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‘You hungry, kiddo?’ he asked. He hadn’t taken her shopping for groceries in a week or so, and they were downto 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 behisdaughter? 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.
‘The I-5,’ Juliette replied.
‘Shit!’ John said. ‘They hung him over the fu– the goddamn freeway by his feet?’
‘Yeah. He could’ve died, Dad. I wish he could come live with us.’
John made a growling sound under his breath. ‘No daughter of mine will ever be living with one of Dornan’s sons.’
Juliette settled back in her seat, a wry smile on her lips. ‘You won’t say that when I marry him,’ she said, and John didn’t know what to say to that.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MARIANA
Dornan had tried to call three times.
Each time, I’d let it go to voicemail, but then I realised that if I didn’t call him back and talk to him, he’d damn well show up at the apartment.
I couldn’t bear for him to be in the apartment with me. He was still living between two houses, spending most nights with his sons in the house he’d shared with his wife, and even though she’d moved out, I had definitely not moved in. With all of his kids there – he had seven, all boys, a number that still made me cringe – I refused to move into a mad house filled with teenagers and testosterone. And so far, he’d acquiesced. Hadn’t packed my stuff up and told me I didn’t have a choice. I think, after Stephanie’s death, Dornan Ross had decided that walking on eggshells was going to be the way to win me back.
It wasn’t, because nothing was going to win me back, but he didn’t need to know that.
