Devil's Own

by Megan Crane

  “Yours does. But it doesn’t have to.” He jerked his head at the door. “Go live your life, Liz. Knock yourself out. Keep in mind, though, that if you do that? If you fuck up on that level? I’ll drop-kick your ass out of Lagrange. Happily. I’m your landlord, your employer, and your worst fucking nightmare. Did you forget that again?”

  He could see she wanted to fight back. Defend herself, poke at him, whatever. But he knew his sister. It was all about self-interest with her and it always had been. Harry Frey had done a number on her, like he had on all of them. Their sister, Chrissie, was the only one who’d lived up to parental expectations. She’d married some dick of a doctor and lived in Atlanta now, Xanaxed out of her head most of the time while the nanny raised the kids and her husband bullied them all, passing on that particular joy to the next generation.

  Liz had gotten out from under their parents’ thumb, though she’d gotten out ugly and she lived ugly, too. Because she could do whatever she wanted, she’d told Chaser more than once. And what she wanted was to date assholes; the worse they treated her the better. No one could tell her a thing. Most people stopped trying. And she’d certainly never been grateful that Chaser had given her a way out of a dead-end life in their crappy little hometown. Somehow, the fact that he’d moved her to Lagrange, given her a trailer to live in rent-free, and paid her enough so she didn’t have to get another job if she didn’t feel like it was something he’d done to her. She held it against him when it suited her, or when she was drunk, or both.

  Not that he gave a shit about that as long as she was competent, at the very least. Which Kaylee rolling around drunk on school days suggested she wasn’t. At all.

  “Maybe you should talk to your daughter,” Liz said evenly. Too evenly, with that hint of outraged innocence beneath it. Another one of her specialties. “If Kaylee’s going to school drunk, she’s hiding it from me, too. It’s not like she listens to me. Or anyone. She probably snuck out in the middle of the day with her friends and got drunk wherever kids get drunk around here. The way I remember it, that’s what you did in high school. Maybe the only thing you did in high school.”

  “I don’t know how many times I’m gonna have to tell you to stop bringing up what I did when I was sixteen like it matters.” He was more pissed than he should have been, he could feel it. More pissed than Liz just being Liz warranted. “But I do know I’ve told you before to cut that shit out. It doesn’t matter if I burned down the school. What matters is that you get your head out of your ass and do what I pay you to do.”

  Liz eyed him and whatever grim expression he had on his face and sniffed. “I’ll get my stuff.”

  Chaser didn’t wait around to watch her gather her shit and go, because what was the point? He’d tell her she was lazy and a fuckup and that he’d find someone else to do her job if she wouldn’t, and she’d get in his face about who he’d trust Kaylee with if not her, and it was the same endless circle they’d been in for a decade. Liz was his sister, but she was pretty much trash. He knew it. He thought she knew it, too—and liked it, on some level, it being a raised middle finger aimed straight at their father and his delusions of high class. But Chaser also knew that if that junkie whore Destiny showed her face around here while he was away, or tried to make any moves toward Kaylee, Liz would smack the bitch upside the head with a cast-iron pan, laugh while she did it, and then use his ex’s body as her ashtray.

  As far as Chaser was concerned, that earned her keep. Even with all the rest of her bullshit. He’d been doing that same math for years.

  He took another swig of his beer and then headed upstairs. Kaylee’s door was cracked slightly, but dark inside, the way it was supposed to be at midnight on a school night. He pushed it open farther and stood there for a moment, letting the hall light spill in over her bed, his beer hanging from two fingers.

  She was curled up in a ball, eyes shut tight and her mouth slightly open, looking the way she had when she’d been a tiny little thing instead of the frustrating near-adult she was now. Kaylee was pretty. A little too pretty for Chaser’s peace of mind, given the perverted assholes he knew. She looked fresh-faced and innocent tonight, with her hands folded beneath her chin and the sheet pulled up over her feet because no matter how hot it was, she was convinced monsters would chew on her toes if she left them exposed.

  And Chaser was not a good man. He’d never tried to change that, because he’d never given much of a fuck about “good.” But he’d do pretty much anything for his kid. He’d searched for her all over the country for six long years, and he’d have kept going if it had taken him twice that long to find her. He’d rip apart anyone who hurt her without a second thought. He liked seeing her safe and somewhere he could protect her. Even when she was being a little shit—which was most of the time these days—he loved her. He didn’t always like her smart mouth very much, but god knew, he loved her. His club and his kid. Those were the only things that mattered to him.

  But he knew Kaylee had never been an angel, no matter how much she looked like one tonight. And he also knew she was faking. She was as wide awake as he was; she just didn’t want to face him.

  “You have five minutes to get your ass downstairs, kid,” he told her, gruff and mean, and he admired the way she kept herself from tensing. Her act was improving. “And when you get there you better have a real good explanation for why you’re rolling into school drunk, letting them catch you, and worse? Letting some teacher give me that news instead of making sure I heard it from your mouth first. Five minutes. And don’t make me come back up here.”

  Liz had wisely disappeared when he made it back downstairs, though she’d left the television blaring as a final fuck you for the evening. Chaser took a seat on the couch in his den, kicking his feet up on the coffee table while he waited to hear the thumping around upstairs that would tell him his charming child was following his orders, however grudgingly. He smirked slightly when he heard her feet hit the floor. Loud.

  Kaylee had no idea how not in the mood he was for this tonight, and how badly it would have gone for her if she’d decided to double down and pretend she’d been so sound asleep she hadn’t heard him up there—a tactic she’d trotted out only very rarely over the years. He heard another thud from the second floor, in case he’d been in any doubt about her mood, and he settled back against the couch, letting the entire irritating night wash over him.

  But it wasn’t the very real shit happening in the club these days that kept playing and replaying in his head, or even the annoying talk he was about to have with his surly teenager. It was the memory of Lara Ashburn with her mouth in the crook of his neck, making those delicious little sounds while her hot cunt gripped him and she let him move her against his cock like liquid. That and the way she’d smiled so brightly as she’d leaned closer to the cop car to give Sheriff Fuckface a little hint of that sugar.

  It made him even edgier than he already was when Kaylee slouched into the room all of three and a half minutes after he’d left her door, because this child he’d made by accident and then turned the world upside down to claim was a whole lot of things, but she wasn’t dumb.

  Though she sure looked pissed tonight. Then again, when didn’t she? Chaser couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her smile. It was always this pouty, sulky expression she was aiming at him now. She was tall and too skinny, with wavy brown hair she wore down to the middle of her back and a fashion sense that made him want to murder people with his teeth. Tonight she was wisely wearing pajama pants and a loose, long-sleeved T-shirt that actually covered her body, not the usual skimpy shit that he was sure she wore purely to torture him.

  Kaylee went to sit catty-corner from him in the comfortable armchair, but he aimed a steady, unfriendly stare her way. “Did I say you could sit?”

  “This isn’t the military, sir.” She stood there before him and glared at him, but she obeyed. He supposed that was something. “I don’t actually know how to stand at attention while you yell at me. I thi
nk that’s called boot camp.”

  “I’m not sure an instant attitude and a snotty tone of voice is a good call here, brat.” He rubbed his free hand over his face and tried to stay calm. Or calm-ish. “Drunk in school, Kaylee? Really?”

  “It was medication—”

  “Nice try. You don’t get migraines.”

  “—for my period.” She made her eyes round and innocent. “I get disgusting, hideous cramps when my menstrual flow is heavy.”

  “No,” he said, not dropping her lying gaze or reacting in any way to what she’d obviously said to disgust him into changing the subject. “You don’t.”

  She made that god-awful half-snorting, half-laughing noise that he thought all teenage girls were wired to start making the moment they turned thirteen. “You don’t know what my body does.”

  “I know that I’m fucking disappointed by this feeble attempt to shut the conversation down,” he threw back at her. “Have you met me, Kaylee? When did I turn into some cringing little bitch who’s gonna pass out because you tell me you bleed every month? You got me confused with those high school boys?”

  “God, Dad.” She scowled at him, but her cheeks were a little flushed. “You don’t have to be gross.”

  “Gross is what happens when babies are born, kid. You have no idea. Women bleed. Big fucking deal. But you don’t have special medicine for cramps because you’ve never had bad cramps. And, baby girl, believe me, I know that I didn’t raise you to hang around suffering in silence.”

  Kaylee looked like a little kid again for a second, the way she did so rarely these days. It was like a punch in the gut, and then it was gone when she blinked and remembered herself. And she turned right back into this teen version of herself who looked at him with flat-out hatred half the time and seemed to dedicate the rest of her breathing hours to coming up with ways to get under his skin.

  But not too far under his skin. She knew who he was. She didn’t really like it when he got too mad.

  “Fine,” Kaylee said. She folded her arms over her middle. “I don’t see what the big deal is. Aunt Liz says you were such a hell-raiser in high school they almost didn’t let you graduate.”

  “How does what I did in high school have anything to do with you?” he asked quietly, and it was the quiet tone that made her nervous, as it should. Chaser making noise was him blowing off steam, but Chaser quiet meant action. She knew it. He saw her shift from foot to foot, uneasy. But she pressed her lips together like she was biting something back. “Do you want to get kicked out, Kaylee? Is that what this is about? Are you done with school now?”

  Her dark eyes glittered. “What if I am?”

  “Great.” He leaned back into the couch and waved his beer bottle at her. “Then you get to start working, because you’re gonna need to pay me some rent. But before you bail on school altogether you might want to think about what job you’re gonna get at sixteen with a smart mouth and no high school diploma.”

  And she was his kid, of course. He saw that flash of mayhem in her gaze, his only warning to brace himself for whatever was coming next.

  “I hear Petit Joe’s is hiring,” Kaylee said, because she clearly had a death wish. He could see the fuck you glint in her eyes. “How hard is it to strip? Isn’t that what my mom did when you met her?”

  Chaser didn’t explode, because that was what she wanted. Clearly. He could see that plain enough. But it took all his control to keep his shit together at the idea of his baby girl in that place, surrounded by perverts. Himself included.

  “Which part of this boatload of crap do you want me to get into first?” His voice was a growl that had been known to stop assholes with guns in their tracks, but Kaylee only glared back at him.

  “Don’t be a hypocrite, Dad,” she snapped, as if his name was Stanley and he was an engineer or some other soft ass thing. “If it’s okay for you to date strippers, why isn’t it okay for me to be one?”

  “You can do whatever the hell you want to do,” he told her very distinctly. “When you’re eighteen and paying your own way. Until then? My house, my rules, and here’s a news flash. They don’t have to meet with your approval. You want to practice for your future career? Get a pole. Put it in the living room.”

  She jerked a little at that. “What? Ew. Why?”

  “Might as well see if you can handle it now. Hell, I’ll invite my brothers over and make a party of it. Like you pointed out, we all spend a lot of time at Petit Joe’s. When you celebrate your eighteenth birthday by flashing your titties up on that stage, who do you think is gonna be in the audience?”

  Kaylee looked a little pale. “You’re disgusting.”

  He took a swig of his beer, keeping his eyes trained on her.

  “That’s reality, kid. It’s all fun and games until your daddy’s best friends are shoving dollar bills in your G-string.” He bit back a smile when she recoiled at that. “But you do you, kid. If taking off your clothes for money is your passion, I’m not gonna stand in your way.”

  She dropped her gaze then, but not before he saw that her eyes looked a little over-full. Not that his tough little girl would cry in front of him these days unless she was in a rage and couldn’t help it. It was hard to imagine, looking back on those crazy years when she’d been so little and he’d had no idea what the fuck to do with her, that he’d actually miss her tears. She’d been like the rainstorms that slapped the hot South around from time to time, blowing up out of nowhere and then gone again. These days she was more like a hurricane. A shit show on the way in, an asshole while she was breaking shit, and a whole lot of trouble when she was done raging.

  “What’s the sudden interest in your mother?” he asked after a minute, when it seemed like Kaylee might not look up from her feet again tonight. Too busy contemplating the reality of stripping at Petit Joe’s in front of him and the club, if he had to guess. He hoped that image gave her nightmares. It was certainly going to fuck with him. “This isn’t the first time you’ve brought her up this summer.”

  His daughter managed to shrug the way grown men shouted go fuck yourself. It was that eloquent. His teeth clenched, but he didn’t jump on her.

  “She’s my mother. I think about her a lot more than you do, apparently.”

  He let out a short laugh he didn’t try to pretend wasn’t a little evil. “You might be surprised.”

  Kaylee’s head came up then, and she looked…indignant, if he had to define it. Maybe this was more of that female stuff he couldn’t pretend to understand. The last time they’d had a serious talk about Destiny, Kaylee had been twelve and still full of crappy memories of the years she’d been carted along on her mother’s downward spiral. Maybe he’d been kidding himself, thinking that kind of thing would never fade.

  “People make mistakes,” Kaylee told him. “You do as much as anyone else, whether you admit it or not.”

  “I make mistakes all the time,” he agreed. “But one of them wasn’t dragging you with me while I hopped from one junkie pimp to another, getting high while you rolled around in filth. It also wasn’t abandoning you when that got boring.”

  Kaylee looked mutinous. And something like desperate, which didn’t make sense. But then, what did she do these days that did? “For all you know she’s changed.”

  Chaser shifted then, tired of this. Tired of everything. He wanted a shower. He wanted to get drunk instead of have this conversation. He wanted to go roust that hot little teacher from her bed and go another round or two until she was out of his system and he felt like himself again.

  Most of all, he wanted Kaylee to get her head out of her ass before she did something she couldn’t take back. He didn’t care if she partied. That’s what kids her age did and god knew, he was no saint. But he was all too aware that there were entirely too many pregnant teenagers out there, and that meant his little girl shackled forever to some punk-bitch asshole he’d probably have to kill. Not exactly what he wanted for her.

  “I don’t know how to do this s
hit,” he muttered. He sat forward and slapped his beer down on the table, swinging his feet to the ground. He didn’t get up. He just glared up at Kaylee. “I can’t tell if you genuinely want to have some kind of mother-daughter moment and that’s why you’re bringing up this crap or you’re just yanking my chain to keep me from focusing on the fact you’re fucking up all over the place these days.”

  She looked like he’d slapped her, and that was the shit he hated. When this girl he’d literally do anything for looked at him like he was his brutal animal of a father. It set his teeth on edge. “I’m not fucking up!”

  “You’re a smart kid, Kaylee,” he said gruffly. “You have a lot going for you, but not if you throw it away being an asshole.”

  Her hands were in fists. “Isn’t that what you did?”

  “No,” he said evenly. “I get that your aunt likes to tell a different, self-serving story, but the fuckup of the family isn’t me. I joined the Marines and once I got out of Georgia I never went back. I never asked for a dime. Your aunt can’t say the same.”

  “Yeah, but she’s not a criminal.”

  She said it mean and hard, and Chaser didn’t know which one of them was more taken back. Kaylee started to shake a little, which meant she knew how stupid it was. She knew she was pushing hard against a line she shouldn’t touch.

  Chaser let it sit for a minute, as much to let her stew on it as to calm the fuck down himself.

  “It’s gonna come as a big surprise to all your uncles that you think they’re pieces of shit suddenly,” he said quietly. So quietly she got pale again, and he saw the shame in her gaze. “How many times did your uncle Greeley take care of you over the years? How many times did your uncle Roscoe play with you at club picnics? You want to crap all over your own family?”

  “No!” she threw out, like it was part sob. Her face crumpled, but she didn’t tip over into a sob. She scowled instead, and then sucked it back. Some part of him was proud of her. If she survived her teenage years, she was going to be one hell of a woman. “No. I didn’t mean that. I just…”