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JACE
“Please, Harlan!” Mom cries, kicking and screaming as Dad drags her by the hair down the hallway and past my bedroom.
I slam my door closed, hating the sound of them fighting over and over and over. It never ends—ever.
And as much as I love Mom, she cheated on our family with my peewee football coach.
She traded her life with us for a night with him.
I hate her for it. I fucking hate her.
She knows how abusive Dad gets and decides to leave me at home with him to go off and fuck a loser from the bad side of town. It is selfish and disgusting of her to do, and I am ashamed to even call her mother. I loathe that she has done that to our family and to me.
“Think about Jace, about the baby, please! Don’t do this.”
Balling my hands into fists, I let a tear fall down my face. While I might hate Mom, I hate Dad more for making her beg and scream for him like this. I want to both stop this myself and drown out their screams. It is constant arguing, constant torture for a kid just trying to get through school and make it big one day.
I collapse onto my bed and grab the football, tossing it into the air and listening to Dad scream at Mom and Mom scream at Dad and them both scream so loud that I can tell neither one of them is listening to what the other is saying. They are yelling to argue, not to understand.
Unable to take it any longer, I rip open my bedroom door. “Can you guys please stop screaming?” I shout over the noise and glance out the hallway to see Mom storming toward me with a fresh black eye and Dad with a bruised lip.
“Fucking bitch,” Dad snarls at her. “You deserve to be put six feet in the ground.”
I woke up, covered in a layer of sweat and my heart pounding inside my chest at the thought of losing Allie’s mother like that. I might’ve hated Mom at some point because of what she had done to our family, but she hadn’t deserved that.
And Allie’s mother … she had been nothing but sweet to me, a motherly figure even.
If Allie only knew half the stuff Dad had done to Mom, she’d flip.
Needing to get a fucking drink to clear my mind, I walked down the hallway and into the kitchen, where Allie, her mother, and my fucking father sat tensely around the kitchen island at three-thirty in the morning, nobody speaking a word and each drinking a glass of fresh milk.
Allie gave me a help me look and glanced back at Harlan, lips pressed together tightly.
Dad turned to me with a huge fake smile and pulled out the chair next to him. “Jace, why don’t you join us? Since you got your stepsister pregnant, might as well learn how to be a father, getting up at all hours of the night to deal with your son, who’ll grow up to be a loser.”
I swallowed hard and pulled out the chair next to Allie, knowing that something was up. By the looks of it, milk wasn’t the only thing Dad had been drinking tonight.
“Allie and her mother have been waking up by themselves for the past week. It’s only right to help out, don’t you think?” he said to me.
“I was sick,” Allie said. “I don’t need Jace to help me puke.”
Harlan looked over at her. “You’re right. You don’t need Jace at all.”
Nostrils flared, I grabbed Dad’s elbow and pulled him to the side of the room.
What the fuck is he up to? What does he know already?
It hadn’t even been a couple days yet, and he was acting too fucking suspicious about everything. Maybe this whole Redwood will burn thing was getting to his head too.
Before I could even get a couple words in, Dad leaned in close to me. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m going to find out,” Dad said, squeezing my shoulder harshly. “I can play the same fucking games you are. I’ve been doing it for years, Jace. So, quit talking to those Poison boys, who don’t know how to do shit, or else someone you love is going to get hurt.”
I flared my nostrils, rage pumping through me. “I’m not doing anything with them.”
“Don’t give me that shit.” Dad seethed. “I know they killed your principal, like I know you’ve been hanging out with them too much lately to just be buying bags of weed that you don’t even smoke.”
Balling my hands into fists behind my back, I had to hold myself back from swinging at him right then and there. The gun was back in my bedroom, and I didn’t know where the fuck Dad had guns anywhere in this house. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had one stuffed in his waistband at all times.
And, plus, I didn’t feel confident enough with shooting that I could kill him in one shot and not miss. I needed training, and I needed it fucking bad because nobody threatened Allie ever, especially not my father.
