“There are two Oakleys,” she said, her voice firm and quiet. “Sometimes you get to say those things to the other one. Not this one. This one is off limits.”
He nodded and she lowered her hand. He peeked over his shoulder to make sure the kids were still occupied. He turned back to her, meeting her eyes. “All joking aside, I would never disrespect you or your daughter that way. My mother didn’t give me that courtesy. Our rental house was small. I saw way more than I should’ve ever seen between her and her boyfriends. I wouldn’t do that to someone else’s kid.”
Oakley’s stern expression softened. “Thank you. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
He shrugged, uncomfortable with the sympathy. “What can you do? Some of us don’t win the parent lottery. I survived.”
Barely. If he hadn’t finally bailed at seventeen after his mother hooked up with yet another guy who liked to take out a bad day by pounding on Pike, he’d be dead or in jail. Pike had thought Red might be different. Unlike the other boyfriends, Red had money, a house, and a good job. The guy owned a successful car dealership, and he’d seemed like he’d be the prince to pull Pike’s family out of their hand-to-mouth existence. But the guy had wanted the picture-perfect family. The younger kids and his mother had been able to fit into that mold. Pike with his Mohawk, piercings, and fuck-you attitude hadn’t fit. And in the end, it turned out his mother had a type. Red was just better at hiding that penchant for violence and justifying it when it flared. And though his mother was sometimes in the line of fire, Pike was Red’s favorite target by far.
The last beating he’d taken from Red had ended with Pike pulling a gun on the guy. Pike had gotten caught trying to sneak out with the car for the night, and Red had slammed Pike’s hand in the car door, breaking the delicate bones in one swift crunch. The pain hadn’t even registered at first. All Pike had seen was bright red rage. One of his hands—the only fucking thing about him that was special, the thing that was going to get him out of this hellhole existence—was now crushed. How the fuck was he supposed to drum one-handed?
Without thinking, he’d grabbed the gun from the glove box with his good hand and jumped out of the car. He’d shoved Red against the wall and had held the gun right to his head, his finger twitching to squeeze the trigger. And when Red had smirked, grabbed Pike’s nuts, and told him he didn’t have the balls to do it, Pike had pulled the trigger and braced for the blast. Nothing had happened. The gun hadn’t been loaded. But before Pike could even register how completely crazy he was being, his mother and younger brother had come out, seeing him with the gun.
He’d dropped the thing like it was on fire, but the incident had sealed his fate with his family anyway. If Pike ever had any doubt, he’d learned that night where his mother’s loyalties lay. She’d been hysterical when she’d come into the garage. Pike’s hand had been a mangled, swelling mess. But she hadn’t listened to his side of the story. And instead of carting him to the ER for his hand, she’d listened to Red and had told Pike to get out for good.
Pike had considered going to the police about his hand. But he knew no one would buy that the punk teenager hadn’t been the one who started it. So after a night sitting in the free clinic to get his hand looked at, he’d officially moved in with Foster, cutting his mother and Red out of his life. Unfortunately, he’d lost his siblings in the process, too. Red took out a restraining order and forbade the family from talking to Pike. And Pike’s mom hadn’t protested the edict, too far under Red’s thumb or too enamored with her new suburban life to bother fighting for her first child. Red paid the bills. He won. Pike was cut out. Dead to them all.
Pike hadn’t slept for weeks after he’d left. He’d always tried to act as the buffer between any of his mom’s boyfriends and the younger kids, so he knew it’d only be a matter of time before one of his siblings became Red’s next target. He made anonymous calls to CPS and tried to get the asshole caught, but his mother and Red were too good at putting on a show and faking it for whoever investigated.
By the time his younger siblings were old enough to make up their own minds, they’d only known what they’d seen—a brother who’d abandoned them—and what they’d been told—that Pike was some psycho asshole who almost killed Red. Pike couldn’t deny the charges because they’d been true. The gun hadn’t been loaded. That’s all that separated him from being a murderer.
Reagan ran up to them, breaking Pike out of the old memories and dragging him back to the present. She bounced on the balls of her feet. “I’m ready.”
Her enthusiasm and bright smile hit him in the gut. His brother, Tristan, had been just a little older than Reagan last time he’d seen him. Tris had been his constant shadow back then. And the one he’d worried about the most when he’d left because he was the obvious choice for Red to move onto once Pike had left. Pike had always sworn to Tristan that he’d keep him safe, and he’d bailed. Thinking about that had given him daily nightmares. He’d known Tris was too sensitive and gentle of a kid to survive the stuff Pike had been through. Tristan was a kid who bottled everything up and let it eat at him instead of exploding in anger. But when Pike had tried to sneak over and check on him, Tristan had run from him—betrayal in his eyes. They’d all counted on Pike and he’d let them down.
He’d tried to call Tris one night a few years ago when he was having a particularly rough night on tour. Right before Christmas. Alone. He’d been fucked up with pills eight ways to Sunday, and he’d pulled out the number he’d tracked down months earlier. He’d been closest to Tris since they were the only two boys, and for some reason, he’d felt this need to connect with someone who shared his blood. He’d barely been able to string words together, and when Tris had realized who it was, he’d hung up on him. Pike had tried to call him back a few days later when he was clear-headed, but he hadn’t answered. Message clear: I don’t want to know you.
Then a year later he’d gotten the news that Tristan had been killed in a car accident in Austin. His car had wrapped around a tree, and there’d been speculation that it might’ve been a suicide. Pike had been torn to shreds at the news and had gone to the funeral. But a security guard had met him at the door and told him he couldn’t go in.
He’d never gotten the chance to say he was sorry. The kid he’d helped raise was gone.
Pike rubbed the heel of his hand over his chest where that hurt still burned bright and dragged his gaze away from Reagan, the memories still too hard to think about.
Oakley gave him an odd look, like she’d caught his shift in mood. “You okay?”
“Fine. Just getting heartburn.”
She didn’t look like she bought that one bit, but she cocked her head toward the room. “Rae, why don’t you help Mr. Pike get the room straightened and I’ll walk the rest of the group back to the activity room? We’ll head out after that.”
“’Kay.”
Pike lifted his head, the simple act of Oakley trusting him to be alone with Reagan both surprising him and helping him pull out of that dark cave in his mind. Usually being alone with a kid was not something he’d want, but Oakley’s endorsement buoyed him. “You sure?”
“I’ll meet you out front.”
Oakley rounded up the other kids and guided them out of the room. There wasn’t much to clean up, but there were instruments to put away and chairs to move. The mindless work helped Pike come back into himself, locking that ugly stuff away again.
Reagan seemed perfectly content to do the work in silence, and Pike found it to be a comfortable quiet. She wasn’t like the other young girls who needed to fill all the blank spaces with chatter.
He stacked a few chairs and Reagan grabbed potato chip bags and granola bar wrappers off one of the tables. Then in the quiet, he heard her soft voice as she sang to herself. He pretended not to notice, not wanting to make her feel self-conscious, but the notes were hard to ignore. Her voice was pure and strong even at low volume, like a lonely bird in a still night. He slowed his movements, recognizing the chorus of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful.” A sweet eleven-year-old girl singing about words not bringing her down. His chest tightened.
He stacked another chair and glanced over at her. “You have a pretty voice, Reagan.”
She ducked her head and went over to the trashcan to dump the wrappers. “Thanks.”
“No, seriously, you’ve got something special there. You should use it in the group.” He didn’t add that her voice was heads above the girl they’d chosen to do the solo parts on the first song, but it was the truth.
“I’m not a singer. I just want to play guitar.”