Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 113353 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113353 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
He growled and tried to roll his brother, but he was much smaller and couldn’t get his weight behind him. Instead, he shoved his brother with both palms, knocking him off balance.
As soon as he rolled on top of Randy, he found himself once again on his back in the grass, unable to catch his breath. His brother was sitting on his chest, crushing his lungs and pinning his arms to the ground.
“Knock it off, you little shit. You made my fuckin’ lip bleed.”
“Good!” came out on a half-sob. He couldn’t cry. Not in front of Randy. But he couldn’t wipe the tears away while his asshole brother held him down. “Lemme go!”
“Only if you stop tryin’ to fight me. I didn’t do this to you. That bitch did. You think she gave two shits about you? She didn’t. Her leavin’ just proved it. She was just the twat used to squirt us out. That’s it. Nothin’ more.”
“You’re wrong.” Why was Randy lying like that?
“Yeah, so wrong,” Randy muttered and shook his head. “I’m gettin’ off you. You try fightin’ me again, I’m not gonna hold back. Dad will find you out in the yard when he gets home with your ass kicked. Then he’ll kick it a second time for bein’ a whiny-assed pussy.”
Randy slowly lifted his weight and, when he was on his feet, his brother wiped the back of his hand across this mouth, smearing the blood. He spat into the grass next to Chris’s head. Luckily, Chris twisted it away in time to keep from getting splattered.
“We don’t need that bitch. What the fuck did she ever do for you?”
Chris laid in the grass, taking deep inhales since his brother was no longer crushing him. Anything to keep himself from crying.
With another shake of his head, Randy walked over to Chris’s worn, dirty teddy bear that had tumbled out onto the dead grass, along with the rest of his things, when the bag spilled during the struggle. His brother picked up the stuffed animal, stared at it for a second, then came back to where Chris laid sprawled on the ground. He dropped it onto his chest. “I’ll tell you what the fuck she’s done. Nothin’. So, don’t be such a fuckin’ baby. We’re better off without her.”
Chris laid there, staring up at the late afternoon sky, and a hot tear slid from the corner of his eye. He heard his brother stomp back up the steps, go inside and slam the front door shut.
From inside the house, Chris heard a muffled shout of, “Fuck her!”
He grabbed his teddy bear, hugged it against his chest and curled into a ball around it. “She’ll be back,” he whispered, unable to stop the tears anymore. No longer caring who saw him cry.
Shortly after, the tears stopped.
And much later, he forgot what she looked like.
Because that night, when his father got home, he burned every damn photo of her in that house. Anything she left behind was burned, too. Then he told them never to mention her name again.
That rule wasn’t difficult to follow because Chris never knew what her name was.
He’d only ever called her Mom.
Chapter One
Fucking Mondays.
Monday mornings were always the hardest.
Cage’s hand slipped down his bare chest and under the tangled sheet to find another reason mornings were hard.
With one hand wrapped around his morning wood, he yawned. He needed to take a piss but that wouldn’t happen any time soon. At least not until his current dilemma was resolved.
The toilet flushing in the small bathroom attached to his room in the club’s bunkhouse had his eyes popping open and his heart skipping a beat.
What the fuck?
Who the fuck was in his bathroom?
He jackknifed up to a seated position and glanced around the room, trying to remember everything that happened last night at, or after, the club’s pig roast.
They’d gone on a Sunday club run. Check.
They had a pig roast afterward since they had a lot of leftovers from the prior weekend’s charity poker run. They’d raised a shit ton of scratch for the Kids Can Do Foundation. So, he stuffed his gut full of good grub. Check.
He’d played a couple rounds of pool with Ozzy and scored a Benjamin. Check.
Then he lost it to Dodge at darts. Unfortunate check.
Billie had been trying to drag him back into his room all night. She didn’t succeed. Check.
Wait.
Or did she? Uncheck.
Fuck.
He scanned the floor for a female’s clothing. No black combat boots or goth shit. No heavy makeup staining his pillow. Thank fuck. Check.
He usually ended up hurting after Billie got her hands on him. She was into some crazy shit. Currently, he wasn’t sore, bleeding or bruised. Check. Check. Check.
He quickly continued to go through his night as he heard the water run in the sink.
Whiskey? Check.
Lots of whiskey? Check.