“Go to sleep.” This time I’m the one flinging the orders.
I push away from the door and Olivia stops me. “Emily Star?”
“I love you, too.” I glance over my shoulder to catch her placing a hand over her heart.
My throat tightens. Because I can’t handle any of the emotions colliding inside me, I walk back into my room. The clock is ticking down until I return to Florida and I have no one in my corner who will tell me the truth.
I change out of my clothes and into a pair of jeans and new shirt. A brush of my hair and I tie it into a ponytail at the nape of my neck. A slide of my finger across the cell and I pray that the internet isn’t having temper issues. It isn’t and I do something it never crossed my mind to do before: I type my mother’s maiden name, Nader, then Kentucky into a search engine. A ton of listings pop up.
If I want the truth, then what better place to get it than from the source, but to make that happen I need a first name and I need a ride.
I slink into the living room and crouch by Violet at the end of the couch. Her eyes snap open and I bring a finger to my lips. Olivia is more right than she can imagine. According to Violet, her mother once drove my mother out of Snowflake and my goal is to force history, in this case, to repeat itself.
“You once said you could get me out of here undetected.” I raise my phone to her line of sight and she reads my internet search.
Violet peeks over at Cyrus as she slowly sits up. “We’ll have to go through the woods.”
I yank on the ends of my hair as the urge to vomit overwhelms me. Dad said this visit was about conquering fears. It appears he wasn’t wrong.
Oz
I ROLL OVER and inhale the smell of the beach. Emily’s scent did transfer to the pillow. My eyes open and rays of morning light highlight the empty spot beside me. This bed never felt solitary before. Never felt like a deep, aching pit.
I’ve dozed, not slept, and a low murmur of conversation beyond my door causes me to slip out of bed. I snatch my shirt off the floor and rub a hand over my chest in an attempt to wake up.
Mom’s on the couch with her feet tucked underneath her. Dad’s beside her holding her hand. They’ve been a couple since they were sixteen and have loved each other through parents who smacked the hell out of them, an unplanned pregnancy, the years they could never make ends meet and then through the years where they blamed each other for life being tough.
They love each other and somewhere along the way, they learned to love me.
I shrug my shirt over my head and straddle the chair I had dragged into the living room over twenty-four hours ago when I had talked to Emily. I rest my forearms on the back of it and look at Dad. “Are they kicking me out?”
“You hit another brother.” Dad scratches the back of his head and Mom presses her other hand over their joint fingers. “Even if he was a prospect, the club doesn’t tolerate violence toward one another.”
“But Oz was defending Emily,” Mom says.
Dad and I glance at each other. Brothers have hit each other before and rarely are they kicked out the first time. There’s a suspension from events and a fine. But none of those brothers had been intimate with the offspring of the two most important men in the club.
“They’re holding Church tonight,” he says. “And I’m going to fight to keep you in.”
The seat creaks as I readjust. I fucked up, not him, and the thought of Dad placing his rep on the line for me doesn’t sit right. “You said I have to be my own man in the club.”
“That’s the reason why I’m going to fight for you to stay in. If you want the truth I wasn’t sure you were ready for the club. They had to talk me into letting you skip your prospect period.”
My eyes flash to his and Mom’s stroking Dad’s arm in support.
“Standing up to Eli last night,” he says. “That was the first time I’ve seen you be your own man.”
What the hell? “Standing up to Eli last night is what’s going to get me kicked out.”
“No, son, the club is about standing up to things bigger than yourself. If you get kicked out it’s because you didn’t show Eli respect and go to him when you developed feelings for his daughter. But as I said, I like the changes I see in you and I’m going to fight by your side.”
I edge back in the chair—a retreat.
Mom shifts so that her feet are on the ground and she snags my hand. I try to pull back, because the touch catches me off guard, but she maintains a firm grip. “Did you know that your dad and I are here for you?”
“We were talking about club stuff,” I say.
“You were and you weren’t,” Mom presses. “You do this. You’ve done this since you were little and I try to tell myself that it’s understandable, but I need you to know—me and your father...we are here and we are on your side.”
There’s a warning siren in my mind. The threat of a familiar bleeding wound creeping forward from the recess of my memories. “I know that.”
“I don’t think you do, or maybe you know it in your head, but you don’t feel it. You’re a great son, but when we try to be there for you in the major moments, when we try to give you advice or stand by you, it’s as if you don’t trust us.”
“I trust you.” The automatic answer is easy, too easy, so easy that I understand that it might not be the truth, but what they prefer to hear.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to figure out how to be your mother.” Mom’s voice breaks at the end. “I’m sorry that I was young and selfish and that you learned to rely on and love Olivia before you could love and rely on me.”
I push back all the way in the chair until I’m standing. “That’s not how it is.”
“It’s exactly how it is. But you can rely on us now. It’s killing me to see you go through losing Olivia alone. It’s killing me to think that your father and I are sitting right here and you can’t let us in.”
The buzzing of phones. Dad releases Mom’s hand and she inches to the end of the couch as she watches us check the message. Dizziness disorients me for a second then both Dad and I are moving. Digging keys out of our pockets. Grabbing our cuts off the table.
My phone rings and I answer it as I sprint out the door. “What’s going on, Eli?”
The text was my worst nightmare.
Everyone come to the clubhouse. Emily is missing.
Emily
“DO YOU WANT me to answer?” Violet’s in the driver’s side of a nineteen-seventy-something-older-than-me Chevy Impala. Her cell rings and this time it’s Oz’s face that pops onto her screen. The first five times, it was Eli, followed by Olivia and now Oz is on the job.