When you were born in a place like The Row, it became a part of who you were. Part of the very fabric of your soul. The scent of weed in the air, stale liquor and bad decisions, clung to you like a second skin. There was no escaping that shit. No outrunning it. But when you were Joe Wilder’s kid, his only flesh and blood, that stain was only amplified. There wasn’t a single person in Darling Row who didn’t know his name. If they didn’t use him for his connections, they feared him because of them. He was a mean sonofabitch who doled out favors and always collected with interest.
“I’ll come with you,” Zane said.
“Nah, man.” I shifted in my seat, feeling like a thousand fucking spiders were crawling under my skin as my trailer came into view. “I’ll be in and out.”
And if my luck was in, Joe would be out.
The car rolled to a stop, and we climbed out. Zane hesitated and I knew he wanted to say something else. But I beat him to it. “I’ll text you later. See what you’re up to.”
“You’d better.” He tsked. “Catch you later.”
I tipped my chin and watched him disappear around the side of my trailer. Joe’s beat up car wasn’t parked out front but that didn’t mean much. Sometimes, if he was too wasted to drive home from The Tap, Lyle, the owner, confiscated his keys and made him walk his sorry ass back here.
Trudging up the steps, I grabbed the door handle and yanked it open. “Jessa?”
“In here, sweetie.”
The smell of freshly baked cookies hit me like a warm blanket. “Hey,” I said, popping my head around the door leading to the open plan living space. Jessa was at the breakfast counter, adding cookies to the cooling rack.
“Where’s Joe?” I frowned when she didn’t look up at me.
“Out. He… uh…”
“Look at me,” I said, clenching my hand into a tight fist as anger rose inside me like a tidal wave hurtling toward shore.
“It’s nothing, Nix. Honestly, it looks worse than it is.”
Closing the distance between us, I gently gripped her chin and forced her to look at me. “Shit, Jessa.” My stomach dropped at the ugly black-and-blue bruise that mottled her eye socket.
“He didn’t mean it.” She batted my hand away, giving the cookies her full attention again.
“Jessa, come on. That’s some bullshit and—”
“I’m not having this conversation, Phoenix. He’s stressed, under a lot of pressure. Sometimes he struggles to control himself.”
She didn’t need to tell me that. I had enough scars littering my body as evidence of Joe Wilder’s regular lack of self-control.
“Fine,” I snapped, barely reining in the anger vibrating inside me. “But I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself.”
She glanced up and gave me a sad smile. “Sometimes it’s harder to walk away than it is to stay, Nix.”
“Yeah, I know.”
And I fucking hated it.
Jessa wasn’t my mom. But she was the closest thing I’d ever had to one. I was supposed to protect her. I had protected her more than once over the years. And it always ended up the same, with us both taking a beating.
We both knew to pick our battles now. When to stand our ground and when to stand down. But when I saw her like this, her fake smile and haunted eyes, I wanted to take the steak knife from the block and gut my father like a fish. It was the least he deserved.
Sometimes, I wondered how much of him I had inside me. How far it would take to push me before I snapped.
Rubbing my temples, I let out a steady breath, forcing some of the rage out of me. “I’m going out.”
“Oh, I thought we could—”
Dejection washed over her, and I felt like an asshole. But I didn’t trust myself enough to stay.
“I can’t be here, not when he… I’m sorry.”