Chapter 16
LAWSON
Ipark in the staff lot behind the bar but don’t get out of my car. I just sit there with the engine off, numb, trying to make sense of the mess I made.
I know I need to go inside and talk to my brothers. I need to tell them about Nova and what happened with King so we can come up with a plan. Some way that I can reassure her that everything is going to be okay, that she can stay here with me.
Nova can’t leave.
It’s been at the back of my mind all summer, the fact that she was going. But it was always at some vague date in the distant future, far enough away I could put it out of my head. Not fucking tomorrow morning.
I might not ever see her again.
The pain hits hard enough to steal my breath, and I slump forward in my seat, resting my forehead on the steering wheel.
I fucked this up so badly. So much of what she said tonight was true.
I was ashamed—not of her, but of my decision to be with her.
I was hiding her. I was keeping her from my brothers.
I fucking hurt that woman. And unless I can come up with a plan to convince her to stay in the next twelve hours, she’s walking out of my life.
How am I supposed to just keep going after that? How could I go to work, hang out with my siblings, exist in this town, without her? Knowing that I had something truly amazing and lost it?
Looking back, my life before Nova suddenly looks so fucking empty. Gray and lonely. That girl blazed into my world and lit the whole thing on fire. I bark out a bitter laugh in the darkness of my truck cab. “My own personal supernova,” I mutter.
God, I’m terrified to lose her.
“Lawson?” I raise my head and see Mac standing next to my car, expression a mix of confused and concerned, voice muffled by the window. “Man, you alright?”
No, I’m not. I’m a fucking coward because even now, with everything on the line, I still don’t want to tell him.
But I think about the look on Nova’s face when she realized I knew who she was all summer. I think about Victor King showing his ratty little face in our storeroom, making demands.
I know I can’t fix this on my own. And if I don’t fix it, Nova is gone.
Mac’s expression shifts to worry, probably catching the agony on my face at the thought of her going. “Open the door, Law. You look like shit and you’re freaking me out.”
I move on autopilot, doing what he says then sliding out of the truck. My knees almost give out when I hit the pavement and his hands dart forward to steady me. “Seriously man, what the fuck is going on?”
I shake my head, my eyes stinging. “I fucked it up, Mac. I fucked everything up. I need to talk to you. To everyone.”
He studies me for a moment. “Let’s get inside.”
I follow him in a daze, through the back hallway and up the stairs to his loft. Vaguely I hear him on his phone but my thoughts are spinning too fast to make sense of it.
Mac deposits me in a dining chair before moving around the kitchen, rustling up a bunch of glasses and a bottle of Jack.
He sits across from me and pours out a healthy measure in two of the glasses before sliding mine across the table to me.
I down the whole thing in one burning gulp.
He doesn’t say a word, just refills my glass.
I drink this one a little slower, trying to get my shit together so I can tell him what I should have months ago.
Then the front door bangs open and Sawyer and Nick come into the loft. So that’s who Mac was talking to as we walked inside.
“Jonah’s covering the bar,” Sawyer explains, striding over to the kitchen. “He said to call him if we need reinforcements.”
Once we’re all sitting with our bourbon, Mac levels me with a steady gaze. “Sawyer said you took off an hour ago looking like you’d seen a ghost.” Fuck, had it only been an hour? Seems like a short amount of time to lose the most important thing in my life.
“So, what’s going on?” Mac presses.
I blow out a breath, meeting Nick’s gaze. His expression tells me he guesses where this is going. He gives me a nod, looking grim.
“Earlier this summer I started seeing someone,” I say, voice flat. I don’t say I started sleeping with someone, because it was more than that, right from the start, even if I’d been too stupid to see it.
Realization breaks over Sawyer’s face. “It was Nova, wasn’t it?”
“Who the fuck is Nova?” Mac asks.
“You met her,” Sawyer says. “She worked in the tattoo booth at the County fair, when we took Lucas.” He turns back to me. “That’s why you’ve been so MIA this summer? You were hooking up with the tattoo girl?”
“It was more than hooking up,” I grind out. “We were…” I can’t even say the word together, not now.
“This is the girl we talked about?” Mac asks. “The exception to your rule?”
I nod. That conversation feels like a lifetime ago now.
“Dude, why didn’t you just tell us?” Sawyer asks, looking a little hurt. “It’s pretty obvious you seriously care about this girl so why haven’t you brought her around—”
“She’s Victor King’s niece,” I blurt out, then rub my face. “That’s why I didn’t tell you guys.”
Mac’s apartment is silent, minus the faint noises from the bar downstairs. I don’t want to meet Mac’s gaze, but I know I need to. When our eyes lock, his expression is flat, unreadable.
“At first I thought there was a chance she might have done some work for him.” I don’t throw Nick under the bus and say he’s the one who put the idea in my head.
“I knew I couldn’t be with someone who was working with that guy, so I tried to stay away.
” I shrug, helpless. “But I couldn’t. Even knowing I might be betraying you guys, I couldn’t fucking stay away. ”
The others are quiet, watching Mac watch me.
“Eventually, she confided in me about him, told me she was saving money to leave town to get away from him.”
Sawyer’s eyes snap to my face, anger flashing in them. “Did he hurt her?”
I shake my head. “He used to have her work for him, when she lived with him. She was a teenager and her mom had left, stuck her with that asshole. She didn’t have anywhere else to go.
She didn’t have a choice.” I hear the pleading note in my voice, my obvious desperation for them to understand, to not judge her.
“But he still harasses her,” I continue. “He wants her to come back to work for him. She said she just wanted to get out of here, go somewhere she didn’t have to think about him, somewhere he wouldn’t bother her.”
“So you figured you’d just hook up until she left?” Mac asked.
“That was the plan.” I laugh bitterly. “I was a fucking idiot. Totally in denial. I never wanted her to go.”
“And that’s why you kept her a secret,” Mac continues, and I hear a hint of anger in his flat voice. “Because…what? You thought we’d be pissed? That you were dating someone connected to King?”
I stare at him. “Well, wouldn’t you have been?”
“Lawson—”
“No, Mac, give me a break. You feel like shit about working with King. I know you do. You think I wanted to show up with his niece? You think I wanted to put that reminder in your face?”
“You think I would have blamed her?” He shoots back, and it’s no longer a hint of anger—my brother is pissed.
“You think there’s anyone on this planet who understands better that none of us can pick our relatives?
” His sharp gaze pierces me. “You think I would blame someone else for who they’re related to?
The person who had to watch his asshole parents abuse my little brothers? ”
I just stare at him. I hadn’t really thought about it like that. I’d just heard the name Victor King and freaked out.
“Our blood relatives were fucking trash, Law,” he continues, and some sharp emotion rises in my chest.
“Yeah, I know,” I interrupt. “And you’re the one who kept us all safe.
You’re the one who got between me and dad whenever he was wailing on me.
You’re the one who got kicked out when you were still a teenager because you wouldn’t let him beat me.
You’re the one who worked your ass off to build this bar for us, to build a damn life for us after they left.
To take care of Jules—to take care of all of us. ”
I’m breathing hard now, my voices rising.
“You think it would have been easy for me? To walk in here and say, hey man, I know you sacrificed everything for me and I owe you my entire life, but here’s the girl I’m in love with.
Sorry if seeing her brings back all the guilt you feel over King. Deal with it.”
I rub at my chest. My fucking heart is pounding so hard it hurts. It takes me a minute to realize that the entire room has gone dead silent.
“Lawson,” Mac finally says, his voice choked. “You don’t owe me your entire life.”
I scoff. “Sure. It’s not like I was such a pathetic little pussy that you had to take hit after hit from that asshole every time he started on me. It’s not like you lived on the streets for two years just ’cause I was too weak to take a beating that night he kicked you out.”
My hands are shaking. Fuck, I can’t catch my breath. “It’s not like you started working with a fucking dangerous drug dealer just so your siblings would have a way to make money and get out of that trailer park.”
“Hey.” His voice is sharp and I finally look up. Nick and Sawyer are staring at me in horror. And Mac…I can’t even read the expression on Mac’s face.
“I chose to get in with King,” he says. “That’s on me. No one else.”
I scoff. “You honestly think you would have done it if you didn’t have the four of us to take care of?”
“I think I would have ended up just like our sorry excuses for parents if I didn’t have the four of you to take care of,” he shoots back. “You know how common that is? For people who grow up like us to perpetuate the same cycle? Turn to booze and drugs and abusing their wives or kids?”