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“Take your time, baby. I’m not going anywhere.”
Promises. Hope. There they were again. Back in his life, only this time, he failed to resist the temptation was beginning to believe in them again.
Keith sighed and pushed the present aside to continue dredging up the past.
“Anyway, around the time I was fifteen, shit got really bad money-wise. Ronnie was only three at the time. One night she woke up crying. When she didn’t stop after a few minutes, I went in to check on her. She’d wet the bed. After I’d changed the sheets and gotten her new pajamas, I went to peek in on my mom. But she wasn’t in her room. She wasn’t in the house. Neither was Dad, but that was nothing new. He spent most nights at the bar. The next night I set my alarm and woke up to find the same thing. She wasn’t there.”
He took a breath to keep his breakfast down. All the while, Mickie’s soft hand roamed over his back providing a comfort he’d never allowed himself before.
“The third night, I tailed my mom when she left the house around eleven at night. She walked about a mile to the shitty motel she cleaned. I thought maybe she was cleaning rooms at night, which was weird, but what the fuck did I know. She walked to one of rooms. Room seven. I’ll never forget it. Then she took out a keycard and let herself in. I followed and stood outside the door with my ear pressed against it.”
His stomach lurched. He’d never forget what happened next, but he never allowed himself to think about it either. It destroyed him, filled him with guilt, and made his hatred for his father grow exponentially.
“Sorry, I just need a minute.”
“Baby, take all the time you need. There’s nowhere I’d rather be than by your side.”
His eyes fell shut as he absorbed her sweet words. God, he wanted this. Wanted her so much more than was wise.
“I’m okay. Uh, so I was outside the door and I could hear…things. Men’s voices, grunting, a yelp from my mom. I thought maybe she was selling drugs. That my dad had put her up to it. I was so pissed, I rammed the door in. Even then, I was over six feet and the lock was practically made of toothpicks and chewing gum. When the door crashed open…” He shuddered at the visceral memory of the odor, the smoky fog throughout the room, and the sounds of bodies slapping together.
“It stunk so bad, I held my breath until I was dizzy to avoid breathing in whatever crap floated in the air. There were too guys in the room and my mom was on the bed. N-naked.”
Mickie sucked in a breath.
He was almost in a trance now, seeing it as though it were in real-time. The words fell from his lips without thought, just rote memory. “A hundred-dollar bill lay on the dingy comforter next to her. One of guys was between her legs, fucking her. She was staring off into space like she wasn’t even aware of what was happening. Like she’d gone somewhere else in her head, but there were tears on her cheeks.”
Keith swallowed a painful lump.
“What about the other man?” she whispered in a voice full of dread.
“Not a man. Chuck. A fifteen-year-old boy like me. Sitting in the corner jerking off as he filmed the piece of shit doing my mother.” His stomach clenched at the nauseating memory. “Found out later, it was his older cousin.”
“Oh, my God. What did you do?”
“I had the element of surprise, and I was way bigger than both of them. I ripped the first guy away from my mom, grabbed her clothes and threw them at her. While she was getting dressed, I laid out the guy who’d been fucking her with one punch. Then I moved on to Chuck. I hit him once, then again. I was about to nail him a third time when the room was suddenly flooded with cops. Turned out the motel owner suspected what my mom was using the room for and called the police.”
Mickie’s hand stilled on his back. “Oh, my God, Keith. What did they do?”
“They arrested all of us. But, uh, Chuck’s old man is the Chief of Police. Back then he was just a captain, but still, he had a lot of clout. Chuck and his cousin were out within the hour. I was brought into an interrogation room and told that if I didn’t want my mother brought up on prostitution charges, I was to forget Chuck was ever there. If I made a thing of it or ever brought up the fact that Chuck had been filming it, they’d throw the book at my mom.”
“Keith…” she murmured as she stroked her hands up and down his chest in a soothing pattern. “That is so fucked up.”
