“Me?” Hurt winged through him. “You should be kicking him out of the house. You should have kicked him out a long time ago.” He gestured to the blood dripping from her nose and her rapidly swelling jaw. “Look what he’s done to you!”
“Please,” she begged, finally meeting his eyes. Hers glistened with pain and sadness that punched him in the gut with as much force as his father had. “You’re only making this worse.”
“Whatever,” he muttered, giving up on this freak show. Face and ribs throbbing, he stormed into the house, packed a gym bag, and hugged his sisters. But he didn’t say good-bye. He’d honestly planned to head to the Murphys’, but once he got behind the wheel, he didn’t stop. He drove right past the Murphy house and out of town.
He kept driving, hoping to outrun his problems.
It hadn’t worked. At least, not until Ian straightened him out.
Joanne’s happy hum drifting on the afternoon breeze was so different from those cries of the past, so he took a deep, calming breath and found his mother taking down the last shirt hanging on the clothesline. “Hey, Mom.”
She grinned. “Hey. I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to ask if you’ll volunteer for some of the heavy lifting at the Founders’ Day event. I told Marylee I’d ask.”
Surprise winged through him. “Did she put you up to it?”
“She suggested it.”
Of course she had. She’d probably hoped he’d be so busy behind the scenes that he wouldn’t have time to hang around with her precious granddaughter. He almost wished he could commit because he’d love to spend time with Brittany with the added bonus of making Marylee squirm.
“Sorry, Mom. I might be headed back to Montana by then.” He frowned. When had “will” return to Montana become “might” return?
“Oh.” She looked so disappointed that Marcus went over and wrapped her in a hug.
“You knew I planned to go back, right?”
She nodded against his chest. “I just...I hoped you’d change your mind. I’ve missed you so much.”
Then maybe you should have kicked Dad out of the house instead of me. Instantly, his skin prickled with shame. He hadn’t realized how angry he still was about what had happened the day he left, but apparently, the fire still smoldered.
Maybe it was time to finally douse the embers that had been burning a hole in his gut since he got here.
“I’m sorry about the way I left,” he said, his voice husky with emotion. “I was angry and hurt, but that doesn’t excuse what I did.”
In his arms, his mom began to tremble. “No, honey, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told you to go. I definitely didn’t mean for you to leave town.”
The words he wanted to hear, “I should have told Hector to go instead,” lingered, unspoken, in the air. She still wasn’t ready to go there, was she? But he sensed that she was edging closer to pulling herself out of the cycle of abuse and denial, and that, at least, was something.
“Forget it,” he said as he released her and stepped back. “I’m here now.” He picked up the loaded laundry basket. “And I promise I won’t be gone that long again.”
A ghost of a smile curved her lips, and he wondered if she believed him. He wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. She’d been abandoned by all of the men in her life, from her father, to her husband, to her son.
You can’t leave her again. She needs you.
Ian needed him, too.
Shit. He felt as if he was being torn in half. What the hell was he supposed to do? All he knew for sure was that standing in the backyard with a load of laundry wasn’t going to provide any answers.
Joanne laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Come inside. We can have some cookies and milk.”
Cookies. She’d always made cookies for him and his sisters after a bad incident with Hector, as if chocolate chips would make them all forget what they’d seen and heard. He hadn’t touched a cookie since the day he left.
“Sure, Mom,” he said softly. “Let’s go have some cookies.”
Chapter Eight
For the second time since he’d been back in Storm, Marcus pulled into the parking lot at Murphy’s Pub. It was mid-afternoon, so the after-church sneak-drinkers were gone and the happy hour crowd hadn’t arrived yet. There were only a couple of cars in the dozen or so spots, one belonging to Logan, and the other, he hoped, was Dillon’s personal ride. A deputy at the sheriff station said Dillon had the day off and was probably at Murphy’s.
He stepped inside, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the dim light for a second, and sure enough, Dillon was sitting at the bar, chatting with Logan as he stood on the other side next to the beer taps in his green Murphy’s Pub T-shirt.
“Hey, Marcus,” Logan called out as he reached for a pint glass. “Beer?”
“Hit me.” He pulled up a stool next to Dillon. “I spent the last few hours drinking tea and lemonade on the Pragers’ roof, so my BAC is a little low. Can’t hurt to remedy that.”
“It was cool of you to offer to fix their leak.” Logan grinned as he passed him the pint of lager. “Look at you being all responsible and shit.”
“I have my moments.” He glanced down at the blister on his index finger, his painful badge of honor. “I also need to fix Mom’s squeaky screen door, the ever-running toilet, and the garbage disposal. Looks like I’m playing handyman for a while.”
Logan cocked his thumb toward the kitchen behind him. “While you’re at it, how about taking a look at the dishwasher and the dry rot around the back door?”
“Sure,” Marcus said. “Did I mention I charge a hundred bucks an hour?”
Logan let out a short laugh. “Asshole.”
“So what brings you here?” Dillon reached for the bowl of pretzels next to him. “Because if you’re here to mess with my brother, I can get behind that.”
“Actually, I’m here to see you.”
Dillon arched an eyebrow. “What’s up?”
“It’s about Hector.”
Instantly, Dillon went taut. It was subtle, but Marcus was nearly as good at reading people as he was cattle, thanks to a childhood spent watching his dad for signs of imminent blowup.
Maybe what Mal said about Dillon’s interest in their mother was spot on.
“There’s something that doesn’t make sense about him leaving,” Marcus said. “He’s a piece of shit, but if he wanted out of the marriage, he wouldn’t have left. He’d have kicked my mom out and kept the house. There’s no way he’d let her have anything. The son of a bitch would have reveled in seeing her penniless and begging for help from friends and family.”
Logan looked up from wiping the scarred bar top. “Do you think he could have gotten mixed up in something bad?”
“You mean like gambling debts or drugs or guns or something?” Marcus shrugged. “It’s definitely crossed my mind a time or two. He gambled a little when I was a teen. Lost a shit-ton of money on a football game once. We ate freaking spaghetti noodles with ketchup for a week because of that.” His mom had been pissed, but when she spoke up, Hector had only blamed it on her. She should have “budgeted the grocery money better.” How she was supposed to do that when Hector spent it on pigskin, Marcus wasn’t sure. He turned back to Dillon. “I know Mom hasn’t filed a missing persons report, but maybe we should do that.”
Dillon blinked. “You want him to be found?”
“I want him in jail. He wouldn’t have taken off like that unless he was in trouble. I’m afraid that once the trouble is over, he’ll be back. Or whatever trouble he got himself into will haunt my family. I don’t want my mother or sisters hurt because he owes some scumbag money.”
“I really don’t think you need to worry about that,” Dillon said, taking a serious interest in the pretzels. “If your mom didn’t file a missing persons report, she doesn’t want him found. We should respect her wishes.”
“My mom doesn’t always make the best decisions when it comes to my dad, and I think you know that.”
&n
bsp; Still focused on the bowl of snacks, Dillon inclined his head a in a slow nod. “I do. But in this case, I think she’s right.”
“This isn’t her decision.”
Dillon cursed on a harsh breath. “Dammit, Marcus—”
“What are you not telling me, D?” Marcus asked, his spidey senses tingling so violently that his skin felt tight.
Silence stretched as Dillon peered into his pint of stout and Logan stood frozen in the growing tension, his gaze flicking between Dillon and Marcus.
“You looking for answers in that Guinness?” Marcus asked, his patience starting to fray. “Because for real, I’ve never found anything but lies at the bottom of a glass of alcohol.” It had taken time and Ian to make him see that particular truth, and once he’d figured that out, he’d never gotten drunk again.
“Shit,” Dillon breathed. “It’s my fault, okay? Your father is gone because of me.”
Whoa. Marcus hadn’t seen that coming, and it took him a moment to find his voice. “What do you mean, because of you?”
Dillon uttered another curse. “I caught him while he was alone and convinced him to leave town.”
“Convinced?” He couldn’t see Hector being chased off unless it was under the threat of jail or at the wrong end of a gun. Like, maybe, a sheriff’s revolver. “Convinced...how?”
Dillon swung around to him, an unrepentant glimmer in his eyes. “Does it matter? I caught him raising a hand to your mom, Marcus. Now he’s gone, and he isn’t going to hurt her again.”
Marcus’s mouth went dry and his head spun like he’d been sucker-punched. The too-familiar black edge of rage began to creep up on him, making his hand tremble around his beer. “Son. Of. A. Bitch.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dillon slammed his glass on the bar top, sloshing beer on his hand. “I might be a son of a bitch, but she had no one else to protect her. I did what I did for her.”
“Hector,” he croaked. “I was talking about Hector.” And Marcus was a piece of shit. Dillon had done what Marcus should have. Ashamed and utterly disgusted with himself, he awkwardly shoved to his feet. “Sorry...I...I need some fresh air.”
He bolted out the side exit as if the pub was on fire, and the moment he was clear of the door, he sagged against the building and inhaled a huge gulp of heated summer air. Then another. And another. But he knew no matter how many breaths he took, he’d never stop drowning in guilt.
He heard the soft squeak of the door opening, and a moment later, Logan stepped next to him, casting a long shadow on the sun-scorched grass. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said roughly. “I’m fine.”
Logan folded his arms over his chest, obscuring the Murphy’s Pub logo on the T-shirt’s pocket. “Dillon shouldn’t have done that.”
Marcus shook his head. “No, the problem is that I should have done it. I wasn’t here for my family, Logan.”
“You did what you had to do.”
That lie wasn’t going to fly anymore, and Marcus rounded on his friend. “I took off and left my mom and my sisters to deal with an abusive bastard. I should have done something.”
“Man, you gotta stop blaming yourself. You were a kid. If you’d stayed, it would have ended with one of you in jail. Or dead.”
Logan was right, and sure, Marcus had apologized to his mom, but he still wasn’t ready to let himself off the hook so easily. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Every bruise, every verbal battering his mom endured since the day he left could be laid at his feet. Well, his and that worthless excuse for a man she’d married.
“Look,” Logan said, being the voice of reason, as usual. “You made the best choice you could at the time. Now you’re back, and you can start over again.” His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and his voice took on a tortured warble. “We can both start over again.”
Ah, damn. Marcus had been so wrapped up in his own problems that it didn’t occur to him that his friend, who had been through hell and back, might be in pain and dealing with his own shit.
“Logan? You doing okay? You know you can talk to me, right?”
“Nah, I’m good. Having Ginny there has been a godsend.”
Ginny. Marcus didn’t think he could ever hear her name again without thinking about Brittany. He hadn’t seen her since yesterday when she left with her grandmother, who had made it very clear what she thought of him being back in town. It was fun, wasn’t it, the way she’d perfected the art of subtle insults? She’d probably thought he was too stupid to even realize he’d been belittled.
Brittany had clearly been mortified, and he’d wanted nothing more than to whisk her away from her haughty bitch of a grandmother and drive until they got to Ian’s ranch in Montana. But as much as he liked that idea, he didn’t need to add kidnapping to his rap sheet.
“I’m glad Ginny has been there for you,” he said, but even to his own ears, he didn’t sound convincing. Oh, he liked Ginny and admired the hell out of her strength. But he loved Logan like a brother, and he didn’t want him to get hurt.
He wasn’t surprised when Logan locked in on Marcus’s concern and stepped closer. “But?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Dammit, Marcus, you’ve never been one to keep your opinions to yourself, so spill.”
No, Marcus had grown up without a filter on his mouth, but Ian had taught him the value of tact. Of knowing when to speak up and when to shut up. Which was why he hadn’t let loose on Marylee when she’d offered him a job as her fucking gardener or pool boy merely to put him in his place. The problem, he was finding, was that sometimes the line between speaking up and shutting up was blurred when dealing with loved ones.
“I just think maybe things between you two are moving a little fast,” he said, running with speak up.
There was an almost imperceptible shift in Logan’s bearing, something Marcus didn’t see as much as felt in the form of a warning tingle on his skin, and for the first time, Marcus saw the soldier Logan had become. “We haven’t slept together, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Ah, no. I’m talking about emotionally.” He scrubbed his hand over his face, unsure how to say this. Brutal honesty or beat around the bush? He mentally flipped a coin, but beating around the bush wasn’t his style. Not with Logan. So... “She’s moved on kind of fast, don’t you think? She’s pregnant with another man’s baby, and that man’s grave is still so fresh you can probably taste Jacob on her lips when you kiss her.”
Marcus didn’t see the punch coming, but he probably should have. One minute he was standing in the grass, and the next he was lying in it, his jaw throbbing, and Logan was standing over him, his eyes blazing.
Frustration at everything that had happened since Marcus arrived home collided with the anger that had been simmering inside him for years, creating a caustic mix that shot through Marcus’s veins like an injection of nitro into his Impala’s fuel line. He was jacked, totally revved, and he didn’t think or hesitate as he met Logan’s fury with an explosion of his own.
In a quick sweep of his legs, he knocked Logan off his feet, and a heartbeat later, they were rolling around on the ground trading punches and wrestling like they were kids in a schoolyard brawl.
Marcus gave as good as he got, nailing Logan with a blow to the solar plexus in return for a knee to the groin, a jab to the nose in exchange for a punch in the mouth. They were both grunting and cursing as Marcus managed to break away and shove to his knees, only to be plowed over and laid out hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.
Logan took instant advantage and pinned him with his forearm across Marcus’s throat, his knee jammed in his gut. “You done?” he growled between panting breaths.
Adrenaline still burned through Marcus’s body, but he looked up at his friend and nodded. Yeah, he could employ some dirty tricks to get free, but this wasn’t truly about anger or hate or causing damage. This had been a release for both of them, and he didn’t want to escalate the situation.
?
??Sorry,” he croaked. “I’m a jackass.”
“Yeah, you are.”
Marcus grinned, then winced at the sting of his busted lip. “But you love me anyway.”
“Dickhead.” Logan let up and rolled away to sit next him, one long leg stretched out, one cocked so he could rest his arm over his grass-stained knee. He shook his other hand out before blowing on his knuckles. “You still have a hard face.”
“You still have a soft gut.” Total lie. Hitting that belly had been like punching a brick wall.
Logan smirked, but his amusement faded as Marcus dabbed blood from his mouth and the reason they’d been trading blows in the first place settled between them. “Look, everyone else is being cool about me and Ginny. My family is happy for me. So why the hell can’t you get behind this?”
Marcus rolled onto his side and propped himself up on an elbow. “Maybe because I’m the only one coming into this from a distance. Your family has been around Ginny for years, but I haven’t. I don’t know her all that well. It isn’t that I don’t like her,” he said quickly. “God, Logan, you know I do. But it was only a matter of weeks ago that she was planning to tell everyone in town that she and Jacob Salt had found their way to each other after all those years of being best friends. Her best friend who is the father of her baby. You really think she can get over something like that so quickly?”
“You think she’s using me?” There was no anger or defensiveness in the question. Now that Logan had cooled off, he’d leveled out, and again, Marcus could see the military training in him.
“I don’t know,” Marcus said, choosing his words carefully. He wanted to be honest, but he also didn’t want to piss off his friend again. “Maybe she’s one of those women who can’t be without a man. Or maybe she wants a dad for her kid. Or maybe she genuinely wants to be with you. I hope to hell that’s the case, and it probably is. But be careful, okay?”
Logan wiped sweat from his brow and gave Marcus a solemn nod. “I will.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear. I promise I won’t bring it up again. I’ve got your back no matter what.”