by Jess Bryant
No Regrets
Bomar Boys
By
Jess Bryant
Every small town has that one family that’s more savage than civilized. The ones that are more myth and legend than man. In Old Settlers, Oklahoma that’s the Bomar boys. Wild, reckless and vicious, they skirt the line of criminal and trip over it more often than not. They are their own punchline: white trash but proud beyond compare. Dirty and dangerously sexy, it’s best to steer clear of them or else risk your life… and your heart. These are their stories.
Jemma Buxton was running scared. She’s running home. But she had no idea she was running straight into his arms.
Fleeing an abusive relationship, she left everything behind. Her life. Her hopes. Her dreams. But not her heart. She wants to move on, start over and love again, but can she trust the first boy she ever loved with her bruised heart when he’s already broken it once?
Cash Bomar never thought he would see her again. Never thought she would come back to their tiny, backwoods town. Not after he cruelly and purposefully broke her heart and all but sent her away five years ago.
Seeing her again is the surprise of a lifetime and the fact that she needs his help is the second chance he never expected to make things right. All his life he’s been told he was nothing but bad, worthless and white trash, but she makes him want to be better. Can he convince the only girl he’s ever let close, ever loved, that she was always meant to be his?
They both have pasts they wish they could change. A history together they’ll have to overcome. Can they build a future together without a lifetime of regrets?
*No Regrets is the first book in the Bomar Boys series but can be read as a stand-alone. Each book features one couple and a HEA but will build on each other so they are best read in order.
**Warning** - This book contains explicit language, sexual scenes and violence. Though not depicted, mentions of domestic violence are key to the story and can be a trigger for some.
NO REGRETS – BOMAR BOYS 1
Copyright ©2016 by Jess Bryant.
Cover Art: Image Design by Romanced By The Cover
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Chapter One
Cash Bomar was cursed. He had been from the moment he was born. The moment he was conceived even. Failure was in his DNA, embedded as deeply as the color of his hair and eyes. He may not have come into the world knowing that he’d been destined for chaos and disaster but it hadn’t taken him long to figure it out. He was a Bomar and in this tiny town and to the people of Old Settlers with their equally tiny minds that meant there was no escaping it.
He was just one more in a long line of men that were born wrong. There was something inside of them, inside all of them, that made them mean. It made them violent. The Bomar boys were known criminals, liars and thieves and worse. Filthy white trash, backwoods brawlers and rowdy rednecks that drank, boozed and whored like it was going out of style. That was the family that he had been born into and by all rights, he’d earned his place in the lore.
He’d done his worst, just because he could, just because it had been expected. He’d been an unholy terror as a kid. He had bullied teachers until they passed him to the next grade just to be rid of him. He’d used the same techniques to woo every girl in a fifty mile radius with daddy issues or rebellious tendencies. Any adult that had dared to reprimand or attempt to enforce a set of rules had been met with disdain and mocking but what nobody knew, what none of them knew, was just how deep his hatred ran, for them, for this town but most of all for the people that were supposed to be his family.
His own father had tried to kill him once, before he was even born. Decker Bomar lived up to his name in every way. He liked to use his fists and had seen no problem decking his eight months pregnant wife. He’d numbed himself with a bottle of whiskey and then beaten her to within an inch of her life, forcing her into a premature labor that meant he and Colt were born struggling from their very first breath. That was only one in a long line of sins for which Decker would eventually rot in hell.
That had been the first time Decker had nearly ended his sons but it hadn’t been the last, not by a long shot.
Luckily, or not so luckily, there were rumors that the twins weren’t even really Bomars. After all, it was public knowledge that Chrissy Bomar had been friendly with any man willing to give her that next hit of the good stuff by the time they were conceived. Lucky, because his sole dream for as long as he could remember was to escape the Bomar curse. Unlucky because that rumor was the reason Decker had decided to torture him for his very existence.
On his best days, Cash liked to believe that it was possible, that he and Colt hadn’t inherited every ounce of darkness that came with being Decker’s sons. But on his worst days, when he faced up to the damage he’d inflicted, the destruction he’d left in his wake and the demons that still scratched at his insides, he knew that there was no escaping either way. Whether he was a Bomar by blood or not, he was a product of his own violent, unstable upbringing.
He’d taken his pain out on anyone that dared get close enough. He’d lied more than he’d told the truth and he’d cheated every chance he’d been given. He’d hurt people, physically and emotionally, and he didn’t let himself dwell on it.
No looking back. That was his motto. It didn’t change things so there was no use letting it eat at him. That’s what he told himself. That was how he functioned. It wasn’t all that hard for him, another sign that at a soul-deep level he was a Bomar, that he only cared about himself. In all of his years, for all of his crimes, there was only one that haunted him.
Her. She was the one thing he allowed himself to regret. The only thing he wished he could take back in his godawful life.
Cash shook his head, trying to clear that random thought. He wasn’t sure where it had come from. It had been a long time since he’d let those old memories rise up on him and usually he only saw flashes of her hurting hazel eyes when he was neck deep in a bottle. He figured the only reason it had risen up on him now, at this particular moment in time, was because of the damaged, destroyed woman in front of him.
Sometimes, in his worst nightmares, this was how he saw her. Beaten down into a shell of a human being. Broken in the most fundamental ways. Dead behind the eyes that had once been so full of life, numb to the horror of what she had become. Addicted to the junk that kept her sedated and emotionless if not alive.
Chrissy Bomar was trapped in her drugged out fog by her own choosing just as steadily as she was trapped in this town and in her marriage to Decker. There was no way to have one without the other. And when he was with his mother, he couldn’t help but wonder if this was the fate all women that loved a Bomar boy suffered.
“Deck?”
Cash pulled himself out of his own fog of pain and shook away the memories, “No Mom, it’s me. It’s Cash.”
“Cash?” Her eyes focused for a half-second on his face before they drifted again and she groaned, “Stop playin’ Deck, where’re the boys? You takin’ care of my boys? You best get them to school on time Decker.”
He swallowed a burst of anger, as he always did, when he realized she didn’t know who he was. She rarely did. He almost never caught her in a lucid moment anymore. Hell, most of the time she didn’t know who she was so he didn’t think it should hurt so much that she didn’t understand her worry was decades too late.
“Come on, put this shirt over your head and then you can go back to bed.”
If he wa
s anything like his mother, he would be able to numb himself to this. He would be able to go through the motions and ignore how wrong it all felt. But he couldn’t because that was part of his curse too. For all the hate and anger, he cared, more than he wanted to, more than they deserved, he cared enough to try.
Once a week, whether he wanted to or not, he forced himself to check on his mother, make sure she was still breathing and clean her up, a chore that Decker couldn’t be bothered with though somehow he always managed to hand her another needle to poke in her arm. Cash pushed away the sickness that ate at him when he glimpsed her pockmarked flesh, scarred with a thousand old tracks. Her skin hung from her bones and was nearly translucent. Not for the first time, he wondered how she was still alive.
She looked ancient. A stranger might confuse her for his grandmother instead of his still relatively young mother. She looked two decades older than her forty-five years and she would probably not survive to become the age she only appeared to be today.
He thought, momentarily, about loading her in his truck, driving her over to the hospital in Falls Lake and putting her into the rehab program again but he dismissed the idea as quickly as it arose. Taking Chrissy to rehab was an exercise in futility. He’d learned a long time ago that he couldn’t save someone that didn’t want to be saved. The last time he’d attempted to get her clean she’d lasted just long enough to remember who he was, to realize how much she’d missed or blocked out, and when it all came roaring back, she’d attempted suicide.
He didn’t think it was any better leaving her this way, a walking zombie, addicted to the pain that Decker inflicted as if it were her air, but he wouldn’t try to take her away from it again. He wouldn’t be the reason she put the blade to her wrist. She’d given him life and not much more but that was enough to ensure he couldn’t be the one to take hers.
She dutifully raised her arms and he tugged the clean shirt over her head before carefully helping her out of the tub. When he bent to dry her legs and feet, she put a hand on his shoulder and he looked up. She grinned, a fleshy, ugly thing that showed the rotten, yellow teeth and gaps where the others had either fallen out or been knocked out, and his gut clenched with more questions that he would never have answers to.
Had she been beautiful once? Before Decker stole her youth and her will to live? Had she lost her dreams when she got pregnant by one of those bad-news Bomar boys? Or had Decker been her dream all along? Had she ever loved him, or Colt, or Remy half as much as she loved that awful man? And if she had, how could she have ever let Decker destroy them, one by one, piece by piece, until they were as broken and damaged as she was?
“Deck?”
“Cash.” He corrected.
“Deck?”
“Goddamnit, I’m not Decker.” He growled, his anger surging, “I don’t even look like that bastard. You know that. If I did, maybe you would have cared when he…” He cut himself off, attempted to reign himself in, “It’s Cash, Mom. Your son. I’m Cash.”
Her head tilted, like she was trying to make sense of his words, but there was nothing in the blue eyes that looked so much like his own. He sighed and went back to his task. It was no use trying to reach her. If there was anything motherly, anything human, left inside of her it was buried deep. She’d made sure of that.
“Deck, where’s Remy?” She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Remy ain’t been by to see me in forever. Is he okay? You’d best tell me if you done something to keep him away. I want to see my boy. Has he got himself some girl takin’ up all his time?”
Cash bit his tongue at the mention of his older brother. Somehow in the past few minutes, after her shower, she’d sobered enough to realize her sons were grown, but of course she wasn’t concerned about the one standing right in front of her. She didn’t even recognize him and likely wouldn’t have Colt either. It was Remy that she asked for, even now, even after he’d left them and never come back.
“Remy’s fine Mom. He’s just fine.”
It wasn’t a lie, at least as far as Cash knew. He hadn’t spoken to his older brother in a while, so it was possible he’d been hurt or worse, but Cash couldn’t believe that. Remington Bomar was too strong, too mean, too damn much like their father to go down without a fight.
Cash and Colt were twins so they’d always had some sort of strange connection to each other. They’d known whenever the other was hurt even if they were separate when the pain was inflicted. They could read each other’s emotions without a word.
Remy was five years older than them. He’d been the first born son and their mother’s favorite, he assumed because she’d been sober and not beaten down when he was born. As far as their father had ever been concerned, Remy was his only son.
Even with the vast differences in the way their parents treated them, Remy had always been there for the twins. He’d been the big brother and their dauntless protector, right up until the day he turned eighteen, joined the army and left them behind to fend for themselves. Even still, even after all these years and half a world between them, Cash thought that if his older brother were dead, he would have known, would have felt it somehow.
“Can you ask him to come see me?”
Cash swallowed hard, “Yeah, I’ll ask him next time we talk.”
“You’re so good to me Deck.”
No, Deck wasn’t. He wasn’t good to anybody. He was the devil himself, a demon from the fiery pits of hell, unleashed to reign terror on the people he should have cared for most in the world. If he had ever been good to the woman that loved him the proof had passed long before Cash was brought into the world.
Instead of hissing the venom that coated his tongue, he did the only thing he could. He helped his mother wobble her way back to the bedroom. He tucked her into the filthy bed, wishing he’d allotted enough time to wash the sheets. It would just have to wait until next week because one look at the digital clock flashing on the nightstand confirmed that Decker would be home soon from whatever whore’s bed he’d crashed in this time and Cash couldn’t risk being here when his old man arrived.
He was too riled up today to deal with Decker. He was itching for a fight, itching to let the anger out, just as he always was when he finished this task. Bathing and caring for his own mother wasn’t new. He’d been doing it for years and it always brought up the worst of his memories. It always left him feeling like the scum of the earth that everyone in this town claimed he was simply because he’d been born a Bomar.
Today it was worse though, today she’d confused him for the person he hated most in the world and he couldn’t abide that. He was nothing like Decker Bomar. He didn’t look like him. He tried like hell not to act like him. And instead of binding the one woman that he had ever loved to him and subjecting her to the same ruinous fate as his mother, he had let her go.
He shook off the horrible memories. The things he’d done. The lies he’d told. The pain he’d inflicted. He couldn’t think about her, not here, not now, not ever. Thinking about her threatened to leave him as broken and useless as all of the rest of the Bomar men and he’d sworn that he would be better than that.
No more looking back. Not anymore. He’d promised himself a long time ago that he wouldn’t let the past weigh him down, wouldn’t let the curse of his last name hold him back. He had to live and there was only one way that he knew how to do that. He had to be a better man than those that had come before him, otherwise, why had he bothered to fight to survive in the first place?
If he was itching for a fight, there were healthier ways to deal with the urge than beating the shit out of his father. Colt had a fight tonight in one of those off-the-books matches out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of guys that watched too much MMA. Cash didn’t partake, didn’t like the connection to their family that ran it, but just being around it, focusing on his twin usually helped. Colt knew that, knew where he was today, and had taken care of it in advance. Colt wouldn’t help him deal with their mother, refused to see her, but he took
care of Cash in the aftermath. Always.
He grabbed his keys from his pocket and headed for his truck. Already he could see the dirt billowing down the road, knew it meant another vehicle was headed his direction. He didn’t have to guess who it was. While almost all of the Bomars lived out here on the abandoned plot of land in the middle of nowhere, there was only one that would be coming home at this early hour. Decker was fast approaching but he wouldn’t arrive before Cash was gone.
He was late for work as it was. As one of the few members of the Bomar family that worked for a living, he took his job seriously. He liked his job even. It allowed him to earn the things that most people took for granted. A safe place to lay his head and food on the table, things he hadn’t always had but refused to ever go without again. He would do better, be better.
When the battered old truck passed him, he didn’t even spare the man behind the wheel a glance. It was better that way. Easier. It was always a good idea to get out of hell before the devil knew you’d been there.
Sitting on the side of a worn-out, little-used highway in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma, it was easy to see her life had gone to hell. The question of course was just when she’d gotten so off track. She knew it had happened long before her Jeep gave up on the last leg of her journey with a squelching noise even she knew couldn’t be good. The black smoke that had poured from under the hood confirmed it was a lost cause but that was only the latest in a long line of disasters.
She was broke down. She was in the middle of nowhere and she didn’t have anyone she could call because nobody knew she was coming home. Yet more proof of her bad life decisions. She rubbed her eyes then put her sunglasses back on to shield them from the harsh summer sun.
She could have cried but while Jemma Buxton might be many things, a crier wasn’t one of them.
