? It’s painted just as white, just as bright as the entrance, but there are cracks in the pavement here, ruts in the mud, and the signs that are posted everywhere are warnings to employees on how to behave and what their place is rather than offering Southern hospitality and warm welcomes.
Just like the entrances, the people who enter and exit from each one know their place.
But as I study the back door and prepare myself to face another day without Mase while the dirt upon his grave is still fresh, I fist my hands knowing what I’m about to face.
And I wonder if I’ll be able to keep my fucking cool.
With a deep breath and a forced swallow over the emotion balled in my chest, I enter the country club and pray the day goes fast.
And it does.
In a rare moment of decency, my boss, Darren, takes pity on me. Hours upon hours of washing dishes in the back of the kitchen is enough to drive most of us crazy, but today it is just what I needed.
He knows I’d had a loss in the family.
He knows I might need a bit of time to readjust.
While he might kowtow to the people who employ us, at least he is decent to me today.
“You good, Simpson?” Darren asks at the end of my shift as he walks past me with his clipboard in hand and the stick still firmly planted up his ass.
Simpson.
Mason’s simple wish—for us to have the same last name—now seems like forever ago. Walking away from the name Knight was a no-brainer … and easy. Especially in this town where people like me aren’t looked twice at.
But hearing it right now, today, after everything that happened, feels like a punch in the gut. It sounds so foreign when said to me, but I own it with every fiber of my being. Anything to feel closer to Mason because with each passing day, he seems to be slipping even further away from me.
“Yeah. Thanks for today. For … letting me work in the back.”
“Of course.” His smile is tight and fleeting. “It was a one-time thing though. You left us short elsewhere, and I’d hate for word to get out that you’re slacking on the job. Not when we have a list of people waiting to work here.”
Fuck you.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Glad that’s understood. Can you bring this down to the Members’ Club for me on your way to the locker room?” he asks and motions to the cart full of folded, monogrammed towels.
“Sure.”
Within minutes, I’ve pushed the cart into the Members’ Club—a place for those who have paid a ridiculous amount to feel even more superior than they already do—and have unloaded the towels onto the shelves.
Lost in thought, I run a hand absently over the soft terry. Mason never got the chance to feel something like this—what money can buy you and the luxury it affords.
I was going to give him that.
I was going to figure a way.
Clank. Clink. Clank.
I freeze at the sound. At the stark reminder of who and what the person who’s holding it no doubt is.
“Those aren’t for you to touch,” the voice at my back says.
I knew I’d come face-to-face with Rothschild or Williams sooner or later. I’d prepared and rehearsed and reminded myself over and over, I need this job. I need this job.
But nothing, and I mean nothing, prepared me for this feeling—this unyielding fury—I feel as I hear Rhett Rothschild’s voice and turn to see him standing there with his cronies at his back. Williams. Porter. Vanderbilt. Dunkirk. Martins.
I clench my fists and then unclench them.
I need this job.
“Cat got your tongue?” Williams asks, glancing toward Rothschild.
The murderer and the accomplice.
I see red.
I see white.
And with all reason turning into rage, I charge at the two of them with fists flying and a feral growl down deep in my throat.
Thoughts are nonexistent as the hurt and the pain and the disbelief rule every part of me.
I connect squarely against them, fists flying and body shoving, pushing them into their friends. But the weight of the whole is no match for me. I lash out with hands and shouts and feet but am restrained within seconds.
And their hands on me, holding me down, is almost even worse. I’ve felt helpless before—when I held Mason in my arms—and I swore I’d never allow myself to feel that again.
But I do. And I am just that—helpless.
A fist connects with my cheek and I grunt at the impact but welcome the pain. To my stomach. To my chin. To my side.
Each punch is the slightest fraction of what I deserve for letting Mason go outside that day. Each one the smallest dent in the powder keg I’ve become.
There’s shouting.
Then more hands grabbing at me but hauling me backward and away.
I look up through blurry eyes and see Darren there, pulling me back, wide-eyed and shocked. “Stay the fuck back,” he growls at me and then holds a finger up. “Stay.”
“What the fuck, dude?” Rothschild shouts as the door to the club shoves open before another worker pushes it back closed to keep prying eyes out.
“Closed for maintenance,” my coworker says as he surveys the scene and shakes his head just like Darren did.
An altercation with a member? Fighting with a member? That’s immediate dismissal and charges for the damages caused.
“Guess the help can’t handle a damn joke,” Porter says as he looks down at himself, checking his clothes as if I got them dirty.
I stare at them all, blinking away tears of shame with the coppery taste of blood on my tongue
Six against one.
“This didn’t happen,” Darren says, eyebrows lifted as he looks from me to them and back. “It didn’t fucking happen.”
Williams snorts. “Says who? I want that fucker’s job and his head on a platter.” He snaps his fingers. “One call to my dad and it’s over.”
“One call to your dad and he’d know about Jenny Tremane, Autumn Glendale”—the blood drains from Williams’s face along with the rest of the guys’—“or any of the other ladies we’ve had complaints from over the past few months.”
“That’s total bullshit.” Rothschild takes a step forward, his chest square. “Do you know who we are?”
Darren’s expression gives nothing away. “Members of the Westmore Country Club,” he says without flinching.
“Yep. And you’re just pieces of shit who live on the other side of the river,” Vanderbilt scoffs.
“The hired help,” another one of them mutters.
“More like the insane hired help,” Porter says. “One joke and the asshole loses his mind.”
It hits me.
They don’t know. They don’t have the fuckingest clue who I am or that Mason is … was my brother.
There’s another knock on the closed door that typically is open. “Closed for quick maintenance,” my coworker says through the door. “Be open in five.”
“Like I said,” Darren repeats. “This never happened. Simpson tripped. He fell into you accidentally. That’s all.”
“Total fucking bullshit is what it is,” Chadwick says.
“Maybe so. Maybe not. You’re welcome to try me.” Darren stands his ground in the space between me and them as my body continues to vibrate with a rage like I’ve never known before. Darren lifts his chin in their direction. “Pretty sure you should head out that door about now.”
Six pairs of disbelieving eyes stare at us but feet start to shift and eventually they move toward the door still being guarded by my coworker.
“Total bullshit.”
“What the fuck, man.”
“Are you really not going to tell your dad?”
Their muttering continues as my coworker shuts the door at their back and then leans against it almost as if he’s guarding it for us.
Darren turns on me now, his expression flustered but mouth silent.
“Why’d you protect me?” I ask as my hands still tremble and my pulse still pounds in my ears.
“I don’t know.” He chuckles. “I might have just fucked us both, but shit, man, those little pricks terrorize everyone, and I’m fucking sick of it.”
“Yeah,” I murmur, still processing what I just risked.
“Fuckers get away with way too much.”
You don’t know the half of it.
“You didn’t have to risk your job for me.” I scrub a hand over my cheek that’s pounding. No doubt it’s red or will be soon enough.
“True, but it’s the least I can do. Your mom helped my mom get a job a while back.”
“She did?”
“Yeah.” His smile is quick but there. “The office building over on Front Street. She worked there until she moved the hell out of here. So … it’s the least I could do.”
“I don’t even know what to say.”
“Say nothing. I know you need this job. I know you’re dealing with something … but man, maybe you shouldn’t go picking a fight with the fucking sons of the town royalty. That’s a goddamn death wish.”
A death wish.
If only he knew how right he was.
“My brother died.”
“Fuck.” He blows out a huge sigh and the sound guts me for some reason. The discomfort in it and the uncertainty tingeing its edges.
More so the fact that he didn’t know.
We’re invisible.
My brother died and no one even knows or cares. We live on the other side of the river, the wasteland of depravity and destitution, and that means we are fucking invisible.
Chadwick and Rhett murdered my brother and they’re living their same life, playing in their cesspool of privilege with those around them, knowing that they hit and killed a little boy, and no one bats an eye.
It’s a horrible fucking feeling.
The pounding on the door jolts me to the present.
“Open up,” a voice booms, and even Darren blanches.
“Fuck. It’s Gary,” he mutters, referring to the manager of the entire country club, and looks at me. “Let me do the talking.” He then nods to my coworker to open the door.
Gary barrels through. “What’s going on here?” he demands as he assesses the situation.
“Nothing, sir,” Darren says as our boss raises his eyebrows in question.
No doubt he doesn’t believe that answer, seeing as my face is probably blotchy and there is blood on the collar of my uniform.
“There was a slight altercation. Simpson here tripped—got his foot caught on the corner of the bench there—and fell on the way out. It was like a set of bowling pins being knocked down. One after another.”
Gary furrows his brow as he studies both of us. “For the record, I’m not buying whatever it is you’re trying to sell.”
Darren glances over to me, his face a mask of innocence, before looking back at our boss. “I saw it with my own eyes. They all fell like dominos. It was hard not to laugh it was so ridiculous.”
Gary nods his head slowly. He’s a smart man and clearly knows there is more to the story than what we are letting on, but he just takes a step back before surveying the room again. “I don’t think I have to emphasize who that just was. We’re all aware, correct?”
Both Darren and I nod.
“Good. The last thing we need is to piss any of those families off.”
“Agreed, sir,” Darren mutters.
“I’m hoping there is nothing more that comes of this.”
“There won’t be, sir,” I say as I move my hands to behind my back, uncertain what my knuckles look like.
“You sure about that?” Gary asks directly and holds my stare.
“There won’t be,” I reiterate. “Like Darren said, it was an accident. I’ve had a lot going on at home. I was distracted and made a mistake and—”
“What’s going on in your home life isn’t my or any of our members’ problems. Your excuses fall on deaf ears,” he spits out.
The rage bubbles back up but I tamp it down.
I should be fired.
They should be in jail.
One might not justify the other, but fuck if I don’t want it to.
“Name?” Gary asks.
My Adam’s apple bobs as I swallow. “Mason Simpson,” I state as Darren’s eyes whip over to me and the different first name I just gave.
“Huh,” the manager says. “Never knew that.”
Invisible.
The name doesn’t ring a bell for any of the people in this room, all of whom no doubt know of the trouble Chadwick was in and had probably read the newspaper articles about it.
The ones that no doubt stated my brother’s name.
But even front-page news couldn’t make him nor I be visible.
“Yes, sir.” My voice sounds like anger personified and then smothered with a blanket.
“Make sure I don’t know it again,” Gary says before walking out and propping the door open on his way out for the mounting members outside who were waiting to come in.
“Let’s get out of here,” Darren says and pushes me out through the staff exit on the other side of the room. The minute we’re in the back hall of the staff hallway, he turns on me. “What the fuck was that about? Your name is Holden, right? Or is it Mason? What the fuck is going on?”
“Nothing. It was stupid.” I wave a hand, hating that it doesn’t even register for him either. “Just … let it go.”
“You sure?” He eyes me and then glances at his watch. “Shit, I’ve got to get to the Pro Shop.”
“Thanks again.” He starts to jog down the hallway. “Darren?”
He stops and turns. “Yeah?”
“The names? The women? What was that all about?”
“I made them up.”
“What?”
“I made them up. There are plenty of rumors around the staff about what pricks those guys are to the women here. They’re so self-centered I took a chance that none of them ever took the time to remember the names of the women they took advantage of.”
“Jesus Christ.”
He shrugs. “Apparently I was right. Lucky for us.” He flashes a grin, but the look in his eyes says it all to me. He gets it. He understands. He loathes them too. “Later, Simpson.” He pushes open the door and then heads off toward the Pro Shop.
I stare after him, trying to process everything that just happened. My first day back at work. The fight. A random ally. Gary’s ignorance.
Later, Simpson.
All that work so people would know we were related, Mase, and they still don’t.
But they will.
I will not be invisible. I refuse to live that way.
They’ll know who we are, Mason. Even if it’s the last thing I do, they’ll fucking know.