AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m serious, I’m not going back. I don’t care who she is, or what happened to her, or the fact that I pointed a gun at her.” He hung his head in his hands. “Fuck. I pointed a gun at my own mother. I’m such a fucking screwup.”
“No argument from me on that.” Rory chuckled. “Do you ever buy Parker roses?”
“Huh?” Maybe he wasn’t the only one who had lost his mind today.
“If you buy roses from a florist, they trim the thorns off the stems. But when you get them at the grocery store, they don’t. So there you are handing your girlfriend a bouquet and, depending on where you bought it, it’s filled with thorns or it’s not.”
“What the bloody hell are you talking about?”
Rory slid down the wall, kicking his legs out in front of him and massaging his thighs. “Here’s the thing. Every rose has thorns. No matter how beautiful, how perfect, how good they smell. Every damn one of them has dozens of those prickly bastards that cut your fingers if you try to take them off yourself.” He held up his fingers, eyeballing them as if they were bleeding right now. “Doesn’t matter, though. In the end, the look on your girlfriend’s face is worth every prick along the way. And then, if you’re smart, you quit buying the grocery store bunches and you go to the florist and pay the extra money to let them handle the thorns.”
“I assume there’s a point to this?”
Rory waved a hand through the air. “Okay, maybe I’m not as good at this as Vivi, but hear me out. There isn’t a single one of us that isn’t a fucking mess of thorns. Your birth parents included. The thing is, none of us get to choose our parents, and maybe if you get past Lori’s thorns, you can find the rose underneath. It sounds like she’s a pretty damn good person.”
“She could be making it all up.”
“Or Lydia could. If you quit on us, you’ll never know. The only thing you can do, kid, is come to the ranch, help us sort this out, then take a DNA test. If sheisyour mom, you can decide then whether you want to pursue having her in your life, thorns and all. Besides, you can’t ditch Parker. She’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth and kick your ass back to the compound.”
Parker. He rubbed his chest where it ached. “She’s put up with me all this time but after this? I ran out on her…Fuck.”
Rory made a dismissive grunt. “If she fell for you in the first place, she’s as screwed up as you are. It’s not what you’ve done, it’s what you’reaboutto do that counts. Beatrice has a plan, and she’s kicking the CIA out. Parker is going to need you more than ever if we’re going to make that plan succeed.”
The sucking hole of nothingness grew smaller. “What plan?”
“If I hadn’t had to come after your sorry ass, I might know the details. What do you say we get to the ranch and find out?”
He was exhausted. He craved oblivion but also something else—revenge. “Seven years. Maddox took her away from me and threw her in a prison to rot forseven years.”
Rory was quiet for a minute. “She deserves respect, that’s for sure, and maybe a pass for not connecting with you sooner. If what she says is true, revealing that you were her son earlier might have put your life, as well as Parker’s, in danger.”
He straightened. “Parker’s?”
Rory swatted at a bug trying to crawl onto his pant leg. “Think about it. What do we know about this Maddox fellow? He likes to hire bad guys to kidnap folks. If he for one minute thought that you and Lori had developed a relationship, he’d know you’d come gunning for him.” He got to his feet and glanced around in the shadowy cave. “What is that smell?”
Moe had been so caught up in his problems he hadn’t let it register. “Shit, I know that odor.” He rose slowly, starting to walk backward the way they’d come. “We need to get out of here. Don’t make any sudden moves.”
Rory went on alert. “Why?”
Moe wiggled his fingers, gesturing for him to follow. “Keep your voice down, and whatever you do, don’t point your gun at me.”
“Are you trying to freak me out?”
A flashlight cut through the shadows and both men swung toward the source. Gus looked past them and fixed his beam on what Moe had feared. “There you are, you furry SOB.”
A glance over his shoulder showed Moe that Oscar had been eavesdropping the whole time. The bear sat on the ground, leaning against a stack of fallen rocks and licking a paw.
Rory jumped, nearly tripping over his feet as he scrambled away. “Holy fuck. That’s one big-ass bear.”
Gus tossed a set of keys at Moe. “My truck is under a tarp behind the station. Your friends took off and so did the asshole. They wanted me to pass on the message to get to the ranch pronto.”
Oscar rolled to his feet, making grumbling noises, and Rory started running for the other end of the tunnel. Moe held the keys, knowing he had a choice to make. He could either disappear into the world, hunt down his father to take revenge for his mom, or he could follow orders, verify who Lori was, and if her story was true.
Every rose had thorns. A sappy old rock song played in his head. God knew he had more than his fair share of them, and now he had those stupid lyrics stuck in his brain, thanks to fucking Rory.
His fingers closed around the keys and he patted Gus on the back. “Thanks. For everything.”
Gus tapped his walking stick. “Just be sure you return it with a full tank of gas.”
