She takes it without issue, holding on like a lifeline.
They’re connected. A set. Inseparable. It’s obvious in the way they lean on one another; both physically and emotionally.
“How do you fit?” Parker steps forward, completely lost to himself.
“That would be none of your concern, Shay,” the boy spits, hate dripping from his tongue like a poison he doesn’t want to touch.
“Jesse and Blake came to me out of appreciation,” my father speaks, moving toward the kids in caution, hoping to make them feel at ease.
Our heads all turn his way, watching on in explanation.
“They were raised by Marcus Dempsey. They tell me they saw news footage of his demise and saw my subsequent arrest.”
Rocco looks ready to explode, his fists clenching and releasing in time with his breaths; quick and sharp.
“You look like us,” Parker imputes, working to understand. “How?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. We want nothing to do with any Shay.”
Rocco steps forward and the boy does the same, placing himself in front of the girl, warning in his stormy gray eyes.
“Are you siblings?” I finally speak, drawing the girl’s attention.
The boy refuses to look away from Rocco.
“Yep. I’m Blake. This bristling hero is my twin brother, Jesse. He’s a little intense.” She rolls her eyes.
I smile. “Seems it runs in the family,” I joke, hoping to put her at ease. “I’m Camryn Rein, Dominic’s daughter. Parker here” —I point— “is my new brother-in-law, and Rocco is his brother.”
“We know who they are,” Jesse grits out, unimpressed by my introductions. “Monsters. Just like their fucking uncle.”
“We’re nothin’ like that piece of shit,” Parker snaps. “Don’t ever compare us to that scum.”
Jesse narrows his eyes. “We’ll be leaving now. Let’s go, Blake.”
“He told us you were dangerous,” she ignores him. “He told us you would want us dead if you knew we existed. That he was our safest option.”
“Marcus killed our mother and our aunt, who also happened to be his wife,” Parker repels her argument with a fervor that sets the room on edge. “The only person ever drippin’ in blood was that asshole. He was evil.”
“Well aware, Einstein.” Jesse pulls at his sister’s arm, working his hardest to get her to move.
“How’d you find yourself with Marcus?” Parker continues. “You can’t be Lila’s. Mira? Did Mira have kids we didn’t know about?”
“No,” Rocco answers stoically. “Their mother is Kendall Montgomery.” His voice is vacant. An empty pool of misery he looks ready to drown in. His body visibly shakes.
Parker turns, questions in his eyes. “You knew?”
Rocco doesn’t speak.
“Rocco knew Kendall was pregnant,” Dominic answers for him.
“You never said anything,” Parker accuses, hurt scoring across his face openly.
“Who is Kendall?” I ask.
No one answers.
“I—” Rocco’s voice cracks. “She left a note, saying she didn’t want me. She told me she would rather die than give birth to something that was part of me, part of my family.”
My heart cracks in my chest.
Rocco.
“You’re our dad?” Blake asks, pushing past her twin brother to move closer to the blonde giant in the room.
Jesse grabs at her, but she shakes him off.
“How old are you?” I ask.
“Sixteen,” they answer in unison.
“Where’s your mother?”
Blake looks over Rocco like he’s an artifact in a museum. Untouchable, but beyond intriguing. “Dead.”
“How?” Rocco looks in physical pain.
Someone else left me.
The idle statement he let go in his bathroom weeks earlier.
He meant Kendall. His ex-girlfriend. One he’d knocked up and has spent half of his life searching for.
He’d been searching for his family when I’d been dissecting our every interaction, certain feelings I’d never hoped to feel again were holding me hostage.
“Overdose,” Jesse answers, the word almost too painful for him to speak.
My eyes blink closed in condolence.
These two kids have lived a life no person should. One of loss and betrayal, of pain and mistruths. You can see it in their guarded, gray eyes. Older than their sixteen years, worn down and cynical about the world around them. Not that I blame them; while other kids their age were playing team sports and arguing with their parents about the injustice of their worlds, Jesse and Blake were fighting to live, to survive.
Rocco shakes his head, rejecting their words. “Kendall was no junkie. It doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s the only Kendall we knew,” Blake rebukes. “You didn’t know her anymore. Not after you blew a load and then demanded she abort your illegitimate child.”
“You asked her that?” Parker recoils.
“Of course I fucking did,” Rocco yells unexpectedly. “I was nineteen and in no frame of mind to raise a fucking kid. It was an initial reaction, she told me, we fought. Then before we could actually talk it out, she disappeared.”
“How convenient for you,” Jesse barks out a humorless laugh.
“I searched for her. For you.”
“To what? Make sure she followed through with your demands?”
“What? No. To make sure you were safe,” Rocco argues, begging them to believe him. He’s fraying at the edges. His composure bursting with panic, ready to rip him apart.
“Well, we weren’t,” Blake vilifies, her soft sweet voice delivering the words like a dagger, making sure they maim. “We lived with the devil and when we finally escaped that hell, we were forced to survive on the streets. I didn’t know anything about you. About who you were or what you were like, but I’d convinced myself you were dead.”
I can’t bring myself to look at Rocco, knowing the heaviness that he’d be loading himself with.
“Because if my dad were alive,” she continues. “He would’ve found me, he would’ve found us. He would’ve rescued us from the wretchedness we were caught in.”
“I tried,” Rocco whispers. “Every fucking day. Kendall was a ghost. You, you both were ghosts.”
“That’s where you disappeared to all those times?” Parker asks, the pain in his voice not dissimilar to his brother’s.
“You didn’t try hard enough.” Jesse ignores his uncle, eyes scanning his sister’s profile in concern.
That declaration hangs in the room like a grenade ready to explode. Destruction at the ready, mere milliseconds of panic as it flies through the air ready to blow the final pieces of Rocco’s heart to smithereens.
“He’d leave.” Parker steps forward, gesturing the siblings to sit, following suit after their asses reluctantly meet the couch once again. “For days on end. Sometimes weeks. He’d never tell me why, but I knew it was important. Important enough that he never stopped trying. It started seventeen years ago, I’m assuming while your mom was still pregnant, and it hasn’t stopped.”
He lets that sink in. A cold, hard truth neither of them was expecting. “You can drag our name through the mud,” he offers vehemently. “It’s not like it doesn’t deserve it. The Shay name is fuckin’ poison, we know that better than anyone. You can claim we didn’t understand, but you’re wrong. We lived with Dempsey too. He killed our fuckin’ mom, took a gun to her head and shot her. We were left with him and our piss weak excuse for a father, who wasn’t much better. The only light we had left was our aunt, and he took her from us as well. You had it worse, there’s no doubt. We had our mom until our teenage years, you didn’t, not the way you should’ve. Not in the way I remember Kendall. But you can’t fuckin’ say my brother didn’t look for you.”
Jesse and Blake look to one another, a look of uncertainty dancing between them.
“Whenever he came up empty-hand
ed, which was every fucking time, he’d throw himself into a ring. He’d let some fucker beat him for failing you. I didn’t understand it. Now I do. Your dad looked for you; he searched high and fuckin’ low, he bled for you. He lived for you all these years. Whatever Marcus Dempsey told you, it was a fucking lie.”
“He’s right.” Codi’s voice echoes the soft click of the office door. “Marcus Dempsey was a monster.”
The twins stand as she steps into view.
“Your eyes,” Blake breathes.
“Are his,” Codi answers freely. “He and my mother had an affair and I was the result. A child born of hate and disloyalty. I was lucky that this man” —she steps toward our dad, grabbing his arm, hugging him— “took on the role of my dad and never looked back. I found out Marcus was my father the day he died.”
Jesse looks torn by the information being unloaded, his eyes looking at each of us, working to see deeper. Fighting to read lies in amongst the truths. “This is all too much to take in,” he murmurs, the original bite in his words lost to bewilderment. “Blake and I need time to think all this through. We came to thank Dominic for slaying a demon we couldn’t, and have found a family we were convinced we didn’t want.”
Quiet descends on the room, no one quite sure what to do or say.
“We have a dad.” Jesse looks at Rocco in an ambivalent rapture. Not quite sure the man before him is real. More a figment of his imagination, one he’d dreamed of as a child, but never let himself hope for as he matured by circumstance.
“It’s too much all at once,” he confesses, looking to his sister for support.
“Jesse looks like a cloned version of his uncle. I’m apparently the spitting image of my murdered grandmother. Our father looks as unhinged as Marcus promised he was, but also kind of sweet in the way he’d kill anyone that would hurt us, which is so confusing. Our uncle is also married to the daughter of the guy who forced us to grow up in purgatory all because he was all kinds of deranged. Too much, is the understatement of the farking century. We need to decompress.”
“You can stay here,” Dominic offers.
“That’ll be a hard no.” Blake smirks. “We’ve survived this long without handouts or help, we’re good. But a bit of that food you had circling around for Uncle Tattoo and his model wife here would be awesome.”
“Please,” Rocco begs of them, the desperation in his voice slicing across the room in heartache. “I don’t expect you to accept an invitation to stay with me and that’s cool. But you came here with trust for Dominic. You were right, you can trust him. I promise you that. I’ll leave, if that’s what you want,” he grits out, hating himself for saying it. “But let Dominic give you a roof and food while you’re sortin’ through this mind fuck.”
Looking at one another, they share a silent conversation none of us are welcome in on. “We’d feel comfortable if you weren’t here.”
Ouch.
He hides the hurt their words cause him, dipping his chin once in understanding. “I’ll be back tomorrow.” Turning to my father, he nods. “You’ll make sure they’re comfortable?”
“Of course,” Dominic assures him.
“It seems all hopeless right now.” Rocco stuffs his hands in his pockets, unsure what to do with them. “But we’ll work it out. I don’t wanna frighten you, but I’ve searched my life for you, I ain’t gonna let you go without a fight. You deserve that, someone to fight for you. That’s me…” He trails off, swallowing against the lump in his throat. “You might not believe it, but... you’re mine, which means my life is yours.”
He walks out without another word, the power in his declaration left in the room like the aftermath of a wedding reception; messy and chaotic and overflowing with evidence that love is real. And it’s confusing as fuck.
“I’ll go with him,” Parker offers, but I stop him with a hand to his arm.
“I will. He needs a friend right now. He’ll feel like you need an explanation. One he’s not ready to give you.” I look at the twins. “My dad, Parker, and Codi have got you. Please don’t leave before you give him a chance. He wouldn’t recover. Just… please give him a chance.”
“Ryn,” Codi calls after me as I step through the front door. “You sure you’re up for this?”
I shrug. “I’m the only friend he’s got. Hard as it might be, it’s my job to show up.”
Looking back to the house, Codi nods in apprehension.
“You’ve got this, Codi.” I read her reluctance. “They’re just kids.”
“They won’t even look me in the eye,” she laments.
I step closer, grabbing her shoulders. “They’re scared, Codi. Looking into your eyes is like looking into the eyes of a monster that breathed fear into them all their lives. Tell them your story. Show them who you are.”
Exhaling heavily, her eyes close on a nod.
“I’m sorry all this happened on your wedding day,” I apologize. “You should be locked away with your husband celebrating.”
“Are you kidding?” She looks at me like I’m crazy. “Rocco and Parker have a family we didn’t know about. This is the greatest gift I could’ve asked for.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rocco
“Move.”
She doesn’t. Her feet stationary in front of my door, halting my exit.
“Where are you going?”
“Out,” I grit, my nostrils flaring in a fit of anger I can scarcely contain. “Move.”
“Can’t do that, Shay.” She tips her head to the side, drinking me in in a way that I know she’s trying to read my inner thoughts. It’s futile. It’s a fuckin’ tornado in there. Swirling around so fast I can’t decide if I’m elated, petrified, insane, heartbroken or just fucking incensed.
“You think you can stop me?”
Crossing her arms over her chest, she shrugs. “I can’t imagine you’d put your hands on me, so, yeah, I do.”
I growl, wanting to put my fist through a wall. “Fucking move,” I bellow, the veins on my neck straining enough that I can feel them protruding from my skin, bulging thick and blue, ready to burst.
She doesn’t react. Not a flinch, barely a blink. “Where are you going?” she repeats, and I grab my hair, ripping at it roughly. My control is slipping with every second that she stands in the way of what I need right now.
Pain.
“Where the fuck do you think I’m going?” I seethe, pacing in front of her like a wild animal, caged against my will. “I’m going to fight. I need to fight.”
“No, you don’t. You want to. There’s a difference.”
I inhale, my muscles aching with the need to be used. To be pushed. To be punished. My entire body is shaking. My emotions bubbling under the surface in an energy I need to disperse.
“You should get this,” I snarl, pointing a finger at her in accusation “More than anyone. You should get my need to do this.”
“Okay.” She steps away from the door. “But if you walk out, think about how you’d feel if this situation was reversed. Think about how you’d feel knowing I felt like slicing my thigh open with your razor blade. I will. I’ll cope with my past with pain instead of talking to you about it. Instead of punching a bag or two to find my power.”
I step forward, hand on the door handle, twitching in indecision. I open it, the corridor mocking me in a way that makes me hate myself. Because I’m considering it. I’m considering walking out and not giving two fucking shits about the fact that she carves open her skin for relief.
“What do you want?” I slam the door, stalking toward her. “What the fuck do you want?” I roar. “You want to know that I need someone to beat the fucking shit out of me because it’s what I deserve.”
It’s then that she flinches at the agony my words are laced in.
“I searched my whole life for her. And not because I fucking cared about her, but because she just fucking up and disappeared and I had no idea if she had the kid or not. I had no idea if a piece of me was out in
this world without me. And now I find out I failed not just one of them, but two of them. Twins. I have fucking twins, Camryn, and I’m such a giant fuck up, I couldn’t save them.” I want to vomit. Empty the entirety of my insides in the hope that it’ll offer me even a sliver of relief. “Me. Their dad. The one person that should always be around to protect them failed them.”
“You didn’t know where they were.”
I laugh. A sarcastic bubble of hate slicing between us. “It’s not good enough, Camryn. They’re sixteen. They’ve gone their whole life without feeling safe and that’s on me. They’ve been living on the fucking street.” I don’t even bother wiping away the tears that fall from my eyes.
She frowns, meeting my step backward with a forward one of her own. “Rocco, you need to stop blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong around you. The burden of the world isn’t on your shoulders, stop taking responsibility for its failures.”
My back hitting the wall, I slide down it, my legs refusing to hold me up any longer. Knees bent, I drop my head between them. A complete and utter image of despondence.
“Talk to me, Rocco. Fucking lean on someone for once in your life.”
She kneels in front of me, the palms of her hands pressed on my knees.
“They’re why I fight,” I confess.
“I know,” she soothes.
“Kendall and I weren’t in love. We were two messed up kids fucking around to make ourselves feel alive. I met her after my mom died. She was everything I was; broken and angry and full of hate. When we were together, it’s one of only a few times in my life that I didn’t feel so alone.”
“I remember her clearly. Maybe more so than I do my own mother. Maybe it was my need to find her that never let me forget her face. The ghostly white skin, the brown eyes that sat bitterly in her face. She was pretty, sure, but she was sad. Happily so. She didn’t want to better her life. She was content in being miserable, in blaming the world for her shortcomings.
“She rocked up at my place a few months after we started fucking. She was so messed up.” I remember it with such clarity. The way her tears reddened her skin, making it blotchy with grief. The panic in her eyes. “Crying and ranting about me being another stupid fucking mistake.”
Reining Devotion: A Chaotic Rein novel Page 17
