“No. Fuck that, and fuck Max. And fuck Charlie. And fuck!” he shouted, pacing the barn. “We can’t just let Charlie get away with this. You can’t spend the rest of your life under his chains.”
“I have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice and always a way.”
I wished I could believe that, but I knew how Charlie worked. I knew the number of times he’d dragged my mother back into his world of despair. I knew he could ruin my life and Rosie’s with a snap of his fingers. I’d never feared anyone other than that madman. Charlie was a monster—and he wasn’t afraid of hurting anyone who got in the way of his destruction.
“I’m sorry, Ian. I just . . . we . . .” I sighed. “We can’t be together.”
“I don’t accept that.”
“Well, you should. There’s no way to make this work.”
“Just you wait,” he promised, taking my hands into his and kissing my palms. “We’re going to get our happily ever after. But first, allow me to ruin this asshole’s life.”
40
IAN
I’d spent the whole night trying to figure out how to help Hazel, and when it became too hard and I felt as if I were running in circles, I went to the only person I could think of who could help me. The person I always turned to during the hardest moments.
Big Paw sat in his office chair with his wrinkles deepening into a frown as I told him everything Hazel had unfolded to me the previous night.
“I always hated that Charlie Riley. He’s a toxic creature to this here town, and it’s about time we get rid of him.”
“How? Hazel said there’s no way. His presence here is too big, and even when people get one step forward, he pushes them two steps back.”
“Not this time. He doesn’t get to push my loved ones into a corner.”
“But that’s what he’s doing, and there’s no way we can push back against him.”
“Yes, there is. When you are pushed in a corner, you put on your boxing gloves, and you fight back, Ian. You think I’ve never faced hard times? Of course I have, but do you know how I’ve made it through those tough periods?”
“How?”
“I didn’t give up, I kept fighting, and when I needed it the most, I reached out to others to help me. We don’t have to face every battle alone. Sometimes, all of the time, we’re stronger together.” He reached out toward me and placed his hand against mine. “I’m glad you came to me with this. Now, get to work today, and be up bright and early tomorrow. We have a long drive to take tomorrow.”
“A drive to where?”
“To the one person who is Charlie’s blind spot. We’re going to see Hazel’s mother.”
“What? How? She’s in prison, and she won’t even see Hazel. She hasn’t seen her in months.”
“She doesn’t have to see Hazel. She has to see me, and seeing as how I’m already on her visitor list, it won’t be a big deal. I was going up there tomorrow, anyway. The only difference is I’m bringing you along with me this time around.”
I had so many questions for him. Questions about why he’d been visiting Hazel’s mother. Questions about why we were going to visit her in the first place and how she could help the Charlie situation. Questions about . . . everything.
But the way Big Paw smiled my way showed me that I was supposed to just trust him.
Therefore, I did.
As we headed toward the prison, my stomach sat knotted up with the thought of seeing Hazel’s mom, Jean. When you thought about meeting your girlfriend’s mother, you didn’t assume it would be in a prison. Talk about unorthodox.
“Now, let me do a bit of the talking first to get the conversation moving,” Big Paw ordered. “I don’t want you making any trouble by saying something offbeat.”
We walked inside and went through all of the security procedures before being led to a table to wait for Jean to come out.
When she did, she looked surprised to see me sitting at the table with Big Paw.
“You brought a guest,” she said, looking him dead in the eyes as she took her seat. “Where’s Holly?”
Wait, what?
Jean knew Big Paw and Grams? How was that possible?
“She wasn’t feeling too well today. She couldn’t make the drive,” he told her.
I shifted around in my chair, trying to get comfortable but knowing it was impossible. Jean had a heavy sadness about her whole persona. It was pretty hard to witness. You could tell she’d been through a lot of hard shit in her life just by looking into her eyes. She gave me a sideways grin, and it disappeared quickly before her eyes shifted to her clasped hands.
“I got you some pictures,” Big Paw mentioned, pulling out a stack of photographs. He held each photo up for Jean to witness, and tears began falling down her cheeks as she took in the photographs of Rosie that Big Paw was sharing with her.
“She’s getting big,” she commented.
“Yes,” I agreed. “She looks so much like you.”
“She looks like Hazel,” she corrected, fiddling with her hands. “When Hazel was a baby, she had those big eyes too.”
“Wait, so how do you and Big Paw know each other?” I asked, bewildered.
“Holly and I’ve been visiting her quite a bit over the past few months,” he explained.
“Yeah, he’s been a pain in my ass,” Jean joked.
“And she’s been a pain in mine, always has throughout the years.”
“Years?” I asked.
Jean nodded. “We’d crossed paths many moons ago, when I was a teenager. I was pregnant with Hazel and on my own when I came to Eres. I was running from a troubled childhood, and when I got here, Holly and Big Paw took me in with arms wide open.”
“It seems to be what they do,” I said.
“Yeah, but I didn’t make it easy for them. I got involved with your mother and father, and I made a few choices I shouldn’t have after Hazel was born. I started hanging out with Sarah and Ray, and they introduced me to Charlie, and we all know how that ended up.” She gestured around her and frowned.
All this time I’d blamed Hazel’s mother for the beast that Charlie was, but it seemed as if my parents were the ones responsible for bringing Charlie and Jean together.
“You can only go up from here,” I said, hoping to give her a splash of hope.
She rubbed her hand up and down her arm nervously. “I want to do right; that’s all.”
“Which is why we’re here,” Big Paw said. “We need your help.”
She snickered. “No offense, Big Paw, but I’m not really able to help people much with my current situation.” She gestured around her again.
“But you can do what you can from where you are,” he said, clasping his hands together. “He threatened your daughters.”
Jean’s eyes widened, and she gave Big Paw a panicked look. “How so?”
“He’s forcing Hazel to give him all of her income, controlling her relationships, saying he’ll burn down the ranch, and threatening to do harm to her and Rosie if she doesn’t obey. He’s been beating up Garrett, too, pretty bad.”
Tears filled her eyes, and she shook her head. “I got her in a terrible place. I should’ve never gotten involved with Charlie. He shouldn’t be able to hurt my girl, but that’s how he is.” She wiped a few tears from her eyes and swallowed hard. “I don’t get how I can help, though.”
“That’s easy,” Big Paw said. “If there’s one person who knows Charlie, it’s you. You know how his messed-up brain works. You know his plans, his drops, his . . . everything. So I need you to tell us some things to help catch him. We need to get him locked up, and this time, he won’t have anyone to take the fall for him. This time, he’s on his own, and this time, we’ll make sure it sticks.”
A moment of silence passed by as Jean lowered her brows. She clasped her hands together and nodded once. “I’ll tell you anything you need to know.”
And she did exactly that.
She gave us all that she
could until it was time for her to leave the space. As she stood up from her chair, she looked my way. “You love my daughter?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
“Can you do me a favor and treat her well? She deserves someone who treats her well.”
“I promise,” I told her. “And thank you for your help. You have no clue how much this means to us.”
“I’ve been a terrible mother. I’ve been messed up more than I’ve been clean, but getting off drugs in here has made me very clear minded. I want to do what’s right. If I can help you, I’ll do whatever I can. If it keeps my girls safe, I’ll do anything. If you could tell Hazel I’m sorry—for everything—that would mean a lot to me.”
“You really love your daughters, don’t you?”
“I do. I’ve never been a good mother, but I’ve always had the most amazing girl. I just couldn’t realize it when my head was fogged. Please tell her I’m sorry.”
“You should reach out to her yourself.”
“I doubt she’d want anything to do with me after I cut her off all those months ago.”
“She will,” I swore. “She is Hazel, after all . . . she loves unconditionally.”
Jean nodded once before her stare moved to Big Paw. “Please send Holly my well-wishes. I’m sorry for what she’s going through, and I’m sorry that you are struggling too.”
As Big Paw and I walked outside, I asked him the one question that had been sitting in my head all this time. “Do you blame yourself for what happened to her? As if her living with you was the cause of her meeting Charlie?”
“Every single day.”
“And that’s why you wanted to give Hazel the job all those months ago?”
He nodded. “Just looking for a little bit of redemption.”
“Trust me, Big Paw. You’ve been redeemed.”
The moment we made it back to Eres, I told Hazel what the plan was going to be. Even though she was hesitant, there was a splash of hope in her eyes.
I wished I could’ve said there was some super-blockbuster-movie moment that happened when Big Paw and I set Charlie up, but there wasn’t. He was caught at one of his drop-off locations, and he was arrested once more. This time, it would stick, because he no longer had Jean to take the rap for him. Plus, he’d been in and out of prison so much that there was no way he’d be able to walk away clean.
When I got the word from Big Paw that Charlie was in handcuffs, I headed to the house to see Hazel. When I got there, she was already in bed, and I woke her up from her slumber.
“Hey,” she whispered, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “What’s going on?”
“It’s over.”
Those were the only words I said, and they were enough to get her to sit up in bed. “It’s over? Really? They got Charlie?”
“Yes, and he’s not getting out anytime soon. Garrett even said he’d testify against him in court. It’s really over, Haze. It’s over.”
She released the biggest sigh of relief and fell into my arms. “It’s over,” she whispered.
That night I made love to my love, and everything felt right.
41
IAN
“That’s perfect, perfect, perfect!” Hazel clapped her hands together as she sat in the barn house with the band and me, helping shape up the lyrics to a few of the tracks we’d been creating.
We’d been working day and night, trying to pull this album out of our ass, and as the days moved by, it was appearing more and more unlikely.
Lately, all of our phones had blown up with dozens of text messages from Max, ordering us to return as quickly as possible to get the album up and running with Warren Lee’s tracks.
“Ignore him,” Eric told me. “Max Fucking Rider will be okay for a while. Our biggest concern right now is our music, not him.”
I thanked him for reminding me what was important.
“I think they are beautiful,” Hazel said, grinning ear to ear. She’d been nothing but an asset to the songs, taking my vision and making it soar. We worked together so effortlessly, and I was glad to get back to the basics of the music. It was beginning to feel like fun again.
Leah had been attending our rehearsals with Hazel, and I was thankful that she’d become such a big part of Hazel’s life. Hazel needed a friend in town, and I knew Leah was a loyal one. Watching them grow closer each day was the best damn thing to see.
“Not to make your egos bigger than they already are, but that was beyond amazing,” Leah said. “And believe me, it kills me to give my brother a compliment, but it was magical.”
“I agree with Hazel. That was amazing!” Grams exclaimed, sitting in a chair beside Big Paw. Since we weren’t able to perform or post anything about the new music, the only people we could share the tracks with were people we could really trust.
“I think that you really tapped into—” Grams’s words trailed off as she stood from her chair. Her hand fell to her chest, and she took in deep inhalations. Everything felt as if it were moving in slow motion from that point on. I dropped the microphone from my grip as Grams’s legs began to buckle. Big Paw flew up from his seat, Hazel shot toward her, and the bandmates dashed too.
But it was too late. Grams hit the ground with a hard thump, and in an instant, I’d forgotten how to breathe.
We headed straight to the hospital from the barn house. Big Paw and Grams were picked up by an ambulance, and everyone else was following closely behind. For the most part, the trip was driven in complete silence. Finally, Marcus took control and turned on the radio. After two songs, ours came on the station and blasted through the speakers.
“Jeez,” James sighed, shaking his head. “I’m never going to get used to that. I’m never going to wrap my head around the fact that we’re on the radio.”
“Life’s crazy,” I muttered, chewing on my thumbnail as I stared out toward the dirt roads we were approaching.
We pulled up to the hospital, and I shot out of the car and hurried inside. I walked up to the receptionist’s desk to ask about Grams but was cut off.
“Ian.”
I turned around to see Big Paw standing behind us.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
“They think she might need a pacemaker put in. But first, they have to go in and repair a vessel,” he explained. “They are prepping her for surgery now.”
Surgery?
Fuck.
“Can you believe that bullshit?” Big Paw grimaced. “These SOBs want to cut into my Holly’s heart.” His voice cracked, and tears fell down his cheeks. “How wrong is that?”
I walked over to Big Paw and patted him on the back. “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.”
“How can you say that? You don’t know that for sure,” he argued.
“Yeah, I know, but that’s what Grams would say, isn’t it? She’d say that everything always works out. If it doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the story.”
He huffed, wiping his overworked hands against his face. “That’s just some mumbo jumbo bullshit she says. That woman is going to be the death of me. I can’t believe she’s doing this to me.” His tears began falling faster and faster. “How can she go in there and let those people cut into her?”
“I don’t think she has a choice, Big Paw, but I’m sure these doctors are good at what they do. They are great at their jobs. They are going to take care of Grams; I know it. You just have to have a little faith.”
“I can’t. Holly was the one with faith. I’m the old fart who doesn’t believe in any of that shit. It’s funny, actually,” he said with such a somber tone. “They are cutting into her heart, but it’s mine that’s breaking.”
I pulled him into a hug and held on tight, trying to help his troubled heart, but I knew nothing would help him until the love of his life was coming through the other side of surgery.
We all sat in the waiting room while Grams was in surgery. My bandmates and I shut off our phones, because the nonstop messages from Max were starti
ng to drive us up a wall. My grandmother’s life was on the line, and all Max cared about were the numbers and the dollar figures he was losing out on. It was as if we were nothing more than robots in his money machine.
I sat with my hands clasped together, tapping my feet against the carpeted floor, unable to steady my movements. The idea of Grams not making it out of surgery and not being okay shook me to my core. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the time I’d spent away from home, chasing a dream, while my grandmother’s health was failing.
Who knew how much time I had left with them? I should’ve been home. I should’ve been helping them around the ranch. Hell, Big Paw shouldn’t have been working still.
Rosie sat in her car seat, sleeping, and I was jealous of the amount of peacefulness that baby had. I wished life was that easy and peaceful. A hand slipped over mine, and I looked up to see Hazel standing over me. She gave me that small smile that I loved so much, and she sat down in the chair next to me. She held my hand, even though I hadn’t asked her to. She held on tight, and I was thankful for that. I needed a hand to hold. I needed something to stop the nerves from taking over my whole system, and a simple touch from that girl calmed the wildest parts of my soul.
“Thank you,” I murmured so quietly I wasn’t even certain she heard my words.
At that point, she held on tighter.
When the doctor came out, he didn’t look as ecstatic about the surgery as we would’ve liked. We all shot to our feet, Big Paw standing more quickly than anyone, and we approached him.
“What’s going on?” he barked at the doctor, sounding grumpier and more annoyed than ever before. “I don’t get why nobody has been out here to update us on my Holly! What kind of goddamn place is being run here, anyway? Is it run by apes? This is madness.”
I stepped closer to the doctor, who looked taken aback by Big Paw’s strong opinion. I gave the doctor a half grin. “Hey, sorry about that. My grandfather is just worried about his wife.”
The doctor tried to keep his composure, even though I was certain he had a few choice words for Big Paw. “It is okay. There were a few issues with the surgery, and we weren’t able to get in the way we’d hoped we could. There was a lot of fluid around the lungs, and we didn’t feel comfortable doing the surgery before we were able to drain some of that.”
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