Chapter 31 Sam
SAM
Another punch to his shattered ribs doesn’t make me feel any better than the last one did. He’s strung up in my barn, his hands stretched out and tied above him to the fourteen-foot-high wooden rafters.
Duke and Holden are behind me, watching me deliver blow after blow. It’s not doing anything to soothe my rage.
“Why do you want to avenge Cain Dixon’s death? What’s your connection to him?” Holden steps up behind me, placing a hand on my shoulder to stop me.
I step away, wiping the sweat off my brow with my forearm. I don’t want to hear his whining excuses when he starts rambling.
“I wasn’t going to hurt her! We’ve been dating … I’m practically her boyfriend. I don’t know why you think I did anything!”
He starts crying, and I almost laugh at the string of bullshit he’s spewing.
“Shut the fuck up! I saw your face when she said his name. You know him. But if you don’t feel like talking, Sam here fights like a pit bull. He’ll keep hitting you just for fun.” He steps away, signaling that it’s my turn again.
I step forward, rearing back with my right fist and delivering a blow to his nose. The feeling of his bone fracturing and the crunch that fills the air draw a smile on my face.
“God, I’ve been wanting to do that for so fucking long. That feels so damn good.” I grin at him.
Ben quivers in fear, his lip trembling as blood gushes from his nose and drips down his face.
“I mean it. I’ve punched a lot of guys in the face, but hitting you? Feels better than almost anything.”
I’m aware that I sound like a sick fuck right now.
I would never let Dolly hear me talking like this, but after watching him take her out on dates and try to kiss her, and then he turned out to be involved in making her fear for her life, it opened up something vicious in me. He was going to hurt her.
And now she’s in the hospital because of the stupid plan to flush him out. I had to leave her side to make this piece of shit talk.
Holden and I were the only two who could see Ben’s face when Dolly toasted to Cain. He turned as white as a sheet. I should’ve trusted my instincts with him, but my twisted-up feelings for Dolly made me doubt myself.
He whimpers, letting his head fall and face the ground. I pause, wiping his blood onto my jeans. I could go for hours, but if he passes out, we can’t get anywhere.
“He was my dad,” he mumbles.
I reach down and grab his hair, forcing his head back. “What the fuck did you just say?”
His eyes darken with rage, face twisting. “He was my dad!” Blood spatters across my shirt as it spews from his lips.
No fucking way…
Holden steps forward again. “Cain was your father?”
Ben’s chest is heaving with his attempt to breathe. “I think I might die. I can’t breathe. I need a doctor.”
“Answer the fucking question,” I bark.
“Yes! He was my father. I only met him once, but we were planning to go on a camping trip, and then you killed him! You took my last chance to ever have a dad. So, fuck you! Fuck all of you!”
He’s shaking and bleeding, tears streaming down his face. My mind is whirling, trying to process how this is possible.
“How could he have been your father? Aren’t you twenty-five? He would’ve been, what, ten years old when you were born?”
He spits blood into the dirt. “I’m nineteen.”
“Whoa,” Duke says.
“What the fuck?” I mutter, shaking my head. “How is that possible?”
He looks like he’s in his mid-twenties with a full beard on his face. He’s not especially muscular, but he’s not scrawny like a kid either.
“I use a fake ID. My name isn’t Ben.”
“Then what’s your real name? And don’t piss me off and say it right away. If you refuse to talk, I get to hit you more.” I pop my bloody knuckles, and he shudders.
“It’s Stanley. Stanley Harken. I was raised in foster care.”
It feels like a rug is pulled out from under my feet. My head spins, flashbacks spinning around in my memory.
“This is why I never take babies. They won’t shut the fuck up. You! Yes, you. Get a goddamn diaper! Change his shit so he’ll shut up. I need a drink.”
My foster mom thrusts the crying baby at me. I’ve never held a baby before, much less changed a diaper. I gently lay the little boy on the couch.
“Not on the couch, dumbass! Lay him on the floor so you don’t get shit where I sit. Idiot.”
I quickly move the baby to the floor. His face is red from crying, and he has a sticker name tag on the front of the dirty onesie. It says his name—Stanley Harken. The other kids in the house made themselves scarce when he started crying, and now I know why.
I think it sounds like the secret identity of a superhero. I grab the diaper and the roll of paper towels on the ground. I don’t see any baby wipes.
Stanley won’t stop crying, and I’m worried she’s going to hurt him if I can’t get him to be quiet.
“Shh, shh, baby. Don’t cry. I’m going to change your diaper now. Here, you like superheroes? My favorite is Spider-Man.” I pull the little figurine out of my pants pocket and place it in his tiny fingers.
He’s still crying, but he shoves the toy in his mouth. It’s plastic, so I can rinse it off later. I do my best to clean his butt with the paper towels without getting any poop on my hands. I use half the roll, and his butt is red from me wiping it so much, but he’s finally clean.
I wrap the new diaper around him, securing it with the little Velcro flaps. “There you go, buddy. You’re as good as new.”
Stanley has finally stopped crying. He’s eyeing me curiously while chewing on Spider-Man. I lift him up in my arms, smiling at the new foster mom. I think she’ll like me more after this, and maybe she’ll be nicer to Stanley if I can keep his diapers clean.
She glares at me. “Throw the old one away before someone steps in it. And do it outside so I don’t have to smell it.”
My chest feels tight. I do as told, laying Stanley down on the scratchy carpet while I throw the old diaper away and wash my hands in the kitchen sink.
I wipe away my tears as soon as they fall, missing my mama more than ever now. She wasn’t perfect, but poor babies like Stanley don’t even get to have a real mom at all.
I go back into the living room, picking him up off the floor and balancing him on my hip. “You’re okay, buddy. You got me now. We can be brothers. I always wanted a brother.”
My vision blurs, and I turn to walk out of the barn before I get sick in front of them. A burst of cold wind whips across my cheeks.
I took care of Stanley for seven months until they found my grandparents.
I begged the social worker to let me bring Stanley with me.
I cried for months after leaving that house.
It was a miserable hellhole with kids going in and out constantly and a foster mom who took on way too many at once for the money.
I press my forehead to the side of the barn, letting the cool metal seep into my skin.
My grandmother actually did look for Stanley when I opened up to her about him.
But he wasn’t up for adoption. His parents were young teens, and he was only in the system because they were caught under the influence while driving with him in the back seat as a newborn.
They were fighting to get him back, so he wasn’t eligible for adoption.
Holden comes outside and stands behind me. I shut my eyes, trying not to vomit. I stand up straight and turn to face him.
“What was that?” His face is grim. He’s looking at me like a concerned brother.
I look down at my hands, still coated in blood. He silently waits for me to answer.
“I knew him when I was in foster care. He was a baby. We were placed in the same home for a few months before the state found my grandparents.”
Holden’s brows shoot up. “Holy shit. So, he really is only nineteen.”
I nod. “I was seven, and he was around one back then, so yeah.”
He shakes his head. “He couldn’t have been behind all this on his own while pretending to be interested in dating Dolly.”
“Someone is helping him.”
He nods. “And now we have to figure out how to find them.”
A lead ball settles in my stomach. “Which means she’s not safe alone.”
I start walking toward my truck. He grabs my arm.
“I’ll call Sterling and warn him. Go shower before you go to the hospital. You’ll scare her like this.”
He pulls out his phone and places it against his ear. I pause to listen to their conversation.
“Hey, we think Ben was working with someone. Yeah, the kid’s only nineteen.
Just be aware because he probably knows where she is.
” He kicks a rock with his foot, lifting his eyes back to my face.
“Yeah, Sam is gonna be on his way in five. We’ll keep questioning him, and I’ll have a background check run on him, find out whatever we can. ”
I grit my teeth, wondering how we could’ve possibly been chasing Cain’s nineteen-year-old son, who was also my foster brother, all this time without knowing it.
I need to get to Dolly.
The visceral need is all that’s driving me now. I need to see her with my own two eyes and know that she’s okay.
“I’m going to change and shower and go to the hospital,” I tell him.
Holden nods at me, still talking to Sterling on the phone. I know he won’t leave her side until I get there, but I still take the fastest shower of my life.
She looks so small and fragile. She has tubes and wires stuck all over her skin. I drop down to my knees beside her bed, my head falling into her side with a deep, full body exhale.
“Dolly …” I inhale her scent, focusing on the faint notes of cinnamon and vanilla through the hospital antiseptic.
Her body heat seeps into me, warming me up from the frigid cold in my truck when I didn’t think to use the heater on the way here. All I could think about was getting to her.
“Sam?” Her voice is weak.
I lift my head, grasping for her hand. “I’m here. I’m right here, baby.”