Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Dixon
Dinner was a dream state.
I’d never felt so normal, like any other confident, shit-together man.
It seemed funny, but being with AJ, laughing and flirting, catching each other in long, wanting glances and tangling our feet beneath the table at the Italian restaurant on Main Street in downtown Wisper, with the whole town noticing, made me feel more like a father than I had two hours before.
AJ gave me the confidence to believe I could do it. I could be a dad. I could hold down two jobs, save some cash in a bank account, and become a somewhat upstanding citizen of the world.
I barely remembered the pasta primavera I’d eaten, and by the time we walked out of Paulo’s, bellies full and minds on getting back to AJ’s place, I practically skipped to my car parked out back, wondering if Stu liked Italian. He probably did. He seemed to like anything, as long as it was edible.
I texted Bax and asked if Stu was still awake.
He texted back that, no, Stu had a long day at school and then Merv helped him with schoolwork, which made him cranky, so he passed out right after dinner.
Bax said if I wanted to talk to him, I could call Stu on Bea’s phone when I got up in the morning, so that was my plan.
Both Bax and Bea seemed open to my being in Stu’s life.
Bea had even brought him to the community center yesterday while I worked, and I let him beat me at air hockey.
He shared my lunch with me while Bea ran an errand in town, and all the other employees fawned over him, told us how much we look alike, and then Stu and I colored with some of the day care kids.
It was perfect, like we were any other father and son.
AJ’s mom had called while we ate. She left a message about AJ’s website and something about an “also-bought plug-in” going haywire.
I told AJ to call back while I went to start my car; I still hadn’t fixed the air conditioning, so I rolled down the windows and let cooler air fill it up.
The day had been sweltering, the sun shining down hard with not a cloud in sight, but night brought a light breeze and a small reprieve from summer’s relentless heat.
I couldn’t remember ever wishing for a season, but now I imagined the yellows and golds of the trees in fall and the silkiness of cool autumn air in the Tetons, and I looked forward to it like Christmas break from school when I was a kid.
I could see it in my mind—crisp September mornings spent on Lee Lake with Stu, fishing and telling stories beneath a canopy of pines and the stiff mountain cliffs beyond holding us in their embrace.
I wondered if I’d get to go trick-or-treating with him.
I’d never wanted anything more than seeing my kid dressed up as some colorful character from the stories in his head.
Couldn’t wait to feel the excitement rumbling around him, that jittery squall in his little heart that all kids felt before a night out on the streets of downtown, when the only acceptable outcome was a pillow case filled to the brim with free sugar.
My date, however, was a very close second in her slip of a black dress and the sandals she’d worn with it, like a goddess from Greek mythology.
Those strappy leather shoes showed off her perfectly polished toes and wound up the line of her leg, the one that, no matter how hard I tried not to let it, led my eyes to her knees and then inevitably, her hips.
My heart would race and my dick would harden when I imagined the warm haven between them, and then I’d forget all over again what we’d been talking about.
I couldn’t remember now when I rounded the side of Paulo’s and saw—
“Get your fuckin’ hands off her!” I rushed to AJ, pinned up against the building by the man who I’d just seen at a courthouse in Jackson. The same guy who’d sworn to a judge he’d leave AJ alone.
My steps faltered when Cody Mahone’s low man, Justin, grabbed me from behind, laughing and breathing on my neck, like some deranged marauder. I knew it was him because I could smell the stench of Camels on his breath and wafting off his shirt.
Before I could get a handful of his face and turn his jump-scare around, he pinned my arms behind my back and tripped me with a swipe of his boot in front of my feet. When he released my arms, I fell forward and my face hit gravel.
And that was when my old friend, rage, came out to dance.
Like a movie playing at half speed, I looked up to see Cody’s knee between AJ’s legs. He slapped her face with an open hand, and I saw red.
He’d been drinking—I recognized the posture, the way his movements stumbled and rolled—and he pointed his finger in her face, spitting crude obscenities at her.
His intoxication was plain to see as he swayed a bit with each abusive move he made, but he had enough wherewithal to keep AJ right where he wanted her.
As I tried to get up, pressure on my back held me down, and I felt Justin’s knees crushing my rib cage. He thought he’d gotten the drop on me, but he hadn’t yet met the real me.
The town had come alive with talk when I walked back into it: Dixon Lee is nothin’ but trouble. He’s a hooligan. A scrapper. He’s been nothin’ but a dark stain on this town since the day he was born. I’d heard it all.
I tried not to let the gossip get to me, but the people of Wisper weren’t wrong, and I was about to prove it to them.
Once I’d maneuvered my arms underneath my chest and pushed up, Justin lost his balance.
He tumbled off me, and I sprang to my feet.
Leaning over him, I laughed at the surprised look on his face.
He scrambled to his feet, too, and I backed up, but I grabbed him by his T-shirt and hit him so fucking hard with my closed fist and sharp knuckles to his soft temple that he crumpled like a sack of potatoes and passed right out.
One down.
A ringing in my ears drowned out whatever Cody was spitting at AJ, like a hissing cobra, but I didn’t really need to hear him to know that the way he was touching her was unwelcome and painful.
He grabbed a fistful of AJ’s hair and jabbed his pointing finger into her cheek. I saw the indent it made on her skin and watched him press his mouth next to it.
AJ wouldn’t look at me. She couldn’t see anything because she’d lowered her eyes to the ground. She didn’t want to challenge him and make things worse.
I, on the other hand, had every intention of fucking his shit up.
My ears let up for just a second, the ringing quieting and trying to subside. Maybe it was my body’s way of trying to ease the anger so I’d change my course, and maybe this time I wouldn’t make the stupid choice.
Unfortunately, the silence only lasted long enough for me to hear Cody’s insipid voice when he said, “You stupid cunt. Fuckin’ whore, embarrassin’ me like that in front of my mother?”
What came next was a slur and a blur of sound and motion.
I had no clue how Cody ended up beneath me, could barely remember dragging him away from AJ by his hair, but I straddled him and pinned him with my legs, and I just kept punching.
Like the universe had given me the thing I needed to release all the bad shit I’d been feeling.
All the jealousy I felt about Bax getting to hear my son call him “Daddy” poured out of me. The anger I felt at myself, at Bax, and even Brand and Abey for simply being who they were, for being so fucking lucky they knew who their father was, even though he had been the worst father in the world.
All of it propelled me to hit this fucker harder.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I should’ve stopped. If my sister had to arrest me and I ended up in court, I could land in jail again. No one would be surprised. And this time, I didn’t even have the excuse of being high.
I didn’t deserve Stuart, but after this beating, it would be a final thing.
But this man and the way he spoke to this woman—the beautiful, loyal, tenderhearted woman I loved down to the scars on my soul… He didn’t have the fucking right.
Reason had left the building.
My weight held the asshole to the ground beneath us.
He clawed at me, scratched and dug his fingers into my skin to try to stop me as my fist made contact with his nose again and again, but the rage wouldn’t let me really feel the pain.
I felt the bridge of his nose fracture, though, when my knuckle crunched it, but it didn’t stop me.
I saw Merv’s face front and center in my mind, her lies like a symphony swirling around her. The pain they caused me was the sour, out-of-tune note that ruined it all and made the music suck.
But I also saw her beautiful, shining smile I still remembered from childhood, and I watched as Noah Lee berated her and demeaned her. He flat-out fucking verbally abused her in front of her kids. And he hit her. She tried to hide it from us, but I knew. I’d always known.
This jackoff, this Cody fucking Mahone, represented the hateful man I’d grown up with.
And then, in my mind’s eye, he became the man I despised, the father I’d had to mourn when he was still alive.
Cody became the wife beater, the shit-talking dick who’d hurt my mama. Who’d hurt my sister. Who’d hurt me.
If he could have, Noah would’ve made me cease to exist so he wouldn’t have had to feel like a failure whose wife found the love and care she needed in another man.
Whoever the fuck that was.
Cody Mahone had earned the misfortune of representing the one person who it seemed still had the power to make me insane.
But deep inside, I knew Cody wasn’t Noah.
Finally, the truth of that realization hit me head on, the way Cody had tried to but hadn’t quite managed, because I was bigger and angrier than his lazy ass had ever been, and I’d vowed long ago never to allow another man to beat me down.
The world around me began to pulse. Reality shimmered around the edges of my rage, and Stu’s sweet voice echoed in my head:
“You’re my dad, aren’t you?”