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“You
have no idea what I have or haven’t done!” Cole snarled, turning around.
Alex didn’t back away like he’d
always done; instead, he closed the distance between them, stepping right into
Cole’s face. “Then why don’t you tell me!”
“I almost died. By all rights that
accident should have killed me. Had a lot of time to lay in the hospital and
think about shit. The one thing that kept going over and over in my head was
that I was alone. I hated it. Hated the way we’d all walked away from each
other.”
“We grew up. Shit happened. People
change.”
Cole snorted. “Yeah, I guess. I know
Michael has.”
“And you haven’t? You don’t get to
stand here and look miserable about the way shit’s gone. You were one of the
first to go, even before Chase died.”
“Fuck you!” Cole snapped. “I was
looking for Asher; what the fuck were you doing?”
Cole almost laughed at how wide
Alex’s eyes grew at hearing that.
“I-I never knew that,” Alex
stammered, making Cole smirk a bit. “But… what made you think you would find
him?”
“I had to try. Besides, I’d found him
before. When he did write, there were postmarks on the letters. I called home
from somewhere in Missouri one night and Chase told me he’d gotten a letter
from him a few days before; the return address was some PO Box in Chattanooga.
I staked it out and, sure as shit, he came in there to check it, and for a while,
it was all good; we were together.”
“So what happened, and why didn’t you
bring him home?”
Cole shrugged. “Didn’t see any reason
to come back, and Asher didn’t want to. We bounced around for a while, and then
I decided I wanted to go to Mexico. He didn’t. I figured he’d follow, so I went
anyway. He never showed up, and then time got away from me.”
“So why show up now? Why not stay
away, if you can’t deal with the life he wants to lead?”
“’Cause I’m not willing to lose
another brother,” Cole said. “I don’t have to like his lifestyle, but I don’t
have to be a dick to him about it, either. I want my brother back. I didn’t tag
along with him from here to Seattle back when we were underage and clueless
just to turn around and lose him now. You have no idea what we went through
when we were out there.”
“Neither of you should have been out
there in the first place,” Alex shot back. “I get it; I know why Asher kept
running away, but you—fine, okay, you followed him, you didn’t want him to be
alone; I get that, I do, but why did you have to encourage him to fight and to
treat people like they were just a means to an end?”
Cole ran a hand through his hair and
sighed. “I dunno. I don’t have any excuses, okay?”
“I guess that’s better than you
trying to justify the shit you did. And no, you don’t have to be a dick to
either one of us about our choices. We’re the only ones who have to live with
them.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe, Cole; that’s the way it
is. You don’t get a say. You might be our big brother but you don’t control the
way we live our lives, do you understand me?”
Cole threw up his hands, tired of
arguing. “Yeah.”
“Good, because I’m not gonna let you
hurt him or me ever again. I’m not going to give you the power to make me feel
ashamed of who I am, and I’m not gonna let you drive him to hurt himself because
you want to get back at him for not following you like a goddamned puppy. We
might love you, but we don’t have to put up with you.”
Cole shook his head, shocked at his
brother’s outburst and the vehemence in his words. It was nothing he’d have
ever expected from Alex.
“I already said I didn’t come here to
cause trouble.”
“Good, because I’d hate to have to
fuck up your other leg.”
“As if you could.”
“Don’t underestimate me, Cole. Just ’cause
you’re bigger doesn’t make you smarter, or more vicious. We grew up in the same
house, remember. Don’t think I didn’t learn anything.”
“All right, back to your respective
corners,” Morgan announced as he stepped out onto the porch.
Cole glanced at him, looming in the
doorway with his arms crossed, and smirked at Alex.
“Guess you can act pretty tough,
since you’ve got your daddy to hide behind now.”
“Guess that makes you both even,
since I’m your old man, too,” Morgan snapped, his eyes widening almost as soon
as the words had left his mouth. Cole stood, blinking, stunned into silence
even as Alex shook his head and walked away.
“How the hell would you know? I didn’t
take that stupid test like Asher did.”
“No, you didn’t give me a sample, but
I got one anyway. Remember the night you called me a bastard and spit on the
floor?”
“Vaguely; was kinda drunk.”
“You were shitfaced, but that’s
beside the point. I swabbed it and sent it in. It’s official: You’re my son,
not Jack’s. Which makes you Alexia’s brother, her full brother, so you can stop
blaming whatever you think is wrong with her on me, ’cause if that’s the case
then it’s in you, too.”
“The hell it is.”
“What the fuck are you really doing
here, Colton?”
“Goddammit, Morgan, I already told
you! I came to see Asher, to apologize for the shit I said.”
Morgan nodded. “I’d like to hope you
mean it.”
“I do mean it.”
“We’ll see.”
“Fuck,” Cole muttered, and heaved a
heavy sigh. “You’re my dad?”
“Yup.”
“Fuck.”
“That’s the way it works, in the
crudest of terms.”
Cole couldn’t help but smile at that,
even as he struggled to wrap his mind around the concept of Morgan being his
father.
“I’d have told you, back in the city,
but you didn’t seem interested in hearing a damn thing I had to say.”
Cole nodded, not trusting himself to
speak.
“Look, I know it’s too late for
fatherly advice and shit like that, but it would make me really happy to see
you figure out what’s important to you in life, find something that makes you
happy and settle down before you end up smeared all over a highway somewhere.
I’d hate to have to bury ya, kid.”
“Not in any hurry to end up in a
grave.”
“Good. Maybe someday you’ll realize
life isn’t as shitty as you think.”
And with that he turned away, muttering curses at the sky and all the rain, leaving Cole to listen to the sound of it pinging off the roof as he tried to digest everything that had been revealed to him.
“You
use anger the same way Asher does: to shove people away, build walls, and hide
what you really feel,” Morgan said. “I think you’ve gotten so good at it that
you don’t even know what the hell you feel anymore.”
“You wanna know what I feel?” Cole
asked. “Try pissed off all the damn time.”
“My point exactly, but the question
is, why?”
Again, Cole couldn’t answer, at least
not at first.
“Everything,” he said at last. “I’m
pissed that Chase had to die. I’m pissed that Michael doesn’t give a shit about
any of us anymore. I’m pissed that Asher didn’t follow me to Mexico when I
trailed halfway across the country to find him. I’m pissed that you threw me
out of the bar. I’m pissed that I never knew you were my father and that you
waited so goddamned long to bother to find out. I’m pissed that I fucking fell
in love with a woman and her kid and spent three years taking care of her, only
to have her kick me to the fuckin’ curb as soon as her husband was getting out
of jail. I’m pissed that Alex is trying to be a fuckin’ girl and is prolly
going to get himself killed. I’m pissed that I damn near got myself killed,
that my bike got fucked up, that I haven’t been able to do fuck-all to help
Bishop build the bar, and that I have no goddamn clue how the hell to run the
fuckin’ place despite all the shit I said to Michael about knowing I could
handle it. I’m pissed that at the end of the day, all I have to look forward to
is an empty room and hours of boredom because the only goddamned thing I was
ever good at was fighting. I’m pissed that I never took the opportunity to go
pro; that no matter how hard I worked, Pops never showed up to see me fight. I’m
pissed that nothing seems to make sense anymore. I don’t feel like I know any
of you anymore, and I don’t know how to handle that.”
He was out of breath by the time he
got through his rant. He pressed his hands to the sides of his head, thumbs on
his temples, pressing to keep the budding headache at bay. His leg still
throbbed and the damp coldness of the ground was soaking through his jeans. He
felt nothing but a bone-deep weariness and a desire to be done arguing with
people and trying to explain himself. It had all been so simple when they were
kids; all they’d had to do was stand together, knowing that if they did, they
could survive anything.
Morgan placed a gentle hand on the
back of his head. “That’s a good start,” he said, giving Cole a moment to let
that sink in. “And there are no quick solutions to any of those things. What
you need to do is take the time to confront them without anger and figure out
what it is about each situation that has you so twisted up in knots.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?”
Cole asked without lifting his head.
“Whatever way is going to work best
for you.”
“I’m not gonna sit in some damn
shrink’s office and have some guy in a suit pick me apart.”
“Then don’t,” Morgan said. “I never
said you had to go that route. There are other ways, and if you’re willing,
I’ll help you find them.”
“Don’t you think it’s too late to
play the part of Daddy?”
“For as long as you live, whether you
want me to be or not, I will be your father. It’s up to you if you want to
accept that. But I have always tried to look out for all you boys, because I
care, because you matter to me. Because I would have married your mother in a
heartbeat if she’d been willing to leave Jack. I loved her.”
“Why didn’t she leave him?” Cole
asked. “He was as much a bastard to her as he could be to us, especially when
he was drinking or had a bad run on the circuit.”
“Fear, in part; she always worried
that he’d keep his threat and find a way to take you kids from her,” Morgan
replied with a heavy sigh. “She’d been brought up in the church, as you know,
and she didn’t believe in divorce, saw it as failure and something to be
ashamed of. There were times when she’d write about how much she wished he’d
have an accident on a bull or pass out drunk behind the wheel and drive off a
cliff. Once…”
When Morgan stopped speaking, Cole
raised his head, searching his face for signs that he intended to continue.
“I never knew she’d bought a gun,”
Morgan said at last. “Not until Asher found it and some of her letters in an
old lockbox in the barn. I found one of her letters, marked return to sender
because I’d moved on before it could get to me. In it, she said she planned to
shoot him the next time he raised a hand to her or one of you kids. I don’t
know what happened that she never used it; I think she found out she was sick
and all her focus turned to trying to get better so you boys wouldn’t be left
alone with him.”
“Do you think she’d have done it?”
“I think he’d finally pushed her to
the point where she would have, and if that had happened, she wouldn’t have
been the person I knew and loved anymore. Anger destroys people, Colton; it
destroys families, can’t you see that?”
“Yeah,” Cole said. “That’s all I
could see, all I could think about when I was stuck in that hospital bed. I
just knew I needed to get to Asher and make things right.”
“Only Asher?”
“Didn’t think you’d give a shit one
way or another,” Cole admitted. “Though I-I kinda wished I’d called and
apologized for the shit I said to you. Could have used your advice, too.”
“I’d have given it gladly; still
will,” Morgan told him.
Don't forget to check out book one of the Guitars and Family Series: Guitars and Cages!
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