Christ, amazing.
Jonny kept driving deep and listened as her excitement grew. A sound that fed his frenzy, his need, spurred him on.
“Yes,” she gasped and her pussy convulsed.
Jesus fuck.
“Goddamn perfection,” Jonny growled and let go.
He fucked her hard and fast through her orgasm. He kept fucking her until her moans turned into soft pants, and only then did Jonny join her. Eyes locked. Buried to the root. Pleasure pulsed, ricocheted, consumed. Heat ignited in his soul, radiated outward until the warmth consumed him. Jonny gave it a moment to wash over him. After he took that, felt it, memorized it.
Bobby Layne. All his.
All he needed to beat back the demons.
Just her.
Jonny couldn’t keep his eyes off Bobby. She was sitting outside on the deck, her head tipped back taking in the rays of the morning sun, coffee in one hand, her tablet in the other. He was standing in the doorway with his own cup of joe thinking he could stare at her for hours. Only he’d rather be doing it back home.
The only problem with that was if they went back, everyone would want a piece of her. She was tight with her girls; it was a rare occasion Jonny saw her without one of them at her side, or alternately with her phone to her ear, gabbing. She was also close with her girls’ men that meant if she wasn’t working for Genevieve, out with her posse, or on the phone with them, she was hanging out at Gemini Group. She’d say she hung out there so she could gossip with McKenna while she worked, but that wasn’t why. Bobby liked to be close to the people she cared about, she liked running to get them coffee, lunch, taking care of the guys any way she could. Doing that for her girls but also as a way to give back to the men who had become brothers.
Jonny liked all that said about the type of woman Bobby was. What he didn’t like was knowing the moment they got back to KC, both of them would be hounded. He knew his time was up, he needed to call Nix and check in. It would’ve been the right thing to do. His friends were worried about him, but he wanted time with Bobby. Like he’d told her—a week, just the two of them.
It was selfish. Jonny also didn’t give a shit. He was taking this time.
Those were his thoughts staring at his woman when his phone in his back pocket rang, disturbing the quiet moment. Bobby’s neck twisted and she smiled.
Good God, she was beautiful.
“You gonna get that?” she asked.
“Only person I wanna talk to is sitting right in front of me.”
He knew he’d given her the right answer, even though he was simply telling the truth, when her smile turned blinding.
The phone stopped ringing and he asked, “Wanna go out to breakfast or stay in?”
Before she could answer, his phone started ringing again.
“You should at least see who it is.”
She was right, but he had a feeling he knew who it was. The guys had given up calling weeks ago. The only two people Jonny had communicated with since he’d been at the beach were his mother and nephew. Caleb didn’t call, though if he did, Jonny would’ve answered. The boy texted instead. The only person who still rang his phone was his mother.
Unfortunately, Jonny couldn’t put Anita Spencer off.
With a great deal of irritation he wished he didn’t feel, Jonny pulled his phone from his back pocket and looked at the screen. Irrational annoyance set in.
He swiped the screen to connect the call and brought his cell to his ear.
“Ma?”
“Jonathan.”
That’s all it took. Just his name and Jonny’s jaw clenched. It was barely coming on eleven o’clock in the morning and he heard it.
“Everything okay?” he asked gratuitously, knowing damn good and well there wasn’t a damn thing okay in his mother’s life.
The question was perfunctory. A cursory greeting. A ridiculous question he asked every time she called knowing how she’d answer.
“Of course.”
Lie.
Everything was always a goddamn lie.
He was acutely aware Bobby’s eyes were on him and try as he might Jonny couldn’t force his body to relax. Not when it wasn’t even lunch and he could hear the slur in his mother’s voice.
She’d started early. On a good day, Anita waited to hit the bottle until dinner time and didn’t finish until she was annihilated. On not so good days, she started as soon as she rolled out of bed.
It was a not so good day.
“Will you be home for your dad’s birthday?”
“Ma,” he snarled.
“I just thought you’d want to go to the cemetery with me this year. You haven’t been. I thought…maybe Caleb and Rory would like to go.”
Involuntary rage took over.
“Don’t you dare call Macy and ask her that shit.”
Jonny heard his mother’s swift inhale but he felt Bobby's presence. Just her nearness felt like a physical touch. She was getting up out of the chair, ready to come to him, comfort him. Any other time he’d welcome it, but not when he was speaking to his drunkard of a mother about his lying, cheating father. Not when the burn of their betrayal was slicing through him. He shook his head and Bobby’s step faltered but she didn’t stop her approach.
Jonny needed to get his mother off the phone with her promise that she wouldn’t reach out to his sister-in-law Macy.
“Why in the world not?”
Clueless.
“To start with, you’re halfway to sloshed. Macy doesn’t need to hear it.”
“Jona—”
“But more importantly, don’t you think Caleb and Rory have had enough hurt?”
“I’m their grandmother,” she weakly protested, not addressing her drunken state. “And Calvin was their grandfather.”
“Was he?” he snarled, losing patience.
Jonny felt Bobby’s hand on his forearm. He looked down and watched as she slowly trailed her fingertips down his arm until their palms were together and she curled her fingers around his.
“Breathe,” Bobby whispered.
Jonny did not breathe in fear he’d exhale fire.
“That’s a horrible thing to say. I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”
Of course she wouldn’t know. She was too goddamn busy drowning her sorrows, same as she’d been since Jonny was ten. Same day, over and over. Same lie. Same bullshit.
Nothing ever changed.
No, that wasn’t true; it got worse.
Apparently, the silence had stretched on too long without Jonny doing what he always did after he lost his cool with his mother, which was to apologize. And Anita, unable to endure her son’s disapproval, broke that silence. When she did, Jonny lost the loose hold he had with his mother.
“You can’t imagine how hard this has been on me.”
“I can’t, Ma? Really?”
“Jona—”
“Oh, no. You’re right. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have my husband cheat on me. But you know what I don’t need to imagine? What it feels like to know the dad I loved, the man I looked up to, the man I thought was a good, decent man—wasn’t. I also don’t need to imagine what it’s like to not only find that out, but then watch my mother who is a good, decent woman turn into an alcoholic.”
“I’m not an alcoholic,” she denied.
“It’s not even eleven in the morning,” Jonny reminded her.
Bobby squeezed his hand and anger surged.
Anger at his father, his mother, his brother, the universe.
Secrets and lies.
Neither were of Jonny’s making yet he’d been forced to play along. His father’s indiscretions had been a black stain on the family. His “adopted” brother the breathing, walking proof Calvin Spencer was a dickhead. A child the community had praised the Spencers for fostering then adopting. A child who then grew into a teenager with anger issues. A child who grew into a man who was a shit husband, shit father, and in the end a man who snapped and killed his father.
And through all of that, Anita had sunk further and further into her misery. A woman who at one time was a good mother, turned sour.
Raising your husband’s love child would do that.
Lying to your friends, your relatives, your other child would do that.
“It’s a hard week for me, Jonathan. Your father’s birthday is—”
“Just stop,” Jonny interrupted her. “The drinking didn’t start after he died. It’s just gotten worse because he’s not around to cover for you. This isn’t the first conversation we’ve had about this. It isn’t even the tenth. I’ve begged you to get help. I’ve offered to pay for it. I’ve offered to take you to New York so you could be close to your brothers and no one in Cliff City would find out. Begged, Ma. Your son has fucking begged you to get help and still you deny you have a drinking problem.”
“You shouldn’t say the f-word to your mother, Jonathan, it’s disrespectful.”
Jonny’s chin dipped and his head lulled forward.
All the anger slid clean away and in its wake leaving nothing.
No pain. No remorse. No love.
Just nothing.
How could a son feel nothing for the woman who raised him?
“Don’t call Macy,” he told her in an effort to wrap up the call. “The kids are not going to the cemetery, neither am I. You wanna go to keep up appearances you do that. You wanna go stare at the headstone of the man that betrayed you, destroyed our family, lied, and cheated you do that alone. You wake up and want help, call me. Until that happens, Ma, I’m sorry to say I’m done with this. I didn’t make this mess, but you and Dad sure did make me live it and I’m done with that, too.”
Suddenly and surprisingly, Anita no longer sounded intoxicated when she spat, “You wouldn’t dare.”
Jonny’s hand flexed in Bobby’s and tightened until he heard her whimper in pain. Christ. He tried to disengage their hands but Bobby held fast and refused to let go. The conversation needed to end. This wasn’t the way he’d wanted to ease his woman into the topic of his fucked-up family. He’d wanted time with her with no outside distractions, and that had included the past. He’d wanted a week of mellow, then on the last day before they left to go home, he would’ve told her everything. She deserved to know. But he just wanted a few days of peace, with his Bobby. Then his mother had called and blown his plans to hell.
Typical. So goddamn typical, nothing in Jonny’s life was his own. It was a series of days, months, years where he was expected to toe the line of dysfunction.
Fuck that.
He was done with that, too.
“I wouldn’t dare to do what?” he asked.
“You can’t tell anyone. You know how the town is, they’ll talk. Think about Aurora and Caleb. What would people say to them?”
That was a low blow using his beloved niece and nephew against him. Since the day Caleb had come into this world, Jonny had done everything he could to shield his nephew from the Spencer lies.
“The man is dead, yet you’re still choosing him over your son.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Anita scoffed.
The ugliness in his mother’s voice broke Jonny’s heart. Not because he hadn’t heard it before, the way her tone turned hard. The nasty sneer, however, the snarls and biting words had been for her husband and only when she thought her children were asleep.
That part of his life was a lie, too. Anita and Calvin didn’t argue in front of their children. They did that behind closed doors. The rest of the time they pretended nothing was amiss.
“And you’re a drunk, Ma. Who needs help. You’re also a mother and I suggest you start acting like one or you’ll find yourself not that anymore. I’m ending the call,” Jonny warned. “But before I let you go I’m going to tell you one more time—do not call Macy and the kids. You do, you won’t like what happens.”
“I am your mother!” she screeched.
“Then start acting like it.”
With that, Jonny took the phone from his ear while his mother was shouting. He couldn’t make out the words but he knew they were utter bullshit.
Further, he knew he was a shit son.
And worse, Bobby being privy to the whole disastrous conversation knew it, too.
He hadn’t put his phone away before Bobby announced, “My mother was an alcoholic.”
Woodenly, because his body had turned to stone, Jonny shoved his cell in his pocket and looked over at Bobby. “Come again?”
“Of course, no one called her that,” she went on. “Not because she wasn’t one, it was no one thought anything of her drinking because it was normal where I grew up. Kathy Layne was the life of the party, or so I’ve been told. Only time she was happy was when she had a bottle in hand. And I do mean a bottle. She’d sing and dance and smile and tell me and EJ how she was gonna be one of those showgirl types. The problem was she was so drunk all the time she was delusional. Not only could she not carry a tune in a basket, she must’ve forgotten she sounded like a dying rhinoceros. Not that she was ever sober long enough to remember anything. This included making the two children she’d pushed out supper. Then one day she’d totally forgotten she was a mother at all and she took off cleaning out my daddy’s best shine.
“To this day I’m not sure what my daddy was more upset about, Kathy taking his booze or his wife leaving him. Though he wasn’t upset for long and he didn’t have a mind to the two children who were left living with him and what they might need. Hell, he didn’t notice us at all until EJ was old enough to make him money and I was old enough to clean his house.”
Jonny stood, his body locked tight, breath caught in his lungs, and he stared at Bobby. Unable to formulate words. Unable to process all that she’d told him. And finally unable to picture this beautiful, kind, smart, loyal, honest woman not having…what didn’t she have? A good mom to show her the way, a dad who loved and praised his little girl, good role models.
How in the hell had Bobby Layne become all that she was all on her own?
Because she’s smart, kind, and determined.
“I’m telling you that,” Bobby continued. “Because I won’t be apologizing for not giving you privacy to speak to your mother. I’m telling you so you’ll know I understand. But also because you said we were starting something, so you should know who you’re starting with. So that’s me. My daddy’s a criminal. My brother’s no better. My mom is…I don’t know what she is because I haven’t seen her in over twenty-five years. But when I had her, she wasn’t much so I don’t think she’s much now.”
“Baby—”
“No, Jonny. I heard what you said to your ma and I don’t pity you. So you’ll be returnin’ the favor. Not only don’t I want it, I don’t need it. I left that girl back in Kentucky. I’ve worked myself to the bone getting rid of all that was Shady Hollow. I’m not that girl and you won’t be treatin’ me as such.”
Jonny needed to add strong and resilient to the list of things that Bobby Layne was. And would, later, after he fed his woman and came clean.
If one good thing had come from his mother’s call, it was a resolute certainty Bobby Layne was meant to be his.
8
I was a little nauseous as Jonny led me into the house. A little light-headed, too.
So much for leaving the past in the past.
I should’ve kept my big trap shut, but I couldn’t stop myself. Not when Jonny looked the way he did when he was speaking to his mother. Beyond tortured. Beyond pained. The man had practically begged his mother to seek help. Something he’d said he’d done in the past to no avail.
I had no idea Mrs. Spencer drank. I’d only met her twice and neither of those times had she been intoxicated. At least, I hadn’t thought so—now I wasn’t so sure. What I did know was Jonny openly spoke to his mother while I was standing next to him; he hadn’t walked away, asked me to leave, or cut the conversation short.
He’d let it all hang out.
And there was a lot to sift through
. His mother’s issue with alcohol was only the beginning. He’d mentioned his father had cheated and lied. I got the feeling that betrayal might’ve edged out the hurt his mother’s drinking caused. I knew this from experience as well. Elmer Layne wasn’t known for his faithfulness to his wife and family. Daddy didn’t hide his women, not even from his woman. As a child, I’d blamed his inability to be a good husband as the reason Kathy drank. I also blamed my daddy for her finally getting fed up and leaving. Growing up, I’d blamed a lot of what happened to my family on how we lived, where we lived, going back generations and neither of my parents knowing any better.
Then I grew up and learned that no matter where I was, Nashville, Tennessee, or Beverly Hills, California, men cheated, they drank, they lied. Women did the same. It wasn’t limited to the holler. It wasn’t about wealth, ethnicity, religion, or poverty. What it was, was wrong. Just wrong. Didn’t matter where you came from or your social status—people lied and cheated.
That was when I had to admit Kathy and Elmer Layne weren’t products of their environments. They were assholes. Both of them. The good news for me was, that meant there was a chance for me. I was born and raised in Shady Hollow. My kin were who they were but I wasn’t them. Knowing my parents were simple-minded, selfish jackholes and they were that because they wanted to be, set me free.
I wasn’t them.
I wasn’t my brother.
I was me.
I was proud of what I’d accomplished.
Yet, I was still embarrassed of my past.
Something to think of later when Jonny wasn’t vibrating with pent-up anger. When he didn’t look like the weight of the world sat on his chest.
Jonny's Redemption (Gemini Group Book 7) Page 5