Page 42 of Restored Dreams

“Lily pad,” he pleads into my skin, but there was nothing to beg for.

He’d already ruined my heart. We were finished. Dream destroyed.

24

The first fight

[Brut]

I race through LA traffic as fast as one can with gridlock on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. My heart feels hollow inside my chest at the way things went with Lily.

You’re special to me.

Fuck that. My hand pounds the steering wheel as I swear at another slow-moving driver. Hours pass like days as I’m drawn back to my reality.

A fight. What the fuck was Chopper thinking?

He wasn’t thinking, I surmise, just as I wasn’t all those years ago. I’d received notice that I lost my scholarship due to a failed class. My attendance was poor because I had to cover for my dad in the shop. He drank too much, too often, and couldn’t be roused. Then he officially fell sick, and I discovered the gambling debts.

I did what I shouldn’t have done. I got drunk. Late night, a dive bar, and a girl with eyes like Lily’s. My weakened state of mind and the angry energy within me fooled me into thinking I was losing myself in Lily. Sweet Lily. I hadn’t gone to her because I didn’t want to ruin her. I didn’t want our first time to be under my hostility. I just needed five minutes to stew, and it changed the course of my life forever. I’d used the wrong sister.

Lily found out from said sister. After two weeks of guilt, the tears, the horror, and the accusations assaulted me—as they should have. Broken Lily. She disappeared. She wouldn’t take my calls. I finally went to her house a week later, but Lauren answered the door. That was when she told me she was pregnant. I didn’t believe her. I didn’t want to believe her. I wanted nothing to do with the older Warren sister again. Heartbroken, I had no choice but to let the younger one go.

Then almost a year later, a present arrived on my doorstep.

Happy Father’s Day, the note read atop a bundle of blankets over an infant in a car seat. I looked up to see the brake lights of a waiting car, which then sped off the second I acknowledged it. The weeks that followed included a paternity test, a formal appeal to rectify the name on the birth certificate, and a petition of abandonment to qualify for legal parentage. Born Brutus Joseph Warren, I changed the baby’s name to Charles Henry Paige, giving him my father and my brother’s name as well as my own. My father nicknamed him Chopper.

I’d never fault that child. That child sealed my fate. If I ever doubted Lauren, I had all the proof I needed growing before me for almost twenty-two years. Lily’s words linger in my ears as I pull into my driveway, taking note of the sadness of my house compared to the brightness of the beach house. Lily’s dream home is nothing like mine. I want to give her a house.

I rub at the ache in my chest as I slam the SUV into park and rush for the front steps. Chopper sits inside the dark living room, his head resting on the back of the couch. Sensing I’m ready to lay into my son, my brother jumps from the chair he sits in. Hank is bigger than I am in stature—fuller, thicker—but we’re the same height. I’ve always been the calmer of the two of us.

“Brut, just calm down.”

“Calm down?” I snap. “What the fuck were you doing?” I narrow in on my son. His dark hair matches the color mine once was. His eyes however will match my greatest love and my biggest nemesis. Chopper rolls forward on the couch, his head lowering to his hands as his elbows hit his knees. He doesn’t speak to me. He doesn’t even look at me. What the fuck?

“I think you need to relax. He’s okay now. Nothing major. The cops hauled them each away to cool off.” I stare at my brother with his hands on my shoulders, nodding at me as if I’m a child who needs to understand.

“You pulled strings, didn’t you?” I bark again. My brother was once a famous musician. After all the fights he’s been in, all the bar mishaps from years of drinking, he has connections. His lip twitches, and he struggles to straighten it, proud of his behavior.

“You think this is funny? What if it had been Elston or Ronin?” Elston and Ronin are the older two of his new stepsons. A fight could have happened with either of them, and the roles would be reversed right now. Hank would be losing his mind.

“Ronin wouldn’t fight anyone.” Hank huffs. “Elston might be another story. But this isn’t about my boys; it’s about yours. And he’s okay, for the moment.”

Hank’s calm does nothing to ease my frayed nerves. I fold to a squat before Chopper.

“Are you okay?” I push back his longer hair, tipping back his head so I can see his face. Instead of sorrow or remorse, there’s an edge to my son’s expression along with a shining black eye. He hosts an empty glare while I scan his features. He looks just like me when I was his age, but he has her eyes. It’s been hard to look him in those eyes over the years. They remind me too often of what I’ve lost.

“Get enough of a look?” he hisses at me, and I’m startled by the venom in his tone. My son and I have what I consider an open relationship. I’ve been both parents plus disciplinarian, but as he grew older, I also became a little too lax. Drinking when he was too young. Girls at the house. Later nights than necessary. It didn’t mean I didn’t care about him, or worry he would be an alcoholic like Hank, or fuck the wrong girl and impregnate her, like me. I just let him loose too soon.

“What happened?” I soften my voice, hoping he’ll talk to me. He usually does, but there’s something in those hard eyes I haven’t seen before.

“It was a fight. No biggie.”

“No biggie? Chopper, you went to jail for this.”

“It was only lock-up. Hank got me out.”

“You know this won’t be the end of it.” He’ll have community service or something. He can’t possibly get off scot-free, not to mention he’ll be paying his uncle back every dime.