AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For Fiona, I need to stay smart and survive. Yet, I don’t think I’m capable of giving up my sexy biker, even if we remain strangers in a million ways.
RHETT “EAGLE” FINCH
I’m not easygoing.I don’t let things roll off my back. I cling to grudges. I’m cranky, get my feelings hurt easily, and always assume people are screwing with me. I absolutely never view life as a glass half full.
Basically, I’m an asshole.
I’ve been that way since I was a baby. My bitch grandmother once claimed I absorbed my mom’s shame while I was in the womb.
“That’s why you never smile,” she insisted.
I’d been fourteen when she shared her dogshit wisdom. I didn’t say a damn thing in response. I wasn’t there to chitchat. I’d visited so I could swipe booze from my juicehead grandparents when they weren’t looking.
Still, her words stuck with me, even after I dumped bleach over her beloved garden in retaliation.
I’ve never felt right about myself or my place in the world. My shitty disposition sure wasn’t helped by my grandparents never letting anyone forget how I was “born of sin.”
My grandma and grandpa were average people in McMurdo Valley. He worked in an office. She was a stay-at-home mom. He played golf. She loved her garden. They weren’t rich or high class. Despite all the Jesus crap on their walls, my grandparents weren’t particularly religious, either. However, they were most definitely sheep.
They did what everyone did. They wore what others wore and ate at places others ate. Every vacation they took was to a place someone else recommended. Nothing about them was unique.
Until my sweet mom showed up pregnant at the tender age of sixteen. Unlike her parents, Jillian Finch had a taste for the wild side. That was how she caught the eye of a slick son of a bitch who told her all the bullshit every asshole tells a teenager he ought to leave alone. After two weeks of sinful fun, he blew her off, leaving Jillian to return to her life as a feisty high schooler.
The problem was their short-term lust created me. Jillian’s wanton ways were fine behind closed doors. Sin needed to be hidden, like my grandparents’ heavy drinking. They looked respectably average with a beer during a barbecue or a glass of wine with friends. Behind closed doors, they drank from sunrise to when they passed out after dark.That’s how acceptable sin worked.
My mom’s thin build showed off her bump early on. Everyone knew, and they didn’t keep their opinions to themselves.
My grandparents responded by moving my preggo mom into the “guesthouse” out behind their modest rambler. I spent the first seven years of my life in that one-room shack. We had a toilet, a college-sized fridge, and a full-sized mattress. I slept with my mom until she met Asshole Lloyd who improved our lives while also stealing away the only true joy in my life.
I’m never ashamed to admit how much I loved my mom. Jillian was a ray of sunshine. Even after she got respectable with a husband and three daughters born in wedlock, she still had a taste for the wild side. She also loved me in an addictive way.
That’s why Asshole Lloyd ruined things for me, despite giving us a home and a chance at normalcy. Before he came along, I never had any friends. Kids rarely came over to my house since I didn’t have many toys. Meanwhile, most of their mothers refused to let my poor, bastard ass into their precious homes.
With my new address, I had more options. Yet, by then, I’d already gotten accustomed to feeling like I wasn’t good enough. I’d see kids playing and think to join them, but I feared their rejection or bullying. I never saw a person that I didn’t assume would screw me over.
That’s why I knew Asshole Lloyd would take away my mom. No matter how much he smiled before the wedding, I was certain he was no good. After Asshole Lloyd nailed down my mom with a ring, his shitty side bubbled to the surface. Despite the next dozen painful years of my life, Jillian always promised I would be the happiest person in the family one day.
