Path of Destruction

by Cara Dee

  "You can quit quizzing her now," Lincoln said with his mouth full. "She's an adult."

  If Mr. Hayes wanted to argue that fact, he didn’t let on. "I'm allowed to have concerns. I wasn’t born yesterday, and you're no saint."

  "Ouch." Lincoln pretended to be wounded. "Is this how to treat your only child? What's next, you gonna forget my birthday?"

  Thank you, thank you. I could've kissed his feet for turning the spotlight his way.

  "You're a real comedian," Mr. Hayes deadpanned.

  "When is your birthday?" I wondered.

  "July thirtieth," he replied and took a swig of his beer. "I think we're in Philly then."

  That was soon. I'd be here for that, hopefully. After Nashville, it was Atlanta and then straight down to Florida where they had three or four shows. Heading north along the East Coast was next, after which they'd zigzag a bit based on how they'd booked the arenas. Morgan had told me they'd do a quick weekend in LA in August too, for some TV thing, before flying back to…Chicago or Detroit, I wasn’t sure. It was kind of confusing, but I'd be here until my luck ran out.

  I took the back seat for a while when our food arrived. With the developing feelings I had for Lincoln, it was interesting—and mostly funny—to watch him interact with his dad. Part of me was envious, too. Even though they were only two people, they were a family.

  I'd never know what that really felt like.

  * * *

  2008

  I knocked lightly on Dr. Anderson's door.

  "Come in."

  Opening the door, I poked my head in. "I'm done for the day, sir. Want me to lock up?"

  He merely nodded and went back to whatever he was doing on his computer.

  "Oh, one thing, Adeline."

  "Yes?" I turned to him.

  He removed his glasses and peered at me with casual interest. "How's Abel adjusting to the new meds? I forgot to ask you after his session the other day, and he's not very generous with words."

  I smiled slightly, knowing how true that was. Abel had probably just said, "Good."

  "He struggles with his anxiety," I answered, "but the highs and lows have evened out significantly. We're so thankful for that."

  "Good. Good. I'm glad to hear it." He nodded and made a note about something. "His ninety days aren't up yet, so we'll wait a couple more weeks. Then we can see about adjusting the dosage."

  "Okay, great." We said goodbye, and I went outside to lock up the main entrance and wait for my ride.

  Madigan was living with us, so he'd started picking up Abel after school. I checked my watch, hoping he'd be here soon. When I got home, I'd start dinner and help Abel with his homework, and then I started my shift at the hotel at eight.

  A familiar honk made me look up, and I saw Madigan's truck. Freezing my ass off, I hurried over and hopped in.

  "Hi. Where's Abel?"

  "Hey, gorgeous. At home with Jesse." He smiled and placed his hand at the back of my headrest as he backed out of the lot. "How was work?"

  "The usual." I shrugged and put on my seat belt. "Any luck in the job search?"

  Spoiled brat. Okay, that was harsh of me. God knew Madigan worked incredibly hard; I just envied the options he had. He moved a lot, so we had a strange friendship. Sometimes we found ourselves living together, and then he'd open his next chapter in life and I wouldn’t see him for a year.

  "Maybe." He scratched his jaw thoughtfully, letting a car pass before he hit the main road. "You don't live in the most prosperous city, you know."

  No shit. Detroit was a far cry from the glitz and glamour he could find in LA and New York. They had all the high-end tattoo shops with celebrity clients, and Madigan was known in his business. Kinda came with the territory, coming from a family that was huge in the entertainment industry. As if having a rock-star drummer—Mikey—for his older brother wasn’t enough, their parents were producers.

  "I'm not sure why you're still here," I said honestly. I'd expected him to crash on my couch a few weeks.

  "Because I wanna be," he replied bluntly. "Do you want me gone?"

  "Don’t be an idiot."

  He snickered. "Then let me stick around and take care of my family."

  "Madigan…" I sighed, torn. "You know we love you." This wasn’t the first time we'd argued about his parents and brother.

  "And so do they," he said, "but not as much as they love the industry. I'm fed up, all right? I want some goddamn normalcy."

  I hesitated, wondering if something new had happened. "Is Mikey okay?"

  He smiled, though it was dark and resentful. "He's back in rehab."

  "I'm sorry." There wasn’t much more than that I could say. Both Mikey and Tony were in and out of rehab often enough. Sam was the only one who'd made it out of Destruction unscathed. He did film scores these days, I'd heard. I couldn’t say I knew any of them. Whatever I knew, I heard from Madigan.

  *

  "Oh, for crying out loud." I left the stove and ripped the check from the fridge. It seemed Jesse couldn’t stop scowling at it. "We're not cashing it." I tore it to shreds and threw away the pieces. "There. Find something else to glare at."

  "I don’t fucking get you!" He threw up his hands. "We need the money."

  "The hell you do." Madigan entered the kitchen and draped an arm around Jesse's shoulders. "I told you, kid. You've got me now. If your mother had picked up the phone earlier and told me shit was this bad, I would've been here before my ex turned out to be a douchebag."

  I gnashed my teeth together and returned to stirring the sauce. Hated, hated, hated depending on others, but it was easier to lean on Madigan. He was more like a brother. We knew each other so well, and he didn’t make me feel like a charity case. That said, the reaching out part was too hard.

  "Do you willingly attract douchebags?" Jesse asked, furrowing his brow. "Every time we see you, it's because some boy toy broke your heart."

  "Boy toy?" Madigan frowned. "Are you implying I'm dating younger guys?"

  "Duh." Jesse started setting the table, and I checked the chicken in the oven. "Once they're legal, you run after them." He snickered. I saw through him. He enjoyed riling up Madigan sometimes, and it was mutual.

  I tried to keep out of it. Jesse needed someone who could act like his older brother or fun uncle.

  "Actually," Madigan drawled, "your old man—"

  "Hey!" I spun around, wide-eyed and horrified. "Boundaries."

  The last thing Jesse—and Abel, for that matter, though he wasn’t interested—needed to know was just how close we'd all been at one point or another. There was a reason I hadn't told the boys much. Morgan had worked for the band, I'd been friends with the band, Madigan was part of the crew and the personal roadie of his brother—that’s it. PG-13. I wanted to keep it that way.

  "—taught me it wasn’t about age," Madigan finished wisely.

  Jesse flicked his gaze between us, suspicious.

  "Jesse, can you go get your brother? Dinner's ready," I said.

  He cast us another suspicious look before leaving the kitchen, and then Madigan walked over to me with a carefree smile and drew me in for a hug.

  "You're such a mother," he whispered and kissed my cheek. "I wasn’t actually gonna tell him I used to hook up with their dad, you know."

  I opened my mouth, then closed it and narrowed my eyes. "Weren't you?"

  "Okay, but I wasn’t gonna be crude."

  I rolled my eyes.

  I was curious, too. "Was it ever serious between you two?"

  "Nah, I wouldn’t say that." He leaned against the counter while I brought out the chicken. He smiled softly, a bit wistful. "I guess we were fuck buddies, but…more. We grew closer as friends, I'd say."

  I set the chicken on the stove and then squeezed his arm gently. "We miss him, too."

  "Yeah," he sighed.

  We finished setting out dinner in comfortable silence, both of us probably thinking of Morgan. If it weren't for him, I'd never would've known what it wa
s like to have a real family. He taught me in a very short time what that kind of love was like.

  *

  "What're you whispering about?" I asked, amused.

  Jesse and Abel looked up from their plates, matching expressions of innocence plastered on their faces.

  Madigan stabbed a piece of chicken and waved his fork at the boys. "Mikey and I would look like that when we wanted something. Just sayin'."

  Uh-oh. I hoped it was something I could afford.

  "Well?" I cocked my head.

  "Tell her," Jesse encouraged.

  Abel released a breath and fidgeted with his glass of milk. "You know Chris?"

  "Of course." I nodded. He was a boy Abel's age. He had sessions with Dr. Anderson too, and the boys sometimes chatted if their appointments were close.

  "Yeah, so he's gonna start playing hockey," Abel mumbled. "His dad says it's good to have a sport so maybe we're less angry?"

  A physical outlet. Made sense. Exercise, I already knew, was important.

  An expensive physical outlet—

  "Done," Madigan said. "If it's okay with your mom, we'll sign you up."

  I let out a noise, a dozen thoughts bursting inside my head at the same time. One being, adults discussed these things before declaring anything as done. Two, it was a lot of money, and if Abel loved it, it wouldn’t just be for a few weeks. Three—The doorbell rang.

  "Just a minute," I managed to choke out, and I left the kitchen, Abel's hopeful look included. Damn that Madigan. I owed him so much already, though what scared me the most was that he could leave.

  Reaching the hallway, I opened the door, chain lock in place, only to reel back a bit when I saw it was Mr. Hayes.

  Shit.

  Chapter 13

  Lincoln Hayes

  2008

  After an increase in reports of Hep C, the COs took drastic measures to make sure we were good boys after lights went out. I counted to forty…six. Forty-six, and then a CO pointed a flashlight into our cell, checking we weren't fucking each other in the ass, shooting up drugs, tattooing one another, or…hell, making blood bonds to be best thugs for life.

  Drastic measures.

  "You've been quiet today," Kid murmured. "Did the visit with your dad go okay?"

  "It went fine." Eight months… It was unbelievable to think I might walk out the gate in less than a year. I should start reading the news. Fuck. Should I? That seemed presumptuous. Kid read the paper every day. "Anything interesting going on in the world today?"

  "What?" he asked flatly. It made me chuckle. It was probably the first time I'd ever asked about the news.

  "Answer, will ya?" I traced my thumb along the blurry writings on the wall. In a contraband search recently, I was told to remove it ASAP—unless I wanted a ticket for "abuse of privileges." If it was the wall or my pen that was the privilege, I didn’t know. "I kinda stopped reading the paper after the towers went down."

  Some shit always reached me. Pop talked about politics and entertainment, the latter evidently being "my industry." I didn’t give a flying fuck about some writers' strike going on in Hollywood. Nor did I care about the next election. Didn’t concern me.

  I heard of Katrina, the wars in the Middle East, the mortgage crisis and recession…

  New inmates upgraded vocabularies of slang and whatever.

  "I wouldn’t know," Kid said. "Guess I'll find out when today's paper gets here next week."

  "You think you're funny."

  He laughed quietly. "Kind of." There was a pause, and I felt him poke my mattress. "Why the sudden interest in current events?"

  I frowned and stared up at the ceiling. "There's a chance I'm getting out this year."

  It'd been a while since I counted the cracks up there. Had I ever counted them when the lights were on? Maybe I'd missed some.

  "I know," he answered quietly. "I can do fifty push-ups without dying now."

  I had a feeling that was where his mind went. What this meant for him. My not being here to protect him… Shit, I didn’t wanna entertain those thoughts.

  With a grunt, I heaved myself up and got down on the floor. My feet hit the concrete floor, and I told him to scoot in.

  "Any progress with your folks?" I gathered him close and sighed contentedly. He'd learned I wasn’t comfortable with his hands touching me much, so he just rested them on my chest. No strokes, no soothing circles.

  He shook his head minutely. "I think they're done with me."

  "That sucks." I threaded my fingers into his hair and pressed my lips to his forehead. The warmth, I dug that. "I guess you're stuck with me then, huh?"

  "Am I, though?"

  I nodded. "Yeah." Whether I was released by the end of this year or later, I'd visit and write. Or maybe he could call. I didn’t need his punk-ass making digs at my spelling. That kinda made me grin. "If you're good, I'll even enable your Pepsi addiction."

  He snickered. "I'll need to find someone who can blow me. Pay it forward, you know?"

  Jesus. I chuckled and placed a hand under my head. "Just stay outta trouble."

  "I'll do my best…" He was scheming. Call it gut instinct. His fingers twitched on my chest, and there was only one reason he'd shift his lower body away from me.

  Kid was horny.

  "Something you wanna tell me?" I lifted my head and cocked a brow, fully aware of his hand trailing south. Did he think he was being subtle about it?

  He swallowed, his breath coming out shallow. He seemed tense and nervous, probably 'cause this was new, his taking the initiative. I didn’t know whether to laugh or smack him.

  "You don't want…?" He played with the waistband of my boxer shorts. "It's been almost a month."

  "I'm fine." I returned his hand to my chest and hugged him a bit closer. "I don’t have to worry about you getting too attached, right?"

  He shook with a silent chuckle. "Um, no. You're hot as fuck, but you're kinda old, Lincoln. No offense."

  "Offense definitely taken," I bitched. "The fuck you saying? I'm not that old."

  "If you say so," he snickered. "Hey, you know what could be fun?"

  "If you shut up?"

  "No, if I quizzed you on things you might've missed."

  How would that be fun? Sounded depressing as fuck to me. I already knew I'd missed a lot.

  "I changed my mind," I grunted. "Make yourself useful and suck me off."

  *

  "Keep goin'!" I glared at Kid and stole one of his Twizzlers. "I didn’t hear you count."

  "Jesus." He lay down flat on the ground again and restarted his rep of sit-ups. "Can you quit taking my candy?"

  No. Fuck, no. I was in desperate need of a smoke, and I didn’t have any. Until the CO could sneak some in for me, I'd have to resort to shitty candy.

  "I resent your first question," I told him, holding up the piece of paper he'd scribbled on. "I've been locked up for ten years, not twenty. I know what LOL means." Not that I knew why it mattered. I had no plans on using the abbreviation.

  He grinned, out of breath. "I wanted to cover as much as possible."

  I could tell. He'd filled the page with shit, and it was the third day we'd been at it like this. He worked out; I suffered through his questions about current events. Such as the meaning of LOL and whoever the fuck Britney Spears was.

  Nunez joined us at the picnic table after his shift in maintenance, and he picked up the list with a smirk.

  "I could'a made you a better list, ese," he said. "These are good, but I got ten years on Kid. You don’t need to know some of this."

  I snatched back the page.

  "It's important, though," Nunez implored. "My brother was released after twenty years, yeah? He had a panic attack just 'cause regular clothes felt different."

  I looked down at my clothes, my forehead creasing. I tried to imagine putting on a pair of jeans again, and I came up blank.

  "Ten years is a long bid, Hayes," Nunez said. "You're gonna wanna take shit slow."

  Yeah
. Just thinking about this made me uncomfortable.

  "Do you know when I'll hear from the Board?" I asked. "Pop told me it was eight months before."

  "I thought it was like five or six weeks," Kid panted, red-faced from his workout.

  Nunez jerked his chin at Kid. "Sounds more accurate with weeks, but I don’t know."

  This was bull. Shifting in my seat, I cleared my throat and refocused on the questions. I reread one twice. Something about cell phones. "What the fuck is a smartphone?" Pop had explained Wi-Fi to me, which was basically internet without the dial-up. Kid was mentioning 3G, Wi-Fi, and—wait, you could take pictures with your phone?

  I thought back on the cell phone I used to have and wondered idly if that was a dumb phone.

  *

  A few days later, I made my weekly call to Pop, and I reminded him to transfer money to Mack's account. Pop still wanted to know why, but I dodged it pretty easily.

  "Speaking of money," he said, changing the topic, "Adeline claims she doesn’t need help anymore."

  I took a deep breath and waited for that familiar pressure in my chest to dissipate. "All right," I replied calmly. "I guess she got her shit together."

  "Maybe." He didn’t sound sure. "I worry."

  "Why? You barely know her." It was starting to seriously bug me. He had no reason to get attached to a random lay I had ten years ago.

  Right, 'cause that’s all she was.

  "You weren't around her for the trial," he pointed out.

  No, I was a bit busy throwing my life away. Because of her.

  "Whatever. Leave her family alone if they don’t need you, Pop."

  "It's a pretty cool family," he noted. "I got to meet them this time, and I guess I made some assumptions earlier. I don't think she's married, and the kids can't be hers. Well, not the eldest, anyway. The photo I saw must've been old."

  I narrowed my eyes. "Why can't you drop this fucking topic?" Goddammit, I'd been doing well. Bombarded with questions of whether or not she was married and kids who were or weren't hers caused my head to spin again.

  Pop got irritated. "Because the reality is that you're getting out soon, and I don’t want you to be alone, Lincoln. I'd sleep better knowing you're among friends."