“Ace,” Jack said, his voice low and measured, those blue eyes missing exactly nothing. “Doing OK?”
“Yeah,” Ace said in his usual ‘no talk before caffeine’ growl, then he took a stab at manners. “You?”
Jack looked mildly surprised. “No complaints.”
“Hmmmmfff,” Ace said, done with etiquette for the day, and headed for the kitchen.
Jack followed, of course, watched as Ace poured himself a massive coffee, then leaned back against the counter to drink it. Jack was wearing that fucking expression, the one that Ace recognized right away and hated the most of all his profiler/mindreader/psychic expressions. It was the one that meant that Jack was looking to crawl around inside Ace’s head, and if Jack wanted to do that, it was going to happen, Ace knew. He sighed, knowing that resistance was fucking futile.
“What?” Jack said, pouring a coffee for himself. “What’s with the sigh?”
“Go on,” Ace replied, taking a fortifying swig of caffeine. “Whatever it is you’re after, just come on out and ask for it. Saves your time and my sanity.”
“OK,” Jack said easily. “I want to hear about your childhood.”
Ace hadn’t see that coming, and he reacted about as badly as possible. “Why the fuck do you want to hear about that? It’s ancient history, Taylor.”
Jack shrugged those massive shoulders, watching Ace actually back up and cross his arms to protect himself. “I just do.” He gave a grin that made Ace think of a wolf, the big bad kind. “I’m a bit of a historian, you see.”
“No, really,” Ace said, still unnerved and looking to buy some time. It was delaying the inevitable and was the verbal equivalent of trying to hold back the ocean, but he was going to give it a shot anyway, no matter how fruitless the effort. “Why?”
“Because it’s still fucking you up,” Jack said succinctly, shocking Ace to the core. “Whatever the hell happened to you, it’s made you who you are.”
“I think the club has made me who I am. The Fallen Angels have made me violent and suspicious and an all-round general prick.”
“No.” Jack shook his dark head. “You went to the club because it was the best fit for who you already were.”
“Aw, bullshit to the tenth degree,” Ace said, feeling the need to fight back now. “Lots of guys come from shit backgrounds and end up in lives of crime. It’s nothing unique or unusual, Jack, and I’d also point out that people with good backgrounds can end up in violent lives. I mean, look at you and some of your fellow King’s Men. How many people have you educated, trained, professional, ex-military types killed, either while overseas, or on King’s orders? Your hands aren’t anything like clean, none of you. So really, how are you so different from me in some ways, man? And if we’re not so different in the here and now, then who cares where the hell we began? Isn’t where we are now all that really matters?”
Jack grinned again, said nothing.
“What?” Ace demanded. “What’s so funny?”
“Your enthusiastic and very erudite deflection,” Jack said. “It was awesome. Masterful, even. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say so many words in a row before.”
“Jesus fuck,” Ace said, clenching his hands. “Back the hell up, Taylor. And I mean now.”
“Nope.” Jack cocked his head, totally relaxed in the knowledge that even if Ace put off this little chat now, there’d be plenty of other chances soon enough. “Tell me now, tell me later, I don’t care, man. But you are going to tell me, and we both know it.”
“I’m not.”
“Sure you are. You’re going to tell me because you want to tell me.”
“I do not.”
“Yeah, you do. You’ve wanted to tell me for a while.”
“I have not.”
“Sure you have. How many times have you brought up your Dad in conversations with me, for no reason at all?”
“Uh, never,” Ace blustered, totally aware that he was lying. “Never ever. Not even once.”
“Bullshit,” Jack said amiably. “And your usage of ‘never’ twice results in an OTT denial and just shows me that you know you’re lying. Also? I find it fascinating that when I said that your childhood has made you who you are, you jumped to the assumption that I was referring to your violence and criminal acts.”
“Well, weren’t you?”
“Nope. Not at all.”
“So, what then?”
“I was talking about pretending to be something that you’re not for years on end. Being able to hide in plain sight in an MC, which is an incredibly vigilant and paranoid environment, always operating in closed and close quarters. Avoiding reaction and conflict with people who hate everything that you actually are, and who aren’t shy to say it. Concealing the truth, holding your temper, pushing down on your core. Denying your own needs and desires day after day, for the whole of your life, among people who are always looking for secrets or betrayals.” Jack’s voice gentled now. “I was talking about passing yourself off as the exact opposite of every single thing that you actually are, Ace, and doing it well. Not even well… brilliantly. Not many people can do any of that, and I’ve never met anyone who does it as well as you did it for so long – and I work with people who are trained and specialize in undercover work. So where did it come from, huh? How did you learn it all by yourself, and why? What was it a coping technique for, Ace?”
Ace was stunned, but he managed a feeble retort: “Stop the shrinky shit, Taylor.”
“I won’t,” Jack said. “So what’s it going to be? You going to finally spill your guts, or are we going to tap dance around a bit more? I’m good either way, you know. I’ve got time.”
“I don’t –” Ace began, ready to fucking rip Jack’s nosy head off his goddamn shoulders, then he paused. Actually… well. Actually, maybe. Maybe he should talk to Jack, maybe just a little bit. After all, it’s not like silence and secrecy and denial had done him much fucking good so far, had they? They had, in fact, lost him Liam, and then landed him here in this mess.
And if Ace were being honest – and one thing that he’d promised himself up there in that bedroom, lying there at six a.m. with nothing to do but think, was that he was going to be honest in this new life – he wanted to talk to Jack. Just Jack, though, because the man was a trained profiler, a psychologist, a smart-as-all-hell guy who knew people and their behavior perfectly. If anyone in Ace’s life could help Ace understand who the hell he had been and who he was now, it was the man standing in front of him now, calmly drinking a coffee.
Hell, maybe Jack could even help Ace see the man that he could become. Because if there was one thing that Ace knew so deep inside that he knew it in his bones, it was that he didn’t like the person that he’d been pretending to be for most of his life. Maybe it was time to take a few steps back, retrace his path, figure out a new way to go.
Maybe it was time to think about some redemption and renewal.
After all, the man that he had been and that he was now wasn’t worthy of Liam, were they? No… no way. Oh sure, Ace wanted to believe that he deserved a second chance with Liam – but not this way. Not with what he could offer at the moment, which was – what? And was who?
He didn’t actually know.
“Where are Honey and Tex?” Ace asked quietly.
“Honey’s sleeping, and Tex is standing guard outside,” Jack said, also keeping his voice low. “I’m on front door duty.”
“Right.” Ace paused. “Well… OK.”
“OK?” Jack repeated. “OK what?”
“OK, I’ll talk to you.”
“Alright, man.” Jack sat on a stool, opened his hands. “Shoot. I’m listening.”
Ace nodded, but didn’t say anything yet because, where the actual fuck to begin? He opened his mouth, and this came out:
“Everyone thinks that my road name is Ace, but it’s
not. Ace is my name… my birth name.”
Jack blinked at that. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. My Dad was a gambler. Like, a serious one. I guess you could say that he was an addict, but you could also say that he wasn’t bad at it. The man never held down a job in the whole of his life, except for playing the tables and the slots. Somehow, he kept a roof over our heads and food on the table – not a nice roof, mind you, and sometimes he forgot to buy food for days on end, when he was on a drinking-and-winning streak, but still. He won more than he lost, and there seemed to be cash around when we really needed it.”
“Your Mom?” Jack asked. “Was she there?”
“For a while. Then she died.”
“How old were you?”
“Two.” Ace shook his head. “I don’t really remember her, but I do remember her voice. I remember her singing me to sleep. The one about the star twinkling up in the sky.”
Jack was surprised that Ace would share such a sweet, intimate moment that he’d had with a woman that he’d clearly loved deeply, and still had strong feelings for. He narrowed his eyes at Ace, wondering if he was being taken for a ride by the conniving bastard, then he stopped as he saw it… really saw it. What he was seeing was like a light being turned on suddenly, flooding a dark room with brightness and illumination. Your eyes just needed time to adjust and you blink – and then everything became clear and sharp and technicolored.
So. This is what Ace Cuddy looks like when he’s vulnerable. Huh.
“Then it was just me and him,” Ace continued. “And that wasn’t great. Like I said, he was a gambler and a drinker, and he wasn’t up for raising a kid. Not even close.”
“He was abusive?” Jack asked, trying to keep his tone level and non-threatening. God only knows how a man like Ace would react to having his weakness called out – even if he’d been a small, frightened boy at the time that it had all taken place. “He hurt you?”
Ace was quiet, but in that silence, Jack both saw and heard everything that the man was thinking and feeling. Oh, yeah, Ace had been hurt… hurt badly.
“He did lots of things,” Ace said, deftly side-stepping the question, the surest sign of deep-seated pain that hadn’t even begun to heal. “But I learned early and fast how to read his moods, and when to get the hell out of the way and disappear, and how to be what he wanted me to be in that exact moment. By the time I was about six, I’d actually figured out how to avoid getting beat on sometimes. Not always, of course. Not when he came looking for me, or came home drunk and angry after losing a shit-ton of cash. Then I was fair game, and no way to stop what was coming. I just took it, and waited for it to stop. It always did, eventually. He got tired or bored or passed out. Or whatever.”
“Nobody helped you?”
Ace shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “I didn’t ask for help.”
“But no adult stepped up and called the cops? “ Jack wasn’t about to let this go. “A relative? Neighbor? Teacher?”
“No. This was over thirty years go and those were different times, remember. Back then nobody really got involved in domestic stuff, and people turned blind eyes all over the fucking place. I was left alone to handle it, as best I could. And I handled it OK, I suppose, until this one thing happened…”
Jack didn’t ask this time. He just waited.
“It was all pretty bad,” Ace said at last. “But the worst thing, the one that got me taken away at last, was when he left me locked in a closet in eighty-plus-degree weather for four days without enough food or water. I almost died.”
“OK, what?” Jack said, disbelieving. “What the actual, living fuck?”
“Oh, he didn’t do it on purpose,” Ace said, and Jack saw that despite the passing of time and the fact that Ace had become a brutal, emotionless man in so many ways, he was still making excuses for his worthless dickhead of a father. “I mean, he locked me in the closet, sure enough, but he always did when he went out for an all-nighter.”
“What?” Jack repeated.
“Yeah. Said it kept me safe if someone broke in to steal the TV, and it was a load off his mind, since I couldn’t get out of bed and wander the streets in the middle of the night.”
Wordless, Jack just looked at Ace. The other man shifted, clearly uncomfortable, but also bound and determined to talk. Jack wondered the last time that Ace had talked about this, and then he knew when.
He knew that Ace had never talked about this.
He also knew that saying one word now – one fucking word, even a supportive one – would shut this whole thing down. Ace would come to his senses, and come to the realization that he was, ultimately, giving Jack a big piece of who he was, and exactly how he’d become that way.
Ace was about to just hand over a slice of his soul… and a single syllable would shatter that act to the point of no-recovery.
“So.” Ace stared at his hands, not seeing anything at all. “I was used to it, really. He had night games on the regular, and they went all night. I got used to sleeping on the closet floor, on a bunch of blankets, behind a locked door. In fact, I kinda forgot that I even had a bed.”
Jack wanted to hiss in rage, but he held it back. Fuck, he hated hearing about abused kids, hated it like poison. His own parents had never touched him that way, so he had no personal experience – but in his professional life, he’d come across victims and survivors of child abuse, and every one of those people had some serious demons to combat. Even the ones who’d managed to move past it all still had the shadows clinging to them and circling around them. Yeah, they were faint and held at arm’s length through incredible strength of will and character… but they were there. They were always going to be there, one way or another.
Ace was a man living in shadow in so, so many ways, and now Jack wondered if he was ever really going to be able to step on out into the sun.
And weirdly, Jack found himself hoping it for Ace. Hoping hard.
“So this one time,” Ace said. “He shut me in as usual, headed out as usual. Left me a sandwich and a bottle of water, also as usual. But the next morning, he didn’t come home. Didn’t come home all the next day, or the next night. I had no way of knowing what time it was, of course, but I did know that way too much time had passed. I’d eaten my sandwich the night before, and I only had a bit of water. I made it last as long as possible, but it ran out too. Then I was screwed, you know? I started to panic at one point, and kicked at the door and screamed, thinking that maybe he’d just stumbled home super drunk and passed out and forgot about me – but he never came. I didn’t see him again for almost four years.”
“So where was he?” Jack said, mentally adding, ‘the fucking dickhead bastard?’
“Jail. He’d gotten himself all liquored-up and lost bad at poker. He then lost his mind. Flipped the table, beat up the other guys, smashed most of the alcohol bottles behind the bar. It was a semi-respectable place and the nice old guy who ran it actually called the cops. My Dad got arrested for drunk and disorderly, destruction of property, assault and battery, and got dragged away to jail. He was drunk and passed out for a day, then he was all concerned about his injuries, then he got into fights with the other prisoners, and he never once thought about me. It was summer and a long holiday weekend, so no court hearing for four days – and I wasn’t in school, so nobody was around to notice that I’d gone missing.”
“So who came for you, in the end?”
“Weirdly enough, two guys looking for my Dad because he owed them money. They broke down the front door of the house and even though I was in bad shape by then, I heard them. Managed to scratch at the closet door a bit, and they opened it up and found me there. The one guy grabbed some water from the fridge and squeezed drops from a facecloth on to my tongue, and the other guy ran outside to the other houses on our street until he found one with a phone. We didn’t have one in our house, see.”
“And
why didn’t you see your Dad for four years?”
“Because even though he was out on parole two years after his arrest for all the stuff that he did that night plus the child abandonment and endangerment charges, I was still taken away from him and put in foster care. And I flat-out refused to see him for visitation.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.” Ace set his jaw. “Wouldn’t do it.”
“You were how old then?”
“Eight when all this shit went down and he was taken away. Ten when he was released and started making noise about seeing me.”
“Shit, Ace,” Jack said softly. “So when did you see him again?”
“It was by accident. I was twelve and skipping school with some buddies, hanging out in a parking lot and smoking cigarettes. He rolled on out of the store with a case of beer.”
“You talked?”
“Nope. He couldn’t even walk straight, let alone focus on a long-haired, wild-eyed, grungy kid. He walked right past me, never gave me a sideways look. Didn’t notice the son that he’d fucking left to die in a closet four years earlier.”
“And you did something.” It wasn’t a question. “You did something to him.”
“Yeah.” Ace shifted again. “I sure as hell did.”
“Which was?”
“C’mon, Jack.” Ace’s tone was almost scornful. “You’re going to act like you don’t have a clue? Seriously?”
“You beat the shit out of him. How bad?”
“Bad enough that I felt better than I had in years.”
Jack nodded. “Did he know it was you?”
“I told him when I had his face planted under my boot. He bawled and apologized, but I didn’t care. He was dead to me by then anyway, and I made that crystal clear. I left him there bloody and barely-conscious, and that was it. Never saw the fucker again, never checked in on him. I have no idea if he’s even alive, and I don’t give a good goddamn either way.”
Extreme Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 7) Page 10
