Beg (God of Rock Book 2)

by Eden Butler

  “For her? Always.”

  “And you’ll do whatever it is I say to see her?” When I nodded, Wills stepped back, leaning an elbow against the sill. “If I asked for your kidney?”

  “It’s yours.” I rolled my eyes when he frowned. “That’s how all this shit started. Why are you surprised?”

  He ignored my question, moving away from the window to sit on the sofa across the room. Wills threaded his fingers together as he watched me, nodding toward the chair across from his spot. He waited until I sat before he went on, still looking amazed, astonished. “And if I tell you I don’t want it?”

  “You already told me that. First night you were here and it’s kind of shitty that you did, gringo. All the fuss you made, all the lying and scheming and you just decide you don’t need my kidney.”

  “Want. Not need.”

  I waved him off, disregarding the clarification. “Is that what you want? The kidney?”

  He waited, considering me, and any humor that had been in his features went blank. “No, mate. I don’t. But I do want you to go and visit your mum. She’s desperate to see you.”

  Iris was worth pushing back my anger. She was worth a hell of a lot more than that. But Wills’ insistence that I see my mother made little sense. He’d come into my home uninvited. He’d disrupted what had been a lengthy drunk that left me smelling ripe and oblivious to everything but the burn of whisky as it went down my throat. He’d barged into my life, promising to kick my ass into gear. So far, he’d showed me a few cool chords, invited himself and his practically mute bodyguard to stay indefinitely, and was manipulating me into visiting the woman who’d loved her highs and hits more than her kid.

  It had been eight years since I’d seen her. Even after kicking her out of that dressing room on my first tour, she’d still wiggled back into my life. Then, I’d truly had my fill. The last time I spoke to her, she’d spoken with a raspy voice, sounding pathetic as she explained why she’d returned back to the guy who’d put her in the hospital more than once. I stopped taking her calls after that.

  If Wills Lager was trying to play daddy, it was too late. If he was trying to be the superhero, I didn’t appreciate it. I didn’t believe in heroes anymore.

  “I don’t get why you care.” If he wanted me jumping through hoops, and I would, then he’d have to explain himself. “She was a junky groupie you fucked decades ago. She’s just older now. Why does it matter if I see her?”

  “It’s not for her, son.”

  Wills saying that like it was natural, normal, bothered me. “I don’t need this,” I said, standing from my chair to make a beeline for the back door.

  “You need it more than you know.”

  Wills was behind me when I jerked around, and I could see the challenge in his expression. He wanted me to debate him. He wanted me to understand something I probably never would. But he held the cards—all the fucking cards— and even if I didn’t like it, I had to play along.

  “I’ll be back later,” I told him, pausing only long enough to grab my wool coat and throw it on.

  “You’re off to see her then?” he asked, frown making him look older than he was. I cocked an eyebrow and turned to leave.

  Macon Street was a small lane that forked outside of the downtown district. There were rows of neat little houses on half-acre lots, all with gates and flower boxes that lined the sidewalk during spring. But it wasn’t spring. It was the dead of winter, early January, and snow had killed all the bluebells that filled those boxes.

  I wouldn’t have noticed the smallest house at the end of the street if I hadn’t been procrastinating, taking extra steps as I tried to convince myself that seeing my mother was a good idea. It wasn’t, but it would get my father to spill his secrets. It would get me to Iris.

  The last house on the right was tiny by Willow Heights standards. Cedar siding covered the front of the house, and warm beige trim framed the exterior. There were small trees lit up with white lights, and red bows on either side of the front porch steps, and a large green wreath with red berries on the front door. The whole place reminded me of a Christmas postcard: simple, elegant, and utterly unlike anything my mama had ever put out on our front steps during the holidays.

  On a ladder in front of the highest pitch of the house, a tall, thin woman looped a string of white lights around her arm, cursing to herself when one section of lights got stuck behind a shingle.

  “Stupid thing…move…” she started, then her fussing turned into a scream as the ladder bounced against the side of the house when she jerked on the wire. Mrs. Daine wobbled and began to fall.

  “Coño!”

  She was a foot from the ground when I reached her, catching her as the lights flew from the curl around her arm.

  “Oh, Lord…thank you…”

  There had been a smile on her face when I caught her. A pretty, half-smile that lightening the red blush on her cheeks, but when Iris’s mother looked up at me, gaze shifting over my face, most of it obscured by the large sunglasses I wore, that brief smile disappeared, and she jerked out of my hold.

  “Mrs. Daine…” I tried but she curled her top lip, nostrils flaring.

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve, Jamie Vega.” She hurried to put space between us, then quickly jogged up her steps, as though I had something she might catch—like an ego or the ability to completely fuck myself over and everyone else I knew—but just as the older woman made it to her front door, she paused, jerking around as though the fog just cleared from her head.

  “Please, Mrs. Daine. I want to…”

  “I don’t care what you want, young man.” She dropped down to the steps, arms folded tight, and I didn’t think it was some defensive stance. I thought, more likely, she curled her arms tight to her chest to keep from throttling me. “I’m going to go inside my house and pretend that you are not in my town.”

  “It’s my town, too,” I said, before I could stop myself, and the comment only made her nostrils flare wider. “Sorry…I’m…” It was no good, trying to make excuses or give apologizes. Her rage was righteous. She was well within her rights to scream her head off at me, and because I knew she was, because it was the least I could give her, I let the lady do just that.

  It was like a salve, seeing the combination of red blotches coloring her pretty face as she berated me, and the snippets of phrases I caught, most of them words in Sioux I didn’t understand, some clearer, like “rotten piece of narcissistic shit,” and one truly impressive “have your privates cut from your body and shipped to a more deserving, less arrogant eunuch…”

  I could only take the punishment, standing in front of her, face front, jerking off my glasses so she could see my face. I didn’t do that often. It was my own defense mechanism that not many people got to see lowered. But Mrs. Daine had seen me as a kid. I’d never had to hide from anything in her house, except maybe her disappointment that Iris had lowered herself to fall for me.

  “And if you ever try to speak to my daughter…”

  “I can’t, can I?” It was the wrong thing to say, and it was rude. I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have let her go on yelling at me because I deserved it, but I really was an asshole, and when you call an asshole on his shit, he tends to be defensive. I cleared my throat, trying to keep my gaze on her face, trying to discern if her cheeks were reddening from the cold or from her anger at me.

  Finally, when she only glared, I exhaled, glancing at the fallen lights on the ground. I picked them up, curled them around my arm and climbed up the ladder.

  “Don’t do me any favors.”

  “I got it,” I said, unsurprised when the woman’s frown only hardened the softness of her features. “You can go on yelling at me, but I’m not a complete bastard. The ladder is old and if I can get this for you…”

  “I said—”

  “Mrs. Daine, keep going. I know that’s not all you have to say to me.”

  But she didn’t yell after that. In fact, all the woman did
was watch as I unhooked the string of lights from the trim, then moved down the ladder to the next section. When the silence got too much, I started babbling.

  “You got anyone to take care of that?” I asked, nodding toward the broken railing at the edge of the porch. I’d noticed the loose railing and the missing pavers near the sidewalk as Mrs. Daine screamed at me. If she was anything like she had been when we were kids, Iris’s mother probably didn’t take a lot of time tending to her yard. The lights, the Christmas decorations, probably only made an appearance because the town’s homeowner’s association expected it. But she was getting older, though she still looked fit enough to handle herself. Still, if I could help, I would.

  “I don’t need your help.” She stood from the steps when I finished with the lights, jerking the string from me before I could finish tying them off. “I don’t want your help.”

  “I kinda got that impression from all the yelling.” She didn’t laugh at my weak attempt at a joke, and I lowered my shoulders, folding up the ladder. When I lifted it, she turned on her heel, grumbling as she led me to the back of the property and into the back shed.

  There was a small sedan parked inside, and I frowned at the tires. No winter weather tires and only a half-full bag of salt in the corner of the shed. I made a mental note to check out the other jobs that she might need done despite her protest. I’d avoid the woman’s ire, but that didn’t mean I’d walk away when it was obvious she needed a hand here and there.

  She watched me walk toward the sidewalk, and I felt every flick of her gaze on me. She hated me; I knew that. I deserved that, but she had to know I was trying. I’d always been trying to be enough for this woman’s daughter.

  Because I seemed unable to stop myself, I stopped, turning to face her as she glared at me. “When we were kids,” I said, pulling my shades from my coat pocket. “You and Iris, the pair of you, were the first time I’d ever seen what real love was.” Something shifted in her features then, and the hard edges of her frown and the lines that dented between her eyes softened. I stepped forward, fingering the rim of my glasses. “Until I saw you two together, I didn’t know a parent could be…nice or sweet or, I don’t know, take care of their kid. You did. You looked after her, and you fed her, fed me too sometimes, and it sort of opened my eyes.” She didn’t stop frowning but she did uncurl her arms, letting them hang at her sides. I took another step, coming to just a few feet from the woman. “Until I saw you with Iris, it just never occurred to me that a mama would care for her kid. That they weren’t supposed to be the one to be looked after.” I inhaled, looking Iris’s mother square in the eyes. “You never thought I was good enough for her. You thought I’d hold her back.”

  “I wasn’t wrong.”

  It stung more that she wasn’t exaggerating. “Maybe not,” I said, nodding when she lifted her chin, a slow movement that defied me to argue. I couldn’t “Maybe I wasn’t good enough for her. God knows I’m not now, but you can’t say I didn’t love her.”

  Mrs. Daine stood in front of me, and there was little left of her anger. It was missing in her features now and showed itself in only a hint of her clipped tone when she spoke. “Loving my daughter was never the problem, Jamie. You were useless at loving yourself.” I couldn’t disagree, and couldn’t take looking at the sadness in her eyes then. I nodded, agreeing in silence, then slipped on my glasses. Mrs. Daine grabbed my wrist, and pulled them back off. “The thing you never got, the thing you still don’t seem to get, is that if you don’t respect yourself, if you don’t love yourself, how the hell can you expect anyone else to do it for you?”

  She didn’t tell me goodbye, and I didn’t offer one. But when I got to the gate that led out of her yard, I turned to face her, shooting a hand through my hair because that woman still had the glare of a viper, no matter what wisdom she’d just imparted.

  “Can you…will you tell her…” The frowned returned, and I released a low sound of frustration I hoped she couldn’t hear. “Please,” I finally said. “I just want her to know I’m sorry. I want her to know if I could take it all back, everything…if I could…”

  “Real love means sacrificing what you want. Real love is selfless.”

  I tilted my head, moving my eyebrows together, waiting to see if she’d finish her thought. When she didn’t, I took a step, stopping when she shook her head. “You don’t think I really love her, do you?”

  Mrs. Daine shook her head, arms crossed over her chest once again. “You’re too blind to know what she really wants from you.”

  I held my breath, frowning when she turned away and started toward the shed. “What does she want from me?” I called, and I swore my heart stopped beating until she spoke again.

  “My daughter wants you to leave her alone.”

  And just then I realized Mrs. Daine was right. I was blind. Very blind.

  Chapter Seven

  There was a slip in my dream; some shift of light and sound that took me from Iris. She held me, fingers running through my hair as I rested my head in her lap. In the distance, there was that white noise, something familiar, something that made my chest tighten, but it felt too good to be with her again. The smell of her hair, this time like gardenias, moved into my sinuses, and I inhaled deep, grabbing her hip to move my face against her stomach. Her round, pregnant stomach. It was different from all the other dreams I’d had of her over the years. It was no memory. Nothing that would bring back a day and time. This was new. This was hope. Iris with me, in this apartment, and that aching sound in the distance growing fainter and fainter.

  “Mami,” I whispered, smiling, when the vibration of her moan moved over me like a blanket. “This is perfect.”

  “It is. But I need you to help me.”

  That noise got clearer, and I sat up, watching Iris’s face, heart thumping hard when I saw her frown. “Florecita, what is it?”

  “Help me. Please. I need your help.”

  The noise was louder now, and more desperate, coming at me through the deep garbled grunt of a man. I knew that voice, and it wasn’t Iris’s. Sleep left me quick, as though I’d been doused with a shot of cold water, and I sat up on my sofa, rubbing my eyes, stilling to hear what I was sure was some imagined cry.

  “Hey, man, I need your help!” Jimmy called, and I shot up from the tumble of thick blankets and darted toward my bedroom, following the single light coming from the master bath.

  Jimmy struggled to hold Wills upright. My father was doubled over near the toilet, and vomit covered the seat. There was a mess on the floor, and when Jimmy tried getting him around the middle to get a tighter hold on him, Wills cried out.

  “Jaysus, don’t!”

  I stepped in, grabbing a towel that I handed to my father’s man when he slipped on some of the sick near the toilet. “What the hell happened?” I asked Jimmy.

  “He started throwing up about a half-hour ago, and when I tried to help him, he pushed me off.” He held the old man by the arm, moving it to his shoulder, then wincing when Wills cried out again.

  “Get him down on the floor,” I told the man, hurrying to dampen a towel to clean my father’s face. I knelt in front of him, and one glance at his expression—all scared and wide-eyed—twisted something in my gut. Something that made me feel mierda I hadn’t let inside my head for years: fear. “Be still now,” I told him, rubbing his mouth and face clean.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Vega, I am, but I’m a bodyguard. I don’t…I don’t have medical training.”

  I glanced over my shoulder, watching the big man’s face as he screwed up his features. He was worried, I could tell, and clearly sorry. It must have frustrated him to be such a big guy and be helpless when it came to taking care of someone who couldn’t do it themselves.

  “Mr. Lager’s been my boss for a long time, but this…”

  “You wanna check out, it’s no problem.” I faced my father again, frowning when he tried sitting up.

  “I…I don’t wanna go. I just—”

&
nbsp; “It’s fine. I took care of my mama for years. It all comes back.” Jimmy was big, but I was wider, and Wills had gotten so thin that he was nothing to carry. I put one arm around his shoulders, the other under his knees and picked him up, avoiding touching his stomach, which seemed to be the spot that hurt him the most.

  “I can’t…what can I do?”

  “Get the car and grab me a blanket. It’s cold out, and he needs to get to the hospital. I got no skills on helping someone with kidney failure.”

  The man nodded once, and I put Wills on the bed, stepping into my closet to grab a thick flannel and some jogging pants. Behind me I heard Wills’ low mutter as he called Jimmy over to him.

  “Text her. She’ll want to know.” But who he wanted didn’t register. Jimmy left the room, and I dressed my father, picking him back up and heading out of the apartment when his man honked the horn.

  “Ah, son. I’m dreadful sorry,” he whispered as I got him into the backseat of the Cadillac. He patted my face, pulling me close to look me in the eyes. “You’re a good boy,” he said before he passed out.

  The hospital was only blocks away, but Wills didn’t stay knocked out long. Once he was admitted and had fluids pumping into his veins, his temper returned, and he started complaining.

  “Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, let me go, will you not?” he shouted, his loud brogue echoing into the hallway. He was a bad patient, but calmed down once the doctor got some pain meds inside him.

  And then the man lowered the hammer.

  “He needs surgery.” I could only stare at the doctor, blinking. I’d taken care of my mother a hundred times when she was high or aching for a fix. I cleaned her up when she shit herself or passed out in her own vomit, but she’d never been sick like this, and she’d never needed surgery. I was out of my element, and I think the doctor understood that. “Mr. Vega, there is an infection in the lining of your father’s stomach. That can happen sometimes with patients on dialysis.” When I shot my eyebrows up, likely looking as surprised as I was, the man elaborated. “He’s been on daily dialysis for a week here. I take it he never informed you?” I shook my head, trying to push back the wave of irritation I felt. Wills had been keeping something from me for a while, I knew that. But I was pissed at myself for being stupid enough not to ask where he took off to, or at least been worried enough to research what a diabetic with kidney failure needed to survive.