“What the fuck is it you’re going to tell me?” He couldn’t think of anything that would ever put him in that kind of situation with her. He had to wonder what she was hiding and how long she’d hid it. He had foolishly thought they had learned from keeping secrets before. “I don’t want there to be any secrets between us either, and we’ve both made mistakes. We get it out in the open here, and then we let it go.”
She bit her lip, not wanting to get out of the truck because she knew that once she stepped out of this cocoon her life would possibly change and maybe not for the better. “I hope you’re still willing to say that after I tell you what I need to.”
“Roni.” He turned her face so that they looked each other head on. “Don’t make assumptions about me. No one knows how they are going to react to certain situations, and judging by the way you’re acting, this situation sucks. At least give me the benefit of finding out what it is and processing it before you lump me in a group with other people.”
“I can do that.” She cleared her throat and glanced back at the house. It was then she noticed that an older looking lady had come out on the porch. “I think that’s her. She’s probably wondering what we’re doing sitting here in the truck instead of coming in.”
Rooster’s heart pounded as he opened the door and slid from the driver’s seat onto the ground. He felt indescribable as he walked around the truck and held out his hand for Roni. She was much slower coming to meet him, but he’d expected that. She obviously had something that she didn’t want to admit to him and it was weighing heavily on her. Little did she know his own secret was weighing heavily on him. Maybe this was something they both needed, a blessing from above that she’d decided to do this. Either way, whatever was going to happen would happen, and it appeared it was going be this afternoon. He gripped her hand strongly in his as they made their way to the front porch where the older woman stood.
“Rooster and Roni?” She asked, wanting to verify before she let them inside.
“Yes, ma’am.” Rooster held out his free hand for her to shake and watched as Roni did the same.
“I was beginning to wonder if the two of you were going to come in.” She smiled warmly at them.
“We thought about turning tail and running all the way to Mexico,” Rooster joked. “But running away from something never fixes it, and if we’re here, we have something to fix.”
Doc Jones nodded at the two of them. “That’s what I like to hear before you take the first step into this house. If you know you have something to fix and you’re open to it, then this will be much easier. Should we get started?”
Roni looked down where her hand was still clasped with Rooster’s. He squeezed it in a comforting gesture. “Yeah, let’s get started,” she said quietly.
She had no doubt that this would be one of the most emotional afternoons of her life, but she was ready for it. With him by her side, she could do anything, and well, if he decided not to be there after this was over, she could still do anything. She would just have to lick her wounds in private and then figure out a way to move on with her life.
Chapter Seventeen
Roni sat on the couch in Doc Jones office, wringing her hands together. She wasn’t sure how people were supposed to feel once they got here, but she was nervous as hell. Everyone that she’d spoken with told her how easy it was to talk to the older woman once they got going, but Roni was beginning to doubt that. They’d been here for almost fifteen minutes and neither one of them were any closer to spilling their guts than they had been when they first walked inside. Neither one of them had barely said a sentence, much less anything else.
“Roni, you’re the one who called me,” Doc Jones started when it was apparent the two of them weren’t going to offer her any information. “Why did you feel the need to have me around when you speak to Rooster?”
She shifted in her seat; this part was the hard part. It felt like the spotlight was on her and she was on display. Being on display was never something her personality had craved and it made her very uncomfortable. If it helped her move on with her life, she knew that she had to do it. “Rooster and I had a relationship as teenagers that was very intense.” She stopped, not sure that she could go on.
“When you say intense, in what way? Most teenage relationships are intense only because of the way we overreact in our teen years.” Doc Jones quirked her brow, hoping one of the other club members had told Roni about her penchant to ask questions and make them answer when they were sitting on her couch.
Rooster picked up for her when she struggled to find the words. “It was a sexual relationship, and I daresay there was a lot of love there—at least as much love as two teenagers can have for one another. It was forbidden, her father didn’t want me to see her, I was best friends with Liam. We had to sneak around, and sneaking around made it that much sweeter.”
It was beginning to click a little in Doc Jones’ head. “It was passionate and forbidden and that made it even more illicit. The danger of getting caught made it that much better?”
“It did.” Rooster scratched his neck, grinning a little. “We would purposely do things when we knew we weren’t supposed to, but we couldn’t stop ourselves. I thought I would marry her,” he whispered.
Her head whipped around, her gaze wide as she looked at him. That was one thing she’d never known. They had not one time spoken of that.
“We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here,” Doc Jones slowed them down. “What happened to make you call me?”
“Like he said, we had a very intense, very passionate relationship. Because of that, we argued over stupid shit, probably more than most. One night to get back at one another, we went to a party and started flirting with different people. Worst case scenario happened, a man attempted to force himself on me, I slammed him in the back of the head with a blunt object, and Rooster and my brother took the fall for it.”
“He died?” Doc Jones wanted to make sure she understood exactly where these two were coming from.
Roni nodded. “He did,” she whispered. “I’m not proud of letting them take the blame. I have a lot of guilt about that, but that’s my own shit that I need to work through.”
“There was no way we were letting you take the fall for it when we were the ones who should have been watching out for you. I don’t know how many times I’ve told you that. Had Liam and I not been dumbasses, you wouldn’t have been in the situation. We made it right,” Rooster argued.
“Now, wait a second,” the older woman interrupted. “You may have made it right for yourself, Rooster, but that doesn’t necessarily make it right for Roni. She’s still going to carry her feelings around, and she’s allowed to. If she hasn’t worked through them, then she can’t let them go. Guilt is a crazy thing; it can eat at you for most of your life if you let it.”
“I have guilt over more than just that,” Roni breathed deeply. “That night set forth a series of events that I couldn’t stop. I dug my heels in and tried to, more than anyone knows, but I couldn’t. Oh sure, I could have tried harder, but at that point in my life, I wanted to die.”
Rooster’s head snapped back as if he had been hit. He’d never known that she had wanted to die. That was something Roni had never shared with him. Now he was beginning to get nervous. Did he really want to know what was going on here? When she’d told him that she wanted to see a shrink, he’d foolishly thought she was overreacting, but now he wasn’t so sure. “No,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t ever have felt like you wanted to die.”
She hadn’t meant to get right into it, but she figured it was like a Band-Aid, it needed to be ripped off quickly. There was no sense in dragging it out. “Please don’t interrupt me when I start this,” she begged the two of them. “I don’t know if I can bring myself to go through it again once I start.”
They both nodded. Rooster grabbed her hand for support, and Doc Jones pulled her notepad in her lap, pen at the ready to take notes.
“After
Liam and Rooster were sent off, my dad kinda had it out for me. He was pissed that Liam had gotten in trouble. He was planning on having Liam do some of the more dangerous things in the club when he turned eighteen because he didn’t have a record and he could get away with more. It wouldn’t be his second or third strike. I fucked that up, and he didn’t hesitate to take that out on me every time he could.”
Beside her, Rooster tensed, and she could tell this was going to be bad. Telling him what she had to might break the two of them. Their relationship was on thin ice, she knew that, but she had to tell him. This relationship had to be right.
“This is hard,” she sniffed. “I don’t want to tell you this.” She looked over at him. “But I want this to work, and I can’t go any further without telling you. I can’t get this close to you again and then have it all fall apart. I won’t survive it again.”
He reached over, running a thumb over her cheek bone. “Tell me, please just tell me.”
“A few weeks after Liam got locked up and you got sent away, I started feeling sick. I thought it was because I missed the two of you so much. I was always around both of you and there you were gone. I was alone, in a situation I didn’t want to be in. You were my support system, and I worried myself to death about both of you. I wrote it off as me manifesting all that worry physically. I was tired all the time, puking, stomach rolling at every turn—then certain smells starting getting to me. I knew I was pregnant, even before I took the test. I didn’t want William to know.” She couldn’t call him “dad” in this moment. It hurt too much.
Rooster inhaled sharply, doing his best not to jump to a hasty conclusion, but his stomach had dropped. He had an awful feeling about this. Roni had no child, so obviously something had happened.
“I was able to hide it for a few weeks,” she continued, not meeting any eyes in the room. She held her head down, afraid to lift it. Part of her was scared to look and see how Rooster was taking the news. “Those weeks were happy, even though I was scared to death. I was making plans. My mom had found a way to get out of there; I was going to do it too. Rooster wouldn’t be at the camp forever and Liam wouldn’t be in juvie forever. I was going to bide my time until I could talk to you and we could make a plan together. We were going to be a family.”
“What happened?” His voice was raw, it sounded the way he felt. He knew with everything in him that William had fucked this up too.
“He found out. He got me in the car and told me we were taking a drive. I didn’t think anything about it,” she told them. “He was my dad. Why would I have any cause to be scared? He did things to other people, not to his own daughter.” She choked on the words, gazing off as she told the story.
“C’mon Roni,” William yelled. “We need to get going.”
Why was he in such a hurry? Her stomach was rolling—she’d been sick since she’d woken up that morning. The saltines were no longer doing it for her, and she knew that soon she’d have to find a doctor and get verification of everything. Maybe they could prescribe her something to help with the morning sickness. Usually it wasn’t so bad, but some days, she could barely lift her head—this was one of those days. “Be right there,” she yelled back. It was going to take every bit of control she had over herself to get out of bed and face this day head-on.
Slowly, she made her way to her dad’s truck and got in.
“You okay?” he asked, glancing over at her.
He wore cologne, and the smell of it was overpowering to her senses. She quickly rolled the window down, sticking her head out as far as she could to get away from the stench. “Fine.” She shook her head, gulping in the fresh air.
They didn’t speak as he took off towards town, and honestly, she was so tired that she didn’t even want to carry on a conversation. Abruptly, she pitched forward, realizing that she had fallen asleep.
“Get out of the truck,” William said to her sharply.
She fought to get a handle on where they were, she’d never seen this place before. It was a house, but she wasn’t sure why they were here. “Where are we?”
When she didn’t move fast enough, he came around the side, opened the door, and yanked her out. “We’re someplace that’s going to take care of the little problem you have. You will not be having Brandon Hancock’s baby, now, or ever.”
It was then she understood what he was saying. She started screaming, trying to kick away from the hold he had on her. With one hand, he grabbed her by the hair, with the other, he backhanded her.
“Get your ass up those steps and into the house. You don’t want me to take care of it for you,” he whispered through gritted teeth.
He would beat her until she lost the baby. How was this man her father and what had she done to deserve this?
“For three weeks, I bled, and I would cry myself to sleep every night. I waited for you to get out of that camp. I wanted to tell you everything, and all I wanted was to feel your arms around me, you to tell me that it was okay,” she trailed off.
“And when I got out, I was different, I wasn’t all like what you expected,” he finished for her.
“No.” She shook her head. “You hated to even look at me.”
“I hated that I had put you in that situation,” he told her. “And now I find out this? God, why would you even want to mess with me after everything I put you through?” His voice was tortured. What had he done to the two of them? How had she been able to look past all the shit he’d done in the last few years? How could she come to him now and really want to make a life with him?
“You’re the only thing, the only person, I’ve ever wanted.” Her voice was clear and truthful. “No matter what, I can’t change the way I feel.”
“I’m a lucky son of a bitch, but you might change the way you feel after I tell you my secret.” He ran a hand over his face.
How the fuck were they going to overcome all of this? Would it be worth it, in the long run? Were they fighting for something that wasn’t going to last?
Chapter Eighteen
Rooster didn’t know if this was a great idea, he was still reeling from what she had told him about their unborn child. That had been the last thing he’d thought she’d tell him when he’d agreed to come here. Of course, he’d had a feeling that whatever it was, it was going to be big. This was much bigger than anything he could have ever imagined.
“Go ahead,” Doc Jones encouraged him. “You get yours out and then we’ll work through it all together. It’s better to just say it, and then we can take the ramifications one by one.”
“I quit the sheriff’s department after some things happened that I didn’t agree with. When I had to go to the camp, things changed and I became the do-gooder extraordinaire of the world because that’s what I had to do. For years, I was a dick to Heaven Hill and I acted like I didn’t even know who Roni was. There’s no doubt in my mind why she didn’t tell me about all this before now. I was trying to be someone I wasn’t.” He ran a hand through his hair. “That’s neither here nor there right now. Anyway, I came back into the Heaven Hill fold this year and got asked to work at the high school doing security because of an anonymous tip that was called in. The tip said that there were steroids being used on the football team.”
He heard the swift intake of breath beside him. Roni had probably already figured it out. This was bad, he was done hurting her.
“Not Drew.” She shook her head. She had hoped their suspicions weren’t founded.
“Yes, Drew and his buddy Dalton. They’re knee-deep in this shit,” he confirmed, dropping his head into his hand that rested on the side of the couch.
“Shit.” She rested her head against the back of the couch cushion.
“So now, I have a dilemma,” he told Doc Jones. “I’ve only been with this group of people for a short amount of time. I’ve just begun to find my foothold and place here, she and I are working on our relationship, and now I have to tell two parents that their teenage son is mixed up in drugs. What do I do? I c
an’t go back to the way I was livin’. I can’t do it.”
To his complete surprise, Roni reached over and grabbed his hand in hers. “Before you start, Doc Jones, can I remind him of something?”
“Please do, I’m still trying to process all of this and understand everything that’s going on.” She watched the two of them carefully. When a couple came in to see her, this is what she wanted, them to help each other with their problems. It looked like this couple was more than willing to do that.
Roni turned in her seat to face him. “You have to remember that Liam sent you there, he asked you to take a look at this because he’d gotten the tip. He wants to know what’s going on. That doesn’t mean he wants you to sugarcoat anything. Whatever this turns out to be for Drew, we’ll all deal with it. He’s a teenager and he’s going to do stupid shit. Liam’s not going to be pissed because you’ve done what he’s asked you to. He knew there was a chance, and that’s why he asked you to do it. Liam’s not an idiot.”
Doc Jones held up her hand. “Okay, let me make sure that I understand this. You and Roni had a relationship as teenagers and you were best friends with Liam. When the two of you were sent away—you came back different? He went right back to where he was going to go in the first place, and you took the opposite track?”
“Exactly.” Rooster nodded. “My parents…” he trailed off and chuckled, but it was uncomfortable. “Let’s just say, I spent all the time I did with Liam’s family because my home life, it wasn’t great, and even though Liam’s family was as dysfunctional as they came…it was still better than my own house.”
“Shit, you two.” Doc Jones wrote in her tablet.
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