Steel Country Boxset

by Fields, MJ

  When she comes down, her face is stone, her eyes are angry, and she reeks of bitch.

  Fuck.

  “I’ll have another,” I tell her, not returning the glare, but not allowing her to intimidate me, either.

  She slams down the glass, fills the drink, and as if she knows he’s there, she walks away.

  I watch them eye each other, and then he walks toward the door, not even looking back. She looks at me and gives me a smug-ass smile.

  No. No. No. No.

  Desperation sets in, and I yell at him, “Gage!”

  When he doesn’t stop, I stand up to follow him.

  The child, the one taunted by her peers for being a nothing, for smelling, for her clothes being disgusting, for her hair being a mess, looks down at the next generation tauntress.

  She shrugs and smirks.

  I hate her. I hate her, and I hate him.

  I hurry toward the door after him, yelling, “Gage Falcon, do not walk away from me. We need to talk!”

  He looks back. “Go fuck yourself, Juliana.”

  He’s being a child, a bully, mean. Although I deserve his anger, this is unacceptable.

  “Grow up and think of Brandon!”

  “He’s all I have thought about. You...” He pauses. “You have it made, Juliana. You manipulated your way into a family who can take care of your undeserving ass. You got a fucking degree, a house, alimony, and child support enough that you don’t even have to work!”

  “For him. For my son!” I cry out, desperately needing him to try to understand.

  “Exactly, a little boy who I thought was my blood for years, and you fucking pulled the cuntiest move of all to do that to him for your own fucking gain! You are one sick bitch, you know that?”

  Anxiety and desperation is now replaced with anger.

  “I have my reasons, and someday, you’ll understand.”

  “I understand. You may have fucking manipulated me back then, but I’m no fucking fool. I know you want what’s best for you—hell, maybe even for him—but that doesn’t mean shit. Just fucking go. Let the winds of the south blow your ass back to bitchville.”

  “That’s so mature, Gage Falcon,” I say, trying to calm down, but not ready to give him the upper hand.

  His look, the one of disgust, the one that makes me feel beneath him, forces me to defend myself, defend my lie. Set the stage for the truth that will no doubt rock his world even harder.

  “When you know why I’ve kept his father’s name a secret, you’ll be sorry you said that about him!”

  “I’ll be sorry? You lied to me about Brandon being mine and I’ll be fucking sorry? You’re the sorry one, Juliana. You hitting the bottle hard again, or have you totally fucking lost your mind? Any man who knows he has a kid out there and gives fuck not is a piece of shit.”

  “Hey!” I hear a voice call from behind me and turn around.

  God, she followed us out, probably wants to stir up trouble. Why won’t she leave us alone?

  She throws my jacket in my face, shocking me. “You forgot to pay for your drink.”

  Shock turns to pissed off when the jacket zipper catches the bridge of my nose. I have no idea why, but I look at Gage to say something, anything. He doesn’t.

  Fuck her. Fuck him.

  “Oh, my God, you’re really fucking that?”

  He steps toward me, and for a minute, I am fearful. Then realization sets in. He’s defending her.

  When she laughs at me, I spew venom at her, giving her laugh back to her. “You fuck for tips?”

  Without expectation or warning, she punches me in the nose. It hurts, it hurts bad, but I’m nobody’s punching bag, not anymore.

  I lunge forward and grab her by the hair. “You little bitch!”

  “Phoenix, trust me; she isn’t worth it,” Gage says with a hint of amusement in his voice as he pulls her back. “Let go of her, Juliana, or I will ruin everything you think you have going on.”

  Fuck him. I don’t let go. I don’t, and then she kicks me.

  I fall back on my ass in a puddle, and he laughs as he drags her crazy, screaming ass back to the bar.

  “You’re barred, bitch!” she shouts.

  Humiliated, I sit for a moment as I wipe away the blood pouring out of my nose. When I see headlights coming down the road, I stand, unable to take any more taunting or shame tonight. Right now, right at this moment, I hate myself for what I have done. I hate it, but there is no turning back.

  I made my bed. It’s dirty, filthy, rotten, and crawling with lies and deceit. Yet, I have no choice but to lie in it.

  When I walk into the hotel room, I pray to a God that has never once heard me that Brandon and Gail are asleep and that I will not have to explain the blood on my shirt. True to form, he still hasn’t heard me, or maybe a girl from the wrong side of town, who went to her knees and took it in the ass to survive, just doesn’t deserve her prayers to be answered.

  His words taunt me whenever I am at my lowest, like now, as I walk in the door and see Gail looking at me, blood-stained, filthy, branded by so many as nothing, and his words, his crushing, taunting words screaming in my ears.

  “We’re never gonna be right!” Garrett yelled. “We’ve been branded by way too many as nothings. Brands don’t fucking go away. They stay forever!”

  “Are you sober?” Gail asks, eerily calm.

  I nod as tears fill my eyes.

  “Go shower, Juliana, then we’ll talk.”

  Standing beneath the shower, I cry. I cry for the hell I have lived, the love I lost, and the lives I messed up. I know I will never be what Gage is to Brandon. Never. I need to accept it and accept it now. He can hate me. He can. But he can’t hate the family who has been the reason he is who he is—a beautiful, smart, kind, and caring boy. If—no, when he meets Garrett, I hope he loves him like I did, and I hope Garrett—

  The thought of his name catches in my throat, and I sob into my hands. What did I do to him? What did I do to the boy who saved me then pushed me away? Surely, it was me. It had to have been. Look at his family. Look at them.

  I think about what happened after he left angry that first night at the motel.

  The night I stayed with Garrett, the night he left angry at me, then returned an hour later, apologizing for the whole “I paid for you thing,” he spoke of Gage with great disdain, pertaining to his hero complex. He assured me he didn’t have one. I wanted to tell him that he may not have one, but he was in fact some kind of hero to me.

  His hands were full of bags that he sat on the little table that wasn’t littered with overflowing ashtrays, or empty bottles, pieces of foil, or baggies and bottles.

  He pulled out a small vanilla cake, topped with buttercream frosting, and the words “Happy Birthday, Juliana” spelled with two N’s, not one, but I didn’t care. Then he pulled out a pint of Ben and Jerry’s chocolate cookie dough ice cream. He was nervous, a shy smile on his perfect and full lips that I knew just by looking at them were soft. He even lit a candle. All to celebrate my birthday.

  After we ate, he gave me a pair of pajamas with pink kitten print, a bag of toiletries—all name brand—a pair of sweats, and a sweatshirt that said “Jersey Shore” on them from a twenty-four-hour drug store, along with a prepaid cell phone.

  What he did for me that night, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he was in fact a superhero.

  Four days of being spoiled by Garrett, with food enough to fill ten bellies, clothes he bought from real stores—Hollister, American Eagle, Abercrombie and Fitch—asking that I try them on for him as he sat on the bed, smiling.

  When I came out in the fourth outfit—a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt that fit me perfectly—he didn’t look at me like he had the others. His face was glued to the television. I assumed he didn’t care for it, and when I started to walk into the bathroom, my name said in a sad voice stopped me dead in my tracks.

  I looked at the television as the house of hell went up in smoke.

  He hel
d me while I mourned the death of two people who made my life hell. When I felt like I was stupid for caring, he told me he understood. He assured me that he would make sure I was okay, and then he convinced me to call the police after telling me everything to say to them. Then he left and went to talk to the old man who owned the place, making sure the owner of the Shore’s Point Motel gave the same story.

  My story? I had run away from an abusive home and found refuge here.

  Garrett wasn’t my alibi; he didn’t want to be involved. I understood, his life being different than mine, yet he really didn’t seem that different.

  Not long after that, I was emancipated and able to finish school while living and working at a motel.

  Every day, he showed up. And each day, the feelings, real feelings, began growing at a rapid pace. I was surely more eager than he was.

  He was everything good in my life. No man had ever smelled so good, looked so good, had teeth so perfect that his smile was just so...good. And no one—man nor woman—ever seemed as interested in me or my life, the good, the bad, and the ugly, than he did.

  Everything became possible with him. Being free, feeling kindness and compassion, sleeping without worry, the ability to say what was on my mind.

  There was no falling in love. It just...was.

  Looking back, it was total bullshit, yet I still mourn the loss of the only man who ever looked at me like he did. Every time I look at our beautiful son, I am reminded of the night he pushed me away with his horrible and slurred words.

  Yet, that isn’t what I remember first of our time together, not even close. I wish it were. Being angry at him would be so much easier than thinking of him every. Single. Day.

  Unlike Gage, Garrett didn’t keep his perfect fucking nose in the air, holding his perfect head up high so everyone thought he was perfect. A trait of Gage’s that, somehow through the years, when I was Mrs. Gage Falcon, I adopted.

  I was angry at Garrett, so angry at him for telling me to get the hell away from him, stay away from him, and that I should pray that the child I was carrying wasn’t his, because a child from a girl like me and a man like him would be branded forever by all things wrong.

  When his brother stepped in and dragged me away from the room, he and I snuck away to talk. We were at a beach party at a well-off friend’s home.

  I knew what I had to do to make sure the child growing inside of me was protected from my past...and from Garrett’s words that felt like a curse. Words I knew were not from the man I had been in love with for almost a year. The man I seduced because he wouldn’t touch me, even though he wanted to, the evidence always plan as day.

  He was hard, I was incredibly in love, and even though he tried to stop what happened, I pushed because I wanted him, my hero, to be my first. Hell, I wanted him to be my only.

  For six months, we were all over each other. Mornings before school, afternoons when he dropped me off, and nights when he snuck out of his house to see me. Once a week, he took me to dinner, and sometimes he would drive by to show me where he lived. It was beautiful, and as a young woman in love, I dreamed of someday living in a home like that...with Garrett Falcon.

  I lied to Gage.

  Half of me hates it. The other half is forever grateful that, after that year of hell that was Garrett and my love, followed by nine months of torture, being pregnant and pretending it was Gage’s. Then lying about the night we were together that he was drunk, so damn drunk that he passed out. I did exactly what I had to do by throwing off my clothes and tucking myself beside a man who may not be my child’s father but shared DNA, and from what I heard about him, would do the right thing, even if he hated it. I did it out of love for the child who deserved better than me. I did it for the man who believed nothing good could come from him and I. I also did it to spite him, hurt him, break his heart like he had mine and I did it because I loved him.

  The morning after the party, Gage looked at me, cocked his eyebrow, and shook his head, saying, “Sorry, babe, I gotta be honest, I don’t remember much of last night.”

  I shrugged and forced the first lie. “You saved me from Garrett.”

  He nodded, sat up, and rubbed his hand over his black hair. “He’s a good guy, my brother. He just, I don’t know, flips shit sometimes. I’m sure he didn’t mean anything he said.”

  “It’s fine.” I sat up. “It gave me a chance to”—I look down his body, covered in ink and muscle, and acted as if I was into him—”meet you.”

  “Meet? So nothing happened?” he asked.

  I gave him a look, as if to say I was hurt, and went to stand.

  As expected from what Garrett had told me, it bothered him.

  “I’ll take you to breakfast, but I can’t promise anything more. Got a girlfriend.”

  When we walked out of the bedroom, Garrett was standing at the door of whoever’s place the party was at. He was fucked up, I could tell. I’d seen it too many times, just not with him.

  “You fuck that?” he asked Gage.

  “Mind your business, little brother,” Gage snarled at him.

  He shook his head and walked away.

  A month later, an entire month, I lived in that motel, worked, and waited for Garrett. He never came, called, or messaged. I knew I had to do something.

  I waited until Gage was pulling out of his driveway, had a taxi follow him to the nearest Starbucks, and “ran into him.”

  He looked like he didn’t even remember me. Then I told him I was pregnant.

  He didn’t flinch, run, or tell me to fuck off. He simply asked, “Is it mine?”

  I gave him that same look, the one of hurt I gave him that morning when he asked if we had slept together.

  “Okay.” He nodded. “Let’s go have a chat. Figure this out.”

  A month later, I became Mrs. Gage Falcon.

  Garrett didn’t show up to the wedding. He was supposed to be the best man. Gage wrote him off, because his brother was now a mess. He hadn’t done drugs when I was with him, but he had drunk occasionally. So, when I found out he was pretty hardcore into coke, pills, and pot, it was a bit of a shock, until I thought back on how we had met. It made perfect sense then.

  I lived in hell, absolute hell, as Gage lorded over me, keeping me away from the speculative eyes of his mother, I suppose it was to protect me, until the day Brandon was born. That was when she found me sobbing on my maternity suite’s bathroom floor, high on pain meds. I told her everything.

  My mother-in-law became my greatest ally in the sick and twisted game I played with her sons.

  Why? For Brandon.

  In that commonality, life became manageable, until Gage found out the truth that he wasn’t Brand’s father. Then my life became what I never imagined it would.

  I needed an escape when he took Brandon. I was a mess. I took some pills to numb myself. When I didn’t come home for three days, Garrett Falcon became right about me. For several months after that, I was a train wreck, hooked on pills prescribed to me for depression.

  That was when Gail threatened to make sure Gage didn’t let me see Brandon ever again, and so it happened that the only light shining through the façade that was my life could only visit me every three weeks. Then I knew I needed to do whatever I could to get my shit together.

  I went to school, got my bachelors in three years, passed my boards to become a nurse, met a nice man—a doctor—and now...Now I will get Brandon back. Now I am becoming the mother he deserves. The mother I always wanted. The mother I always wanted to be.

  This hell—knowing if Gage is with that bitch I’ll be watching him bond with other people—I deserve it, but I’ll be damned if I let that little bitch or my doubt win.

  Brandon is the product of the only real love I ever knew.

  Brandon isn’t a horrible brand caused by two people who are horrible. He is everything good. Everything.

  Chapter Three

  New York State of Mind

  Garrett

  When we pull up
in front of my brother’s building, my anger level goes from ten to a million. A pill, a drink, a fucking escape route, that’s what I need.

  I hate him. Hate the fucker who has always made me feel like a weak and worthless piece of shit. Hate that he knows my secret and deems me useless; so useless that he would rather put money in my bank account to keep me away while he lives my fucking life.

  Mine.

  Why the fuck can’t he just leave me alone? Why can’t they all just leave me the fuck alone?

  The second Patrick opens the door, and I grab my bag and get out. Then I grab a cigarette out of my pocket and light it.

  They both look a little bit more than pissed off, but I don’t give a shit. I walk over to the alley between the buildings and fucking smoke. When I’m done, I toss the butt and walk to the entrance. They follow me.

  “I know the way,” I tell them.

  They don’t listen. They keep following.

  I wonder what my brother told them about me. Then I shake off the wonder, realizing he wouldn’t say shit. It would make him look bad. Fucker.

  Heading up in the elevator, I think about just how good the asshole has it. Fucking castle in the sky. Up so high he can look down on everyone around. Bet he likes that shit.

  As soon as we walk off the elevator and into his apartment, I see him standing there, looking pretty much the same as he did a couple years ago, except more ink. His superior glare pisses me off immediately.

  “Well, I’m fuckin’ here. Now what, big brother?” I taunt.

  In mere seconds, he comes at me, fists flying. I let him strike first.

  “You fucking piece of shit!” He hits me in the face. Should hurt, but it doesn’t. Instead, it gives me an excuse to unleash on the fucker. He should have left me the fuck alone.

  “You fucking meddling bastard!” I get three jabs in before the fucking goons rip our bodies apart.

  “Stop! Fucking stop this shit now!” Gray yells, stepping between us. “That’s enough! You’re goddamn brothers!”

  “He’s no fucking brother to me,” I yell as I try to pull away from one of the Patrick men.