by Lacey Dailey
"You just believed a man as manipulative as Kade?"
"No, Ace. I didn't. I didn't stop looking for your father for over a year."
Recognition spread through me. I sat up straighter, my muscles aching. "That's why you never seemed angry. Because dad didn't leave us. He was taken."
She nodded, wiping at an escaped tear. "He never knew who his mother was. He only ever knew of his father. Kade approached your dad when he was just nineteen. I guess their mother had told Kade she had another son and Kade tracked him down. Even back then, Kade was on all sorts of drugs. High as a kite every day. Your dad wanted to help him. Felt obligated, I suppose."
I felt like I was walking on a tightrope hundreds and hundreds of feet in the air with a bee’s nest in my pants. I wanted to move. To scream and lash out. But I just couldn't. I couldn’t lose focus and fall off before making it to the end. "Dad was helping Kade?"
"Not regularly. He saw him every few months. Never let him come to the house or be around you kids. Your dad gave him money a few times, for food and hotel fees. Your grandpa hated it."
"Grandpa Tuck was a hard ass. No way would he have been okay with dad being in the presence of a monster."
"Nobody really knew what Kade was back then. Not until your father ended up dead in a river after attempting to drive Kade to rehab."
All I'd ever wanted when it came to my father was answers. Now that I had them, I wanted to give them all back. There was just so much. My mind was a computer that had stopped responding. Loads of information was being downloaded, but it was too much to process so the machine just quit. "Why wouldn't you report him, huh? If Kade told you the truth, why wouldn't you report him?"
"He threatened my kids," she whispered. "So, I kept my mouth shut. Until this very moment. I wasn't gonna risk your well-being by telling you the truth. One day, you'll understand that."
"Were you ever planning to tell me?"
"No, Ace," she sighed and used the wall to peel herself off the floor, attempting to compose herself as if she decided the conversation was over. She rubbed her hands down the jeans she was wearing and picked lint off her sweater. "I was never going to burden you with that."
Before I could stop myself, I spun around and slammed my fist into the wall beside the counter. Drywall crumbled around me. Somewhere in the back of my head, I thought I heard footsteps running down the hall. My fist was still lodged in the wall when I let out an unrestrained roar. "Burden me? Are you fucking kidding me? You let me believe he walked out! I have spent half my life angry and filled with resentment. I used to curse him at night, scream at him for leaving me and you were going to let me live out my life thinking he didn't love me enough to stay?"
She stepped toward me. Jerking my arm from the wall, I scrambled backward. "No! Don't fucking touch me."
"Ace—"
"You took the truth away from me. You took away the opportunity to tell him goodbye. How dare you?" I screamed. "How fucking dare you? I hated him. I loathed what he did so deeply I couldn’t even say his name out loud." The numbness left me all at once. The pain I was left with robbed me of all my senses. I was blind with tears. Deaf to every truth but that one. Numb to all feeling but pain. I felt like I was sprinting down a dark tunnel for hours but only managed to make it a few inches.
I clutched my chest and thrust my finger at the ceiling. "He has been up there, watching me hate him for more than a decade. And now how the fuck am I supposed to say I'm sorry? How am I supposed to tell him I actually always loved him?" I hiccupped. My knee caps bobbed. Two arms wrapped around my waist and a body molded to mine. "Don't touch me!" I shrieked, flailing with all I had. "Get off me, you fucking liar!"
"Ace, it's okay. It's okay. I got you." The hold tightened. A familiar voice snaked itself into my system. When I felt pieces of my hair being brushed away, and lips moving across the base of my neck, I let go.
My limbs turned to putty. He caught me and thrust me upward, coaxing my legs around his waist. I pushed my face in his neck and sobbed. Wailed while he murmured in my ear and his feet started to move.
"Breathe, baby," he whispered. And suddenly the roles were reversed. "Breathe."
21
Ace
Sometimes, I used to tell Wren I was busy. When we were kids and he’d ask me to hang out, I’d lie and say I was busy. It wasn’t a complete lie. I was busy. Just not necessarily in a way he could understand. I was busy silencing saddening thoughts. Busy trying not to miss my dad. Busy wondering where he went and wiping away tears with the corners of my bed sheet. That was my busy. It was still my busy. Except now I wasn't wondering or wiping away stray tears. I was sobbing into Brett's T-shirt, missing my dad more than the past sixteen years combined.
Brett ran the tip of his nose across my forehead and kissed me lightly between the eyebrows. I made a noise and fisted the front of his T-shirt. I hadn't spoken a single word since he busted into my mother’s house, ready to ignite the world. Wren must've directed him to my old bedroom because the next thing I knew, I was slumped on Brett's lap, my old navy comforter blanketing us both. I nestled my face in the crook of his neck, crying so brokenly, his own tears dripped off his chin and hit the top of my head.
He was tangling his fingers in strands of my hair when the door creaked open and Wren slipped inside. I didn't react to the noise or the bed dipping when Wren slid beside us and rested against the old mattress. His feet crossed at the ankles. He folded his arms over his chest and let his head fall back and rest against the headboard. His eyes closed and he waited.
I waited with him.
I wasn't entirely sure what we were waiting for, but I hoped like hell it came soon and provided me with a distraction from my busy brain.
I wasn't sure how long it'd been when I finally spoke. "How'd you guys find me?" My voice was toneless. Devoid of all the emotions I was feeling.
"You weren't at Circuit," Wren replied, staring up at the ceiling. "This was the next place you'd go for answers."
I made an unpleasant sound. "Fuck those answers. I don't want them anymore."
Wren's right hand came off his chest and he placed it lightly on my shoulder. "I'm sorry, man."
"Sorry for what? That I spent almost two decades being pissed off at my dead father? That my mother never cared enough to tell me the truth? Oh, maybe because he shares DNA with a literal piece of trash?" With a grunt, I flailed my limbs, feeling trapped all the sudden. Brett dodged an elbow to the nose and clawed at my shirt when I tried to escape his confines. "Let me up!" I snapped.
He released me immediately. He and Wren watched as I found my footing and bent at the waist, dragging heavy breaths into my lungs. I felt a ripple form on my forehead and rolled my shoulders, making a noise of distress.
Brett moved painfully slowly, positioning himself so he was sitting on the edge of the bed. "Breathe. It's okay."
My head snapped upward. Without warning or understanding why, anger blazed through me. "You don't know shit about how I'm feeling. Don't pretend you do." I pinned him with a glare so intense, I felt an ache start low in my stomach and instantly regretted it.
“Dude, whoa.” The bed creaked when Wren sprang to his feet. “Come on. We know you’re upset. Your whole fucking life just got put inside a blender and shook the fuck up. Nobody in here is trying to pretend we know how you’re feeling. We’re just here to be with you. Don’t be like that. He’s just trying to help you.”
I kept my gaze on Brett. “You think your forehead kisses and reminders to breathe make this shit better?”
I may as well have kicked him in the nuts. He breathed through his nose and winced at the pain I'd caused him before sitting up straighter, ready for another hit. Ready for the blows if dishing them out was the only reaction that felt safe and natural to me at the moment. I tugged at my hair and snarled. My anger was nothing but an outward expression of fear, hurt, and confusion. A way to cover up my true feelings toward the situation because I hadn't had long enough to process them yet
.
I hadn't even had one day.
It wasn't enough time.
"I'm sorry," I blurted. "Fuck, Brett. I'm so sorry." Tears filled my eyes again. "I don't know what's happening to me right now. God. I feel so fucking revved up yet exhausted at the same time."
"It's okay." He stood up and molded his front to my back. "There are no rules that say you have to feel a certain thing."
“Because this doesn’t happen to people!” I swiped at a tear, frustrated. “People don’t spend their whole fucking life believing wholeheartedly in one truth only to find out it was a huge fucking lie.” I’d spent years of my life looking for my dad, trying to put together a puzzle when I only had half the pieces. I spent so long dragging myself toward a dead end only to find out it was all a waste of time.
“Ace, I understand a little bit about what’s happening to you right now.”
I scoffed. “I know you’re trying to be helpful, but stop. Stop pretending like you know anything. I’m sick and tired of liars.”
I had no time to blink before he shoved me against the nearest wall and pushed his body into mine. My eyes flashed with anger and utter shock. I opened my mouth to tell him to back the fuck up. He slammed his palm over my mouth and pushed our foreheads together.
“It's not exactly the same, but I know what it feels like when your whole fucking world gets turned upside down. I know it feels like being stuck inside a dream. You'll get maybe a two-second reprieve before your brain switches gears and suddenly remembers the truth. And it hurts, baby. I know it hurts. I know you want to rewind time sixteen years and change the outcome of that night. I know you’d do anything to fix it."
My heart burned. That was exactly how I felt. I made a noise behind his hand. He ignored the tears that dripped from my eyes down to his hands. Instead he kissed me.
"I know you feel like you can't breathe. Like there's a thick paste filling up your lungs. I know these past few hours have felt like years to you and that's because I lived my version of it. I know how slow sudden change happens. It feels miserable and painful. It's full of despair, hopelessness, and it isn't always fair. I won't lie to you, baby, there will be moments you wake up in the morning and wish it were over, but I fucking promise I will be there next to you. So, lash out. Get angry. Do whatever you need to do because I'm not fucking leaving and I will never fucking lie to you.”
I nodded. Over and over while tears dripped from my eyes. I lifted both hands and gripped his biceps, digging my fingernails into his skin. Despite my anger, and all the confusion and hurt, I didn’t want him to leave. I needed him to stay.
I needed him to wait for me while my busy passed.
“Brett.”
“I’m not going anywhere, A,” He said firmly, dropping his hand. “Nobody in your life is going anywhere ever again.”
The dam didn’t just break. It fucking exploded. My body sagged, and I pressed my forehead into his chest. “I didn’t get to tell him goodbye,” I cried. “He thinks I hate him.” I couldn’t handle the thought of my father being up there, looking down on his son who spent two decades spewing hate. The guilt was undeniable and so fucking heavy, it was ten tons more than I could carry. My father’s life was taken from him. Erased like he never existed in the first place.
But he did.
He existed in my life even after he was gone. And instead of mourning him, being in awe over the kind of man he was, I destroyed his character every chance I got.
The hate I felt towards myself broke my spirit. I wasn’t Mischief. I wasn’t Ace. I wasn’t anything but a man who cut his own father when he was already bleeding.
“I have never felt so much hate at once,” I rasped. “It’s suffocating. Jesus Christ. My father was trying to help his brother. In what world does that end up with his body in a river? That is not a world I want to live in. A world where brothers kill brothers."
It wasn’t until the words left the tip of my tongue did realization sting me. My insides began to burn. I shoved Brett away from me and pulled at the places of my body where the skin was the loosest. My movements felt erratic and irrational, but my mind was demanding one thing of me.
Get him out.
Every piece of DNA tied to Kade Wilson had to come out. Right fucking then.
“Get him out!”
I shared blood with a man who'd killed hundreds of people. I had something similar to what he had lurking inside my body. Any biological child I wished to bring into this world would share DNA with a man who sold children.
I was tainted. No good for anybody.
“Stop!” Frantic hands secured my wrists. “Ace, stop! Stop!”
I fought against him, yanking against his grip so hard, my feet flew out from under me. He caught me with ease, one hand around my waist and one holding my hands captive while I flailed like a fish that couldn’t breathe.
“Please, let me go. Brett!” Like some sort of possessed, desperate man, I turned my head and sank my teeth into his arm.
He growled roughly. “Ace. Calm down.”
“Fuck you! Don’t you dare tell me to calm down!” I bucked against him and shouted in frustration. “Get him out of me right fucking now!”
“Who, Ace?”
“Kade! Kade Wilson is my uncle.” The words singed my throat raw. “I’ve got parts of a monster inside me.”
The pain on his face completely fucking wrecked me. It was like he needed me to say the words to fully comprehend I was related to the man who kidnapped and beat his sister. I couldn’t even look at Wren.
“I’m sorry.” I slipped from Brett’s grip and fell to my knees as if I were asking for forgiveness. But I wasn’t. Because they wouldn’t forgive me. “I’m so sorry.”
“Ace, look at me,” A voice demanded. “Look at me!”
I followed his command and forced my eyelids open.
He dropped down right in front of me. “You have nothing in common with that man.”
“Except DNA,” I sniffed and scooted away a few inches. My separation from him had to start gradually. I thought maybe it would hurt less after it sank in and he stomped out of my life. “He hurt your sister, Brett.”
“Yeah. And you saved her.”
“Because he took her!”
“And you think his actions reflect on you?"
“They should.”
He crawled forward and grabbed my sweaty hand. “They don't.”
“Sage will hate me.”
“No, she won’t.” Wren was suddenly next to Brett, sitting just as close. “Sage does not and will not hate you based on actions of a man you are barely related to.”
“You are more than those pieces of you, Ace,” Brett stressed. “You are not a monster.”
My heart ached to believe that. “How do you know?”
“I think maybe it’s lack of compassion that makes a man into a monster. Lack of remorse. Lack of sympathy. Lack of love. You embody every single one of those things. You are kind, thoughtful, and desperate to help. You are not a monster, Ace. You’re the man who keeps them away. You save people’s lives. Not just Mischief. You. Ace. You save lives and I know because you saved mine.”
I jerked, tugging at my ear as if to turn it back on. “What?”
“You saved my life.” He cupped my face in his hands and pressed his lips to my ear. “Every moment I spend with you feels like a revival to my soul. From the second you spoke to me, you taught me what it felt like to breathe again. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so at ease with another human. To feel so comfortable being whatever version I needed to be to make it to the end of the day. And somehow, I found myself through you. Your love revived me, baby. It brought me back to life. It saved me.”
I sputtered. “Wh... what?”
“You saved me, Ace Jackson. Because it’s what you do. You save people. And if you let me, I will save you too.”
I sniffed. I wanted that truth so bad, I wasn't sure I could believe it right away. “Promise?”
“I p
romise, baby.”
I finally slid close to him, my heavy sobs slowing. “I think it might take a while.”
He pulled me into his lap and held me. “I know. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Even when I get busy?” Because I knew there would be days. Moments of sorrow. Countless hours my brain still needed to work everything out. I’d barely scratched the surface, and I couldn’t be sure what was in store for me. But it was a little less frightening with the knowledge he wouldn’t leave me. He wouldn’t disappear.
“Even then.”
“Okay.” After a beat of silence went by and my chest was no longer heaving, I tipped my head upward and stared at him. “What happens now?”
His dimples appeared with a soft smile, and he captured my lips in a soft kiss. “You breathe.”
22
Ace
5 weeks later…
* * *
Over the course of my life, I learned a lot about the difference between letting go and giving up. Giving up was life reducing. Letting go was life expanding. For a long time, I didn’t like the idea of either of them. Freeing oneself of something and being done with it forever felt too final. With time, I learned letting go wasn’t a one-time process. It was something that happened over and over again. Each day, you’d let go of a little bit more until you were free of what was burdening you. It wasn’t giving up. Giving up required a sacrifice. You had to take something away from yourself. Letting go meant you somehow got something in return.
Since the moment my dad walked out of our front door, I was under an internal attack. Giving up vs. letting go. I’m not sure I did either of those. Not sure I was ready for a decision that felt so much like an ending. But over the last five weeks, with the help of an amazing man, I learned letting go wasn’t an ending. It was a beginning.