Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
I just had to make it through.
“He told me,” I confirmed.
“The man abused Core’s mother.”
“He told me that too.”
“Did he tell you his father beat her to death?”
Every muscle in my body hardened because no.
He did not tell me that.
She died an ugly death.
That was what he said.
But he didn’t come close to telling me how ugly.
“When his old man surfaced from the place he was in his head to be able to do that to her, saw what he’d done, he got his gun, put it in his mouth and blew the back of his head off.”
I staggered back, hit the arm of my couch, and sat on it.
“Core was out with buds when it happened. He was sixteen. He was the one who found them.”
My brain screamed, No!
And my head turned sharply. I looked away, unable to hold his gaze at the same time deal with the pain that seared through me at his words.
“Core thinks his dad did it out of guilt, blowing his brains out. That’s what he needs to believe. I think, from all the rest Core gave us about that fuckin’ guy, he did it because he didn’t want to get into trouble. He didn’t want to go to jail. He didn’t want to be someplace he couldn’t have booze, which was more important to him than his woman and son. And he didn’t want to be someplace where he couldn’t bully and rape—”
My head shot up and the word escaped my mouth as a horrified gasp because my lungs had suddenly ceased working.
“Rape?”
Beck nodded once. “Yeah, rape. Sometimes, he coerced her to have sex with him in exchange for him not beating her up. Core would have to listen to that shit when he was a kid.”
I had the strong feeling I was going to be sick.
“You ever know anyone in the foster system?” Beck asked.
Oh my God.
It just kept…getting…worse.
“There are really great people who take care of kids,” he told me. “And then there are some who really suck at it. Core got those. In two years between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, he had three of them.”
I tried to stand, I didn’t know why, maybe to run away from all he was saying, but my legs were numb, as were my feet, so I couldn’t move.
“He was searching for something, and he sure as fuck found it, hooking himself up with Bounty.”
Wait.
What?
“Bounty?” I asked.
“Who we were before we became Resurrection. Who we were when we did that to Rosalie.”
Man, Core and I didn’t get into anything deep at all, did we?
I thought we had.
But we had not.
“He was fucked-up. He was searching. Found Bounty, and that was perfect. All we wanted to do was party and cause trouble, fight and piss in corners. Pretend we were outlaws and howl at the moon. Anything that would mask what we were really feeling. Anything that would shroud the path that is long and hard and terrifying, which we should have been walking. Take our anger out at anyone and on everybody. Nothing mattered. No person did either. All of that in the guise of brotherhood. We thought we had honor. We thought we understood the true meaning of family. All we did was get tangled up with a bunch of other fucked-up souls and dig the tunnel away from redemption all the deeper.”
I said nothing.
He didn’t either.
And then he did.
“Then came Rosie,” he whispered, the sheer torment on his face hurting even me.
And I knew.
I knew Beck found a way to live with it.
But Core…
With what Core’s father did…
Core had let it kill him.
I remembered his house when I first walked in.
I thought it was a life incomplete.
It wasn’t.
It was a life being lived without the person in it actually living.
“We were shadowboxing,” he said. “I’ll tell you mine, and I gotta say, in hearing the others, it made me feel even weaker than I knew I already was, because mine was nowhere near as bad. Nowhere near as bad as Core’s. But my mom didn’t give a shit about me. I had an older brother. And she gave him everything. All her love. All her hope. All her devotion. I gave it to him too because he was that good of a guy. Golden. I loved him, fuck, only person on this earth who had that from me. He gave that love back. It meant everything to me. And then he was killed in Afghanistan. We both lost him, and she made clear I knew which one of us should have been under dirt.”
He paused, and I had no idea what to say, though I felt for him, and I wanted to know what his dad did. I wanted to know if he had any love at all, outside his brother.
And I was even more grateful than ever that I had Mom and Liane and then came Andy.