Meredith scrunched her eyebrows together in question. “Are you okay?”
“I am,” Roni answered quickly, but she wasn’t as sure or as positive as she sounded. When she opened up these wounds, she wasn’t sure if she would be okay or not, and she wanted someone there in case she wasn’t. What if she told Rooster and he ran, ran away from her, not bothering to look back. Or worse, what if he hated her? “There’s just some things emotionally draining that I need to tell someone else, and I would like for a third party to be there in case things get out of hand.”
Reaching into her purse, Meredith pulled out a well-worn card and handed it to Roni.
“Doc Jones?” She read it out loud. “I think I’ve heard other members of the club talk about her.”
“Probably.” Meredith nodded. “She’s very good at what she does, and a lot of us have gone to see her. Sometimes I go see her even if I just need to talk a few things out and I need a neutral ear. It’s nice to have someone who’s not on a side to help you see what the correct path to take is or the right answer to choose. I trust her with everything, and you know I don’t trust much.”
That was high praise coming from Meredith and Roni knew it. “Then I will definitely check her out. Can I keep the card?”
“Sure, and if you need directions, just let me know. I’d be more than glad to help.”
Roni stuck the card in her purse and chewed on her bottom lip. The question now was how to get Rooster there with her without spilling the beans first.
Chapter Fifteen
Rooster was beginning to get frustrated. He’d figured out without a whole lot of trouble which kids at the high school were the ones dealing the steroids, and he kind of had an idea as to who the kids were that were taking them. Drew and his best friend Dalton Morrison were knee-deep in this whole situation. He still hadn’t found out a way to tell Liam, he was still skirting the truth with Roni, and he was pissed about the whole situation. He was selfish because half of the reason he wasn’t confirming anything about Drew was because he didn’t want Liam to shoot the messenger. His biggest fear was that Liam and Roni would say he was lying and be done with him, even if they both suspected that Drew had a problem. In his experience, when telling people things they didn’t want to hear, it was easy as fuck to turn a blind eye and accuse the person bringing the truth to them. The hardest thing to do was to sit back and wait for it all to unfold, but that’s what he kept telling himself that he had to do. So every day, he would station himself outside the boys’ locker room. They were free in there, much freer than they were out in the hallways, and he could most of the time hear what was going on.
This, however, was tearing him apart. He wanted a future with Roni and he knew that keeping a secret this big from her and Liam was not the way to go, but he had to be sure before he brought his accusations to someone. If he had one piece of this wrong, then he could fuck up every little bit of progress he’d made in getting his life back in order. He wasn’t prepared to give that up. His back against the wall, he was listening closely but not hearing much as he saw Charity coming down the hallway wearing her clothes from cheerleading practice.
“Hi, Rooster,” she called out to him as she got closer. She walked slowly towards where he stood.
“Hey, Charity,” he answered back. Suddenly he looked alive. Maybe she was the way for him to get to Drew. “What are you doing?” he asked, hoping to make pointless conversation with her but steer her towards the answers that he wanted.
“I need to talk to Drew, so I figured I’d come down here and wait on him,” she explained as she had a seat on the floor. She knew, just as well as anyone else, that the football players didn’t get into a big hurry after practice and it could take them an hour to get out of the locker room.
“How are things going with the two of you? You’ve been together for a little while, right?” He didn’t know the answer to that, and as far as he knew no one else in the club knew they were hanging out, seeing each other, whatever teenagers called it. He had definitely heard no rumblings of it.
She smiled up at him, the shy smile of a young girl exploring new feelings for the first time. “Yeah,” she answered. “We’ve been talking since January, and we’ve been kind of dating since May.”
May? And nobody knew about this? Drew was a master at keeping his private shit private. How had no one found out about this yet? “That’s years in teenage time,” he joked, as he had a seat next to her.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Mom says it’s crazy, that I shouldn’t tie myself down to one guy. I’ll be sixteen the week after Drew. She says I need to spread my wings and play the field.” She shrugged.
“But you don’t think so?” The easiest way to get a woman to talk was to turn the conversation over to something about her. At least that’s what he’d learned in his adult conversations, he hoped it was the same for younger women too.
“Mom’s a stripper at Wet Wanda’s, what does she know? She’s not even sure who my daddy is. I don’t want that for my life.” Her voice was strong, no room for argument in what she was saying. She knew that if she said it enough times then it would happen, her dreams would come true. She didn’t want to be working where her mom was, doing what her mom did for the rest of her life. She had goals.
It was admirable to hear a teenager talk this way, with so much determination to do things the way she thought they should be done. Rooster imagined it couldn’t be easy growing up and knowing that your mom sold her body for money. “Your mom’s a very nice woman.” Rooster, in his sheriff days, had a few run-ins at the bar, but Jasmine had always been polite and respectful.
“That’s not what she’s known for,” Charity snorted. “But thank you for saying that. It means a lot.” It wasn’t often that she found people who were willing to overlook her mom’s profession in order to realize what a nice person she could be.
He wanted to turn the conversation away from this and back to Drew, back to the answers he wanted to know. “How’s Drew doing with football practice? Especially now that he made varsity? I haven’t been able to talk to him lately. I’m workin’ here and helping out at Walker’s Wheels,” he offered in way of an explanation. Charity was a smart girl, and he had a feeling if he just came out and asked her, the girl would know he was running a line on her trying to get information.
“He’s okay,” she answered slowly. “But it’s a lot of pressure and I worry about him.”
How did he get this girl to talk? “Worry about him getting hurt?”
“Well, that too, but there’s so much to worry about being on varsity. You have to be bigger, stronger, and faster than everybody else. It’s a huge time commitment. I just hope he has time for me when it’s all said and done,” she admitted. “We’re not seeing eye to eye about a couple of things right now.”
“All couples have arguments, I’m sure you’ll come through it,” he told her, resting his hand on her shoulder.
“We’ve been arguing a lot lately,” she whispered.
He knew that she was on the verge of telling him what he wanted to know. He had to make this sound good. “Anything you wanna talk about?” Rooster hoped like hell she wouldn’t say anything that he couldn’t handle. This was a teenage girl above anything else, and he wasn’t sure he had the emotional capability to get it out of her, but he was damn well going to try.
Charity had apparently been waiting for someone to ask because as soon as he did, she opened up, spilling a lot of words in a short time period. “He’s being stupid, thinking that the shit he’s takin’ is gonna make him better. It’s not—he’s better because he’s workin’ harder at it. All that shit is doing is making him mean, and he’s not the guy I met and liked. He’s an ass. I see people like that all the time with my mom. I don’t wanna be with somebody like that, but I’m scared to tell him I’m done, he’s got such a temper lately.”
“What shit is he doing?” He needed someone to confirm it, someone who knew the truth to let him know exactly what was going on.
“Steroids,” she whispered. Once the word was out though, her voice grew stronger and she started telling him what he wanted to know. What he needed to know. “He’s getting it from older guys on the team, and it’s the worst kept secret ever. The coach even knows about it, which I think is shady, but everyone tells me it’s none of my business. If you ask me,” she looked up at him, her eyes looking much older than fifteen, “the coach has something to do with it. I see this type of shit all the time from the people my mom hangs with.”
Now that was interesting, Rooster decided. He’d have to do some research on the coach and see what was going on there. “He knows that shit shrivels his dick up, right?”
Her face blushed a bright red, and he realized he probably shouldn’t have said that to her. To Drew, yes, but not to her.
“Sorry, I’m used to being around guys,” he said by way of apology. It had embarrassed him too.
“It’s okay.” She shrugged, once again looking much too old for her age. “I’m used to people saying wildly inappropriate things around me.”
Just then the locker room door opened, and Rooster knew that Drew would be walking through there soon. He got up. “I gotta be goin’, but hopefully I’ll see you sometime soon. Maybe you should make Drew bring you out to the clubhouse.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she laughed.
He wasn’t sure if she was scared or if Drew didn’t want her there so that no one else could be up in his business. Either way, it looked like something she didn’t want to do. There was nothing else to say as he made his way down the hallway. Once he got out of the line of sight from the football players coming down the hallway, he stopped and beat his head against a locker. What the fuck was he going to do? How was he going to explain this to everyone? It was the same question he kept asking himself over and over again, but he still had no answer, at least no easy answer. He hated this and he hated what he was going to have to put Drew through, but first he had to call in a favor and he had to figure out just what in the hell the football coach had to do with any of this. Usually when something like this happened, there was a spearhead figure that caused it all and he, without a doubt, knew that the coach had a hand in this. Investigating this wouldn’t be easy, but he sent a text to Travis, asking him to get everything he could on the coach, but to keep it between the two of them. He even used the token word “cuz”, just to let Travis know that this was serious. They still didn’t refer to themselves as family very often, but Travis knew that when they did, it was something serious. If he didn’t figure out how to make this work, he was fucked, and the new relationship he’d managed to start with Roni—that was over.
Chapter Sixteen
An hour later, Rooster had what he was looking for and Travis was asking questions that he knew he couldn’t answer. That seemed to be his token job lately, having answers that he couldn’t reveal.
“This is the high school football coach. What the fuck is going on?” Travis whispered as he held onto the papers he had printed for Rooster.
“I can’t explain that right now, I need this information, so I need you to let go of the fucking paper,” he whispered back.
It was stupid, the two of them whisper shouting at each other in Steele’s cave, but Rooster couldn’t afford to let someone else hear them. What if Liam heard and then he had to confess that he’d kept all of this a secret? That he hadn’t been completely on the up and up. It made his stomach hurt, but he didn’t want to cause emotional pain to anyone until he knew exactly what he was dealing with. It didn’t matter that he was waiting to get a bead on everything, to find out if what he thought was true was actually true. Liam wasn’t going to listen to that. He was going to do what every normal father did and react first, think later. That reaction would surely be against both Rooster and Drew, but Rooster didn’t know how bad that reaction would be. Liam could be calm, but he could also be as hot-headed as they came too. No matter how far the two of them had come in their friendship, he worried that this whole situation would set them back. Maybe it would all work out—maybe it wouldn’t, but Rooster was scared as hell to take that chance.
“Don’t ask me to keep secrets. You know what happened last time.” Travis referenced the secret romance he’d had with Jagger’s sister. It had been a bad deal when Jagger had found out by accident. Travis had ended up with a buzz cut and staples in his head. Neither one of them wanted to go there again.
Rooster nodded. “I know, I know. I’m asking you to let me tell Liam about this, and I promise you, I will do that in the next 48 hours. Is that good for you?” Rooster could tell just by looking at Travis that it wasn’t but he would make the exception this one time.
“Forty-eight hours, and then my mouth opens, big time.”
Rooster took the folder of papers that Travis had printed for him and was making his way out of the clubhouse when his cell phone went off. Roni. Fuck. He hadn’t heard from her in a day or so, and he really wanted to hear the soft tone of her voice. She would be a calming factor in this shit storm that had somehow made its way into his life. Getting into his truck that he drove back and forth to the school, he answered the call. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” she started, and he could hear uncertainty there. “I was wondering if you could make time to come somewhere with me this afternoon. There’s a couple of things I wanna talk to you about.”
He wasn’t sure he liked the tone of her voice. Now he was kind of regretting that he’d answered. What he didn’t need now was another issue to mess with, but trying to be with her meant being with her when the going wasn’t always so easy. “Sure.” He backed his truck out of the parking lot at the clubhouse and started down the drive. “Do I need to come get you? I’m leaving the clubhouse right now.”
“That’s perfect, I’ll be waiting on you.”
Rooster hung up and beat his hand against the steering wheel. He had a bad feeling about this, and this wasn’t what he needed on today of all days. Putting the paperwork that Travis had given him under the seat, he resigned himself into realizing that this whole situation just might suck ass.
Roni waited for Rooster to get to her apartment, watching out the window for what he would be driving. Sometimes he drove his truck, sometimes he drove his bike. Either way, she wanted to be ready when he pulled in. If she wasn’t, she was afraid she wouldn’t go through with the appointment she’d made, and she had to go through with it. She had to tell him the truth before they moved any further. She would never be able to give herself to him until she purged herself of the poison.
This was going to be the hardest thing she’d ever done. She’d told no one about this, not even Liam. He had his suspicions, but she’d never verified them and she’d never offered to talk about it. The only other person in the world who knew her secret besides the doctor that had performed the procedure was her dad. Even though she’d gotten closer to her mom in recent years, she’d never been able to tell her what had gone down, afraid that it would somehow harm the relationship they’d started to build with one another.
The other fear was that her budding relationship with Rooster wouldn’t survive. That was the main reason she’d stopped the physical contact between the two of them after their night at the swimming hole. She couldn’t handle it if he decided he could no longer be with her, if they could no longer build this relationship. That’s what they were going to work on today, and she knew she was a bitch for springing this on him, but in this, she had to make the decisions that were right for her. It was such a gaping wound in her soul that she knew she couldn’t think about him. He had no idea what had gone on, and he wouldn’t until she told him.
Rooster’s truck pulled in the parking lot, and she quickly grabbed her bag and exited her apartment, running toward it like she was meeting him for a date. He reached over to the side and opened the passenger door for her and she
climbed inside. She leaned over; kissing him the lips and letting herself linger there. She had to hold onto it, just in case he decided he didn’t want it anymore after what she was about to put him through.
“I’m happy to see you,” he told her, and the way he said it almost made her cry. He really was happy to see her, and she hoped that he would still be happy to see her within an hour, after she had completely changed his life.
“I’m happy to see you too,” she answered, reaching over to grab his hand. She needed to hold onto something, to keep him with her, just in case.
“Where are we headed?”
She didn’t want to tell him exactly where they were going. She wasn’t sure if he knew of the place or not. Roni figured he may have, after so many people in the club had employed the services of Doc Jones, but she wanted to keep this a secret for as long as she could. She gave him directions, but never told him the name of where they were going. As they pulled up in front of an old farmhouse, he cut the engine but kept his hands on the steering wheel.
“Wanna tell me why we’re at Doc Jones’?”
Roni swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. “Because I have some things to tell you and I think you have some things to tell me. Instead of inadvertently hurting each other, maybe we can work through whatever it is with the help of a third party that doesn’t know either one of us.”
He could see the appeal and was actually happy that she’d thought about this, but that didn’t mean he was shot in the ass about going to see a shrink. “If that’s what you think we need, we’ll do it, but I have to tell you…I’m worried.”
“I am too,” she admitted. “There are things I should have told you, but I haven’t, and I need some help to get through those things. That’s all this is. If you have anything you want to discuss while we’re in there, we will. But I want to make sure that I get everything out in the open, and then you can decide if you still want to be with me. When we leave here there will be no hard feelings and I have a backup ride in case I need it.” Her mouth was bone dry as she said those words to him. Meredith had promised she would be around, just in case shit went south.
Heaven Hill Series - Complete Series Page 104
