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‘Move,’ he growled, but Jason stayed put. John’s eyebrows practically hit the roof. ‘Really, kid?’ he asked without thinking. ‘You don’t think that maybe you’re barking up the wrong tree if you’re worried about violence against women?’
Jason sagged immediately, letting him pass. John felt shitty for delivering such a low blow – the poor kid – but desperate times and all that. By the time he got outside, Juliette was already sitting in the passenger seat, her arms folded tightly across her chest and her eyes shiny with tears. She always got upset if she saw John hurt. It frightened her, and rightly so. She shouldn’t have to worry about her parents not making it home. Shouldn’t have to be tricked into leaving the house with Dornan, an obvious and cruel move to fuck with John. His heart was torn up at how Juliette was worrying in the seat beside him, yet wouldn’t say a word.
John made the quick decision not to go straight home – in his fantasy, Caroline might have more time to miraculously die before they arrived to find her – and instead drove towards Hermosa Beach. It was a little over thirty minutes to get there with no traffic, and thankfully there was none this late at night.
He could tell that Juliette was too cut up to ask where they were going. John said nothing. Eventually, after about fifteen minutes of silence, she cleared her throat.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked quietly.
‘For a father–daughter drive,’ John replied. ‘Humour your old man.’
‘You’re not even that old,’ Julz said, fiddling with her jacket sleeve. ‘I don’t know why you always say that.’
He snorted. ‘It’s all about how old you feel. I feel like I’m about a hundred right now.’
Juliette seemed to digest that. ‘It’s because you never get any sleep, Daddy,’ she said quietly. ‘You’re always busy worrying about everybody else.’
She was a smart girl. It broke his black heart that she noticed so much.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ John said, making the turn that would take them to Hermosa. It was utterly desolate on the streets of LA tonight. He hadn’t seen it this quiet in forever.
‘You hungry, kiddo?’ he asked. He hadn’t taken her shopping for groceries in a week or so, and they were down to pop tarts and long-life milk. Juliette never complained, and John barely remembered to eat these days.
‘Starving,’ Juliette replied. ‘Your face, though.’
John waved his hand dismissively. ‘We’ll get a booth in back.’
He cleaned his face up as best he could with some water and napkins before he headed into the diner. It was one of those old mom and pop style diners, covered in a layer of grease, and with management who had seen John come in bloody and hungry more than once. He led Julz straight to one of the booths in back – dark, away from the windows.
They ordered quickly: a steak for John, who was still feeling off after the whole fight and only picked at his food, and apple pie with ice cream for Julz. As she was shovelling pie, John set his knife and fork down and tried to formulate a question that wouldn’t make her shut down.
‘Did you hit Uncle Dornan?’ she asked around a mouthful of pie, before he’d even decided what to ask her.
His mouth opened, but no words came out. He wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. ‘Yeah,’ he said, finally. ‘I did.’
Juliette nodded. ‘He must have deserved it,’ she said, taking another bite. ‘You only hurt people if they deserve it.’
John scrubbed his palm across his mouth, his brain screaming for words that would divert the attention from what he was. A lowlife fucking criminal.
‘Was it because of what happened in Colorado?’ she asked softly, not looking him in the eye this time. ‘With Jase and his mom?’
John’s stomach knotted painfully. ‘What do you know about that?’ he asked. ‘You shouldn’t know anything about that.’
Juliette placed her fork on her empty plate and straightened in her side of the booth. ‘Jason told me,’ she said. ‘He needed to tell somebody, Dad.’
She was right. The poor kid did need somebody to confide in. But why did it have to be his daughter? Why couldn’t it be anyone else?
‘You’d think he would be talking to his brothers,’ John said tightly, gripping his steak knife so hard he had to set it down. Juliette went quiet.
‘What?’ John prompted.
‘The boys aren’t nice to him,’ she said to the table.
Jesus. Open a can of worms and watch them wriggle out. ‘What do you mean?’ John asked tiredly. He couldn’t believe he’d disassociated himself from the boy’s plight so brutally, but he was just trying to survive here. Dornan’s youngest son was a liability. John might’ve funded his survival for the better part of sixteen years, even as he grew in his mother’s womb, but he was terrified at the thought of taking the boy when they left LA. Almost like Dornan would be able to seek out his own blood, his DNA, easier and more swiftly than if the boy was not an issue.
‘The boys have always been good to me,’ Julz said softly, referring collectively to Dornan’s six other sons, who ranged in age from seventeen to twenty-four. ‘But they’re really scary, Dad. They hung Jason off a bridge by his feet and he says he almost fell.’
‘What kind of bridge?’ John asked.
