Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
HARPER
I fall to my knees on the carpet when I see Bruiser there holding his favorite Minecraft book. I hurl my arms around him and squeeze him to me because oh thank God he’s safe.
He’s here, he’s safe, and for one perfect second the terror dissolves into relief.
“Mom,” Bruiser complains. “Mooooom. You’re squishing my book.”
He squirms to get away from me, and it’s all so beautifully, perfectly normal that I squeeze him even tighter and fight not to sob into his hair. He smells like sunshine and dirt and a little bit like peanut butter—exactly the way a nine-year-old boy should smell.
He finally gets his elbows involved in the squirming and I laugh, which comes out choked and slightly hysterical. I give him one last kiss on the crown of his head before letting him go.
His face is immediately back in his book, even though he’s read about Dave the Villager conquering the zombie invasion about a hundred times already. The pages are dog-eared and crinkled from all the places he’s dragged it.
“Where ya been, kiddo?” I ask, careful to keep my voice light and normal, like my hands aren’t still shaking.
He frowns like I’m being the weird one, eyes never leaving his book. “Staying at Uncle Choirboy’s. Why didn’t you tell me I had an uncle?”
The words hit me like a fist to the gut, and all the relief drains out of me so fast I feel dizzy.
Uncle Choirboy?
I don’t have any brothers and neither does Z, which means this “Uncle” is part of whatever nightmare Z has gotten us tangled up in.
My hands are still on Bruiser’s shoulders, and I feel myself grip tighter without meaning to.
Bruiser makes a little noise of protest, and while I loosen my grip, I can’t make myself let go completely.
“It was fun, though,” Bruiser continues, oblivious to my internal panic. “Uncle Choirboy and his friends all have nicknames, just like me. They said Bruiser was a good one.”
I force my voice to stay light and curious. “Oh yeah? What were the other nicknames people had?”
Bruiser looks up at the ceiling as he recalls, squinting in concentration. “Oh, well, there was Chains and Roadkill and Viper—”
“Go play in your room, Bruise,” Z bites out from somewhere behind us.
But all I can hear echoing over and over in my head are the names Bruiser just listed off. Because those are Motorcycle Club names.
Z got us mixed up with a fucking MC? Jesus Christ! Apart from the cartels, those are some of the most ruthless crews operating in Texas these days.
Every muscle in my body locks up, and I have to physically force myself to take a breath through my nose and out through my mouth so I don’t lose my shit in front of my kid and terrify him.
But on the inside, I’m screaming and imagining a hundred different ways to kill Z with my bare hands.
He left my baby with violent fucking criminals? What in the hell was he thinking?
I snap my head up and there Z is, standing with his arms crossed, looking every inch the stranger he’s become.
His right hand is laid casually over a gun holstered on his belt like it’s the most natural thing in the world to be armed in front of his nine-year-old son.
A gun. Z has a fucking gun.
When Bruiser stands up to obey, instinct takes over and I grab his shoulder and push him behind me as I stand up, shielding him with my frame. Over my dead fucking body am I letting my son out of my sight around this armed stranger wearing my best friend’s face.
Everything’s starting to fall into place like puzzle pieces clicking together, each one revealing a picture I really, really don’t want to see.
Silas used to run with an MC back in the day. He tried to keep it separate from his family life for the most part, but I witnessed his “friends” at work one time when I was with him.
Mom was out of her mind after snorting powder off the kitchen table. Silas must have thought he didn’t have any choice but to take me by the clubhouse with him. I was young, maybe five, and I seriously didn’t understand what was going on around me.
My memories are still just flashes of images that barely make sense even now.
Naked women with glazed eyes sitting on men’s laps.
The sharp copper smell of blood in the air like someone had sprayed it on the walls.
A man’s screams coming from somewhere in the back that went on and on until they suddenly cut off.
And the bloody, chained-up guy in the corner with a face so swollen I couldn’t tell where his features were supposed to be, begging in this wet, broken voice that still sometimes wakes me up screaming from nightmares about it.
Dad was never a patched member, but he was always on the periphery for some reason, doing their dirty work and taking their money.
Somehow it’s all come back around full circle, connecting to Z and looping back to me in some twisted fucking pattern I can’t escape no matter how hard I run.
“We’re leaving now.” The words come out cold and flat because it’s the tone I use when I’m two seconds away from violence.
“Mom?” Bruiser asks, and I hear the uncertainty creeping into his voice because he’s never heard me talk like this before.
“Go get in the car,” I say over my shoulder, never taking my eyes off Z.
“Don’t you fucking move,” Z barks, and there’s something in his voice I’ve never heard before these past few days. Something sharp and ugly and mean that doesn’t belong in the mouth of the boy who used to make me laugh until I couldn’t breathe.
“Mom?” Now Bruiser sounds officially scared, and I fucking hate Z for doing this to him.
But I’m not playing any more of Z’s games because I know now that’s all they’ve ever been. Games where he holds all the cards and I’m just supposed to play along and pretend not to notice.
“Dad?” Bruiser tries in an even more devastatingly small voice, and my heart just shatters into a thousand pieces. That little questioning lilt at the end is like he’s asking Z to be the person Bruiser thinks he is. The person Bruiser needs him to be. His dad.
Except Z was never his dad. That was all a lie. I don’t even know how he did it because I read the paternity report myself.
It would be a less bitter pill to swallow if I was the only one who believed the story Z had been selling all these years. But he brought an innocent child into this.
I push Bruiser farther behind me when he tries to peek out at the man he’s known his entire life as his father. My hand finds his head and presses it down, keeping him small and safe behind my body.
“Harper,” Z says, and his voice is quiet and shaking, like he still sees himself as the victim here. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”
The bruises under his eyes are darker than they were yesterday, and I wonder how long it’s been since whatever drugs he’s on have allowed him to sleep. Has he been awake for two days straight? Three? Just how volatile is he right now?
“It didn’t have to be like this, but you made it this way!” He gets louder with each word until he’s shouting at me, like this is somehow all my fault. His paranoid, drugged-out brain probably believes it is. “All I wanted was for us to be a family. Why couldn’t you just let us be a family!”
The words make my skin crawl because we were never meant to be a family the way Z wanted. Not when every cell in my body has belonged to someone else since I was seventeen years old, and Z knew that, and he did all this anyway.
“I did exactly what you said.” I keep my voice controlled and reasonable even though I want to scream back in his face. “And now my son and I are leaving.”
“No!” Z yells like a toddler being told he can’t have candy. And then his face darkens. “It’s time to go back to the closet.”
Bruiser starts making little whining, scared noises from behind me that are high-pitched and anxious, just like when he was a toddler and sensed danger he couldn’t understand.
It cuts right through me and activates every protective instinct I have.
I want to tear Z apart with my bare hands for making my child feel so afraid.
“You said you’d let me go after I did what you asked at the prison,” I remind him as calmly as I can manage.
“Well, I’ll only know you actually did it when I get a call from Viper,” Z says petulantly.
Viper. I heard Z talking to him yesterday. So that’s the new boss who owns him now. That’s who Z sold his soul to, and apparently he’s trying to sell mine and Bruiser’s along with it.
“That’s an issue between you and your boss,” I say carefully, like I’m talking to a feral dog that might bite. “You aren’t putting me back in that closet or separating me from our son again.”
I reach behind me blindly, past my son, feeling for the front door handle because if I can just get us outside, then we can run. My fingers brush the cool metal, and hope flares in my chest for just a second.
Which is when Z pulls the gun from the holster.
Bruiser screams, and the sound is so high and pure with terror that it feels like it rips something loose inside my chest. Like he’s just torn out a piece of my heart and I’m watching it fall to the floor between us.
I spin around immediately, wrapping my arms around my son and pushing his head down so he can’t see his dad pointing a gun at his mom. So this moment doesn’t burn itself into his brain the way so many of my traumatic childhood memories burned themselves into mine and never let go.
I never imagined Z would go this far, even after everything else. How can the boy who used to build pillow forts with me and cry at dog food commercials and hold my hair back when I was sick pull a gun on me while the child he helped me raise watches on? How did we get here from there?
“What is wrong with you?” I cry, and it comes out raw and desperate. “Z, it’s me. It’s us.”
“You aren’t leaving me!” Z shouts, and that’s when I see it while looking over my shoulder at him and keeping Bruiser’s face pressed against my stomach. His eyes aren’t right. His pupils are too small, just little pinpoints in the afternoon light coming through the window.
That little pipe I saw yesterday. Is it meth? Oh God, there’s nothing left of the boy I knew in those vacant, pinprick eyes. He’s been replaced by this hollow creature.
How the hell do I protect Bruiser against this crazy stranger with a gun pulled on us when I have nothing but my own body to use as a shield?
But something catches my eye in the periphery, registering through the useless panic flooding my brain. Just there, through the window across the living room, behind Z’s shoulder.
Is that—
I distrust my eyes at first because it can’t be; there’s no way he could have followed me, or would be stupid enough to—
Oh my God, it is.
My eyes jerk back to Z as Caleb Graham comes running full speed straight toward the large back window with his entire body aimed at the glass like a human battering ram.
I brace my son’s body tighter behind my back and tuck my own head down as Caleb braces his arms in front of his face for the only protection he’s going to get before he cannonballs through the living room window in an explosion of shattering glass.