1
TEN YEARS LATER
Lennon
“King Sullivan is back.”
I freeze, my hand clutching my forkful of homemade macaroni ’n’ cheese like it’s a steadily unraveling rope dangling over a sheer cliff.
And no, I’m not being dramatic.
My grip is that desperate. That frantically hopeful.
Because with those four casually tossed words from my father, I’ve gone from standing on steady, firm ground to hanging on for dear life with nothing but pebbles and sky beneath my bicycling feet.
So no. When your father mentions the return of the man who broke your heart into so many pieces the fine grains could fill an hourglass, it’s entirely fair to be a little…emotional.
“Lennon?”
I deliberately loosen my death hold from around the fork and lower it to my plate. Reaching for the glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, I pick it up and deliberately take a long sip. Only then, do I meet Dad’s steady, dark brown gaze.
“Yes?” Damn. Is that my voice? Scratchy, a little tremulous?
No.No.
It’s been ten long years. King Sullivan should not—will not—elicit this reaction from me. He’s taken more than enough from me. I won’t allow him to have my composure, my peace, my calm. He will not have it.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I did,” I say, taking another sip of the wine. And refuse to consider that it might be liquid courage. “You said King Sullivan” the name is bitter and grimy on my tongue like cigarette ash, “is back in town.”
Forcing myself to adopt a nonchalance that is a figment of my imagination, I grasp my fork again and lift the abandoned macaroni ’n’ cheese to my mouth. Though it’s my mother’s recipe and my favorite thing in the world to eat, it now sits like a lump of coal on my tongue. Still, I force myself to chew and swallow, because Dad’s gaze hasn’t wavered. Like he’s searching my face for a hidden truth as if I’m a defendant in his courtroom.
“That’s right. Just drove right through downtown as bold as a peacock. He and his entourage. As if no one here owns a television or has the internet.” He snorts, cutting into his roast with a shake of his head. The corner of his mouth curls, and not even pushing food between his lips and chewing can dislodge the distaste and disapproval marring his expression. “Drugs. Alcohol. So-called rehab can’t fix what’s in his blood, his genes. Forget the apple not falling far from the tree. That one hasn’t even dropped from the branch. Like father, like son. And no amount of money or fame is going to make me or a lot of other people in this town forget exactly who he is.”
My stomach folds in on itself, twisting in pain—in protest. Yes, King took advantage of naïve eighteen-year-old me. Hurt me in ways that I claim I’m fully over and healed from. Yet, with just his song on the radio or a flash of his image on the television or computer, and that healing felt more like a practical joke.
A joke that’s on me.
It’s not fair that a man with a heart not even the sturdiest ice pick could chip away… A man who has indulged in every sin, corruption and overindulgence… A man who seems to have his autopilot set on self-destruction…doesn’t show that wear and tear on his fallen angel face, his artist’s masterpiece body, that wondrously, tragic and haunting voice. No, in ten years of hard living and harder partying, that beautiful half-boy, half-man grew into a stunning, physically unflawed man.
Seeing an image of him is like self-flagellation to my soul.
Safe to say I hate King Sullivan.
Yet, hearing Dad trash him like King and his father, John, are pieces of shit that should be tossed in a manure pile, causes a different kind of fire to flare in my belly.
Anger.
But not at King.
At Dad. The urge to snap,You don’t know what you’re talking about, rises within me so swift and hard I almost sway beneath its power. To snarl,What was that about casting the first stones? Because we all have vices, don’t we, Dad?
Vices and skeletons. But Terrance Ward tended to conveniently forget that when he had a boulder to throw at someone else’s glass house.
But I swallow the vitriolic words that would damage the relationship we’ve built stone by stone, brick by brick over the last decade. The fact is, I lost Mom to death. King abandoned me. Dad has been the only person who has stuck; he never left me, either involuntarily or voluntarily. Sometimes he can absolutely frustrate me with his overprotectiveness and elitist attitude when it comes to certain people, but I love him. He’s all I have left.
Still…