by Sybil Bartel
I never said I was your pawn
You took from dusk till dawn
You waited for me to break
You waited for me to cave
You waited till there was nothing left to save
But you forgot
I was the one thing you never had
I was never yours to take
I was never yours to break
Nothing you did
Nothing you said
Nothing you could’ve done
Everything I knew was because of you
Everything I learned, you taught me wrong
All of your hatred
All of your rage
Stuck in my age
Bitter was the taste of you
Blood was the life you knew
I was never yours to take
I was never yours to break
Blood-soaked and dry
Smiling at what you’d done
Thinking you’d finally won
I’m still here to tell
Soaked in my blood
Shaking in rage
Too young for this age
Mine was the hand that drew back to fight
Striking the flesh that could never strike once
Losing your power
You threw what was left
But your words never touched me
I knew I was free
You never broke me
Blood-soaked and dry
You can’t make a grown man cry
So take what you have left
Memories of blood
Hatred is all you possess
You’re less than nothing now
Bitter and old
Hatred and cold
You can’t run from the devil in you
So take what you have left
Nothing has a hold over me
You’re dead and I’m free
You never broke me.
I killed it.
Sneering at the woman who brought me into this world, I played the last chord and the lights went out. I headed backstage, glad Myles hated encores. I put my bass in its case and was closing it up when Myles, Ben and Aaron came in.
“Dude!” Aaron slapped me on the shoulder. “That was awesome! You didn’t tell us you changed it up.”
“You didn’t stick around to hear but the crowd loved it.” Myles smiled.
“Whoever she is, I’m glad I’m not her.” Ben shook his head.
“Right,” Aaron agreed, laughing. “C’mon, drinks are on me!”
“When have you ever paid for shit here?” I scowled at Aaron.
Myles chuckled. “He has a point.”
“Whatever. Who’s with me?” Nothing wiped the smile off Aaron’s face.
“I’m out.” But not before I had Hank toss the bitch and eighty-six her from the club.
“I’m going to find Sam.” Myles packed up his guitar.
Aaron looked at Ben. “You in?”
Ben shrugged and he and Aaron left. I picked up my case and Myles waited till the door closed, then looked at me.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t know what it would be like to see her again. I wasn’t sure how I’d react. The anticipation had been a hundred times worse. In my mind I was that twelve-year-old kid who’d hit her back then lost the shit life I knew. I was beaten, robbed of a childhood and broken, but I’d had a roof over my head and food in my stomach. After that day, I had nothing for almost two years except drugs, fights and instability. She’d never take anything from me again. “She’s dead to me.” A new sort of calm descended as I said it.
Myles slowly nodded. “You leaving through the back?”
“Fuck that.”
Myles raised his eyebrows.
“Hank can toss her. My club, my rules.”
A half smile tipped the side of Myles’s mouth. “I’m going to get Sam, she’s by the bar. You want me to grab Hank?”
The thought of cowering in my office until Hank handled my shit was the pussy way out. “No, I’m coming. I’ll drop my bass in my office and see you out there.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Myles followed me to my office while I dumped my bass then we entered the club through the back hallway. Saturday night, the place was packed. The DJ had started spinning again and we’d taken about two steps before the chicks were on us, mostly Myles. Myles smiled his million-dollar smile and put on his aloof act. I never bothered. I outright ignored them.
I followed Myles to the bar, making a concerted effort not to scan the crowd. Myles found Sam and tucked her under his arm after giving her a kiss. He turned to me and Sam looked up with a smile.
“New lyrics?” she asked coyly.
“Hey, doll.” I leaned down and kissed her cheek.
“Fitting,” she said in my ear, giving me a quick, tight, hug.
“Thanks.” I was hyper aware my back was to the crowd.
When I released Sam, Myles was motioning over one of the bartenders. Half turned away from me, I was still able to hear the single word he said. “Security.”
The hair on the back of my neck bristled and the fight-or-flight instinct flooded my veins with adrenaline.
Myles turned back to me, his face impassive, and he gave a slight nod. “You want something to drink, babe?” he asked Sam while staring at me.
Sam’s eyes widened slightly.
“Jameson’s neat, thank you.” The slightly slurred ashtray voice I hadn’t heard in twelve years answered Myles’s question sarcastically.
My hands went to my hips, I inhaled and turned.
Her dishwater-blond hair, stringy from years of neglect, hung in greasy clumps over too-tanned skin a decade older. Green eyes the same color as mine looked up at me with disdain.
“Not happening,” I said, my voice flat.
“You’re not gonna buy your mother a drink after all these years?” She sneered through smudged lipstick and bleeding eyeliner.
“I don’t have a mother.” Never did.
She scoffed. “Oh, you have a mother, which is more than you deserve.” She lifted what looked like a double Jameson’s to her lips and eyed me over the rim, daring me to engage.
I knew the game. I didn’t say shit. I only stared her down.
It took two seconds. She broke eye contact and looked at Myles like he was ripe for the taking, despite Sam under his arm. “You gonna introduce me?” She leered at him.
“No.” My voice still flat, she’d get nothing from me.
My mother laughed a bitter laugh that sounded more like coughing, then tossed the Jameson’s in one gulp. She tried to put the glass on the bar but missed. It crashed at her feet and shattered everywhere but she ignored it. Teetering on beat-down hooker heels, she swayed and held a hand out to Myles. “Georgia Allen.”
Neither Myles nor Sam moved.
Hank appeared behind my mother and caught her elbow just as she swayed backward. His eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted with a look of disgust. “Problem, boss?”
My mother swung a drunken arm at Hank. “Leggo me,” she slurred.
A wall of muscle, Hank didn’t so much as flinch. “Need me to take out the trash?”
I nodded.
Hank swept my mother around and propelled her through the crowd. A few steps and she stumbled but Hank caught her. Hands around her waist, he practically carried her out. From behind, I got a good look at how thin and frail she’d become. Her body wasted from years of abuse, she disappeared into the crowd. I felt nothing.
Turning back to Myles, I ignored the look of sympathy on Sam’s face.
“You okay?” Myles asked.
“Never better.” I didn’t know what I was. I glanced at my watch. All I knew, I wanted to see Carly, bad.
Myles smiled knowingly. “Go, you still have time.”
Inclining my head, I winked at Sam then pushed through the crowd.
I should’ve known it was too easy.
Chapter Thirty
Gunnar
>
Before I even made it outside, Hank intercepted me and pulled me into the security office.
“Problem.” He paused and held his earpiece, his eyes drifting for a moment, then he looked back at me. “She passed out before we could get her in a cab.”
“Why you telling me? Follow protocol, call the cops.” This was nothing new.
Hank shifted, then pulled the earpiece out. “I didn’t know she was your mother,” he said uncomfortably.
“She’s nothing to me.”
“I wouldn’t have called her trash if I’d known.”
“Then the joke’s on you.” She was trash.
“How you want to handle this?” he asked earnestly.
I was out of patience and this was cutting into my time. “Fuck, Hank, call the cops. This isn’t my problem, do your fucking job.”
Hank held up a plastic card key.
“What the fuck is that?” I snapped, irritated.
“She’s staying at the Days Inn. Want me to have one of the guys take her back?”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. “Where’d you get that?” If he’d searched her, we were fucked. Not that I cared, but the law did.
His mouth twisted into a grimace.
You have got to be kidding me. “She propositioned you?” I was fucking disgusted.
Hank shifted again. “Before she passed out.”
“Fuck.” The fact he was offering to have one of the guys take her back, which broke just about every rule security had, made me think twice about calling the cops. I owed Hank. I couldn’t make this his problem. I had to clean up my own shit. “I’ll take her.” The last thing the club needed was a lawsuit.
“You want one of the guys to go with you?”
It was policy. Never be alone with a passed-out chick. “No, I’ll do it. Where is she?”
“Pull up north of the main entrance, we’ll put her in your car.”
Motherfucker. “If she fucking heaves in my ride, I’m coming back for you.”
Hank looked at me with his perpetual bouncer serious face. “This isn’t a night out, it’s habitual. She’s an alcoholic.”
I didn’t give a shit what she was but I got what he was saying. She was passed out cold but she wouldn’t toss her guts. “I’m holding you to that.” He’d better be right.
Hank didn’t comment. He put his earpiece back in and I followed him out. I jogged across the lot and pulled the Barracuda around. The line to get into the club now gone because it was almost closing, I was able to get right up front. One of the other bouncers was standing sentry, his back to the heap on the ground behind him. Hank opened my passenger door. The other bouncer lifted her in and Hank buckled her seat belt. My car filled with the rank smell of stale alcohol and cigarettes.
“She dead?” Could I be that lucky?
“She will be if she keeps this up.” Hank handed me the room key. “I called ahead, she’s in Room 214. The night manager won’t hassle you. Take her in, dump her then walk back out through the lobby so he sees you.”
“Done this before?” I asked sarcastically.
“You have no idea.”
Jesus. I didn’t have a comeback for that.
“Good luck. Call if there’s a problem.” Hank shut the door and slapped the top of my car.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
I drove through empty streets taking turns slow so she wouldn’t face-plant on the dash board. I was so disgusted with her, I couldn’t even look at her. She was no longer my mother, she was a forty-three-year-old drunk skank. I couldn’t fathom what my dad had ever seen in her. What a fucking joke.
I pulled up in front of the lobby of the hotel and jogged around the front of the car. When I opened the door, her head lifted and one eye opened.
“Wanna party, sailor?” she slurred.
“Go fuck yourself.” I reached for the seatbelt and unlatched it.
She tried to laugh but her head fell back and her eye fluttered shut.
Un-fucking-believable. I didn’t even want to touch her but the quicker I dumped her, the quicker I was out of here.
“In for a penny, in for a penny,” I chanted as I took a deep breath of clean night air, lifted her out of the car and slung her over my shoulder. I was shocked at how light she was. All loose skin and bones in her dirty jean skirt.
Breathing through my mouth, I kicked my car door shut and walked into the lobby. The manager barely glanced at me but I said what I was doing anyway. “Dropping off, back in a few.”
“Yeah, Hank called.” He didn’t seem to care.
I walked through the small lobby and up a flight of stairs to the second floor. I followed signs to her room number, used the card key, threw open the door and hit the light. Nothing could’ve prepared me for what I saw next.
He was ten, maybe twelve years old but he was so thin and disheveled I couldn’t tell. A mop of dirty-blond hair six months past a haircut fell into his bright green eyes. He scampered off the farthest bed and crouched down behind the safety of the mattress, but not before I recognized what was all over his arms and legs.
Bile rose in my throat and rage clouded my vision. I threw the monster down on the bed closest to the door. Her head hit the headboard with a thud and she moaned.
Hands fisted, I began to shake. “Stand up,” I demanded.
The mop of hair visible just above the mattress rose, and a defiant chin jutted out. “Are you going to have sex with my mom?”
My jaw clenched so tight, I thought I’d crack my back teeth. I shook my head once. “No.” Nostrils flared, I counted to ten. “What’s your name?”
“What’s yours?” His head sank a little lower.
“Graham.”
“Gunnar,” he whispered.
I fought for every breath. “How old are you, Gunnar?”
“Are you going to hurt me?”
Jesus. “No.”
He stared at me and I willed the shakes away and held perfectly still. His chin jutted out again and he took a deep breath, puffing his chest out. “I’m eleven.”
“Where’s your dad?” I asked but I already knew.
Still holding his chest out, he seemed to quiver from the effort. “I don’t have one. You can leave now.”
I’d known the second I laid eyes on him that I wasn’t walking out of this hotel room without him. No fucking way but I also knew I couldn’t drag him out. I glanced behind me and grabbed one of the two chairs at the small table and pulled it closer to him. I sat and folded my hands using the few seconds to come up with a game plan.
“You look pretty smart, Gunnar. Can we talk man to man?”
He eyed me wearily. “Are you a cop?”
I cracked a smile. This kid had guts. “No, I’m a mechanic.”
“Cool.”
“I’m also in a band, I play bass. And—” I took a deep breath and nodded at the bitch passed out on the bed behind me, then looked Gunnar in the eye, “—she’s my mother too.”
At first he didn’t react. Then he sank lower.
“I don’t have a brother,” his voice shook.
“You do now.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said angrily.
I slowly reached into my back pocket, pulled out my wallet and tossed it at him. “Look at the driver’s license, the credit cards, tell me what name you see.”
He snatched the wallet and when he saw my cash, he started counting it.
My chest felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. I wanted to empty my bank account and give it all to him but I knew it’d never fix his past eleven years of abuse. “Read the name on the license then you can have the cash.”
Quicker than I could blink he pocketed the money. Slower, he took out the license and credit cards. When he looked up at me, he had a look I knew all too well. He trusted no one.
“This doesn’t mean anything.”
“True, but I think you and I both know in this case it does. Look at my eyes, look at yours. If I didn’t shave my head, I’d have blo
nd hair too. Same nose, same square jaw, I think you’re seeing what I’m seeing right now.” When he didn’t react, I went on. “Our mother’s name is Georgia Marie Allen, she was born in Pensacola and she’s forty-three years old. She was an only child, her parents are dead, she drinks like a fish and—she pushed me around until I was twelve.”
Gunnar’s face went blotchy and he looked away.
Neither of us spoke for a full minute.
“You can go,” his small voice broke the silence.
“You can come with me.”
He shook his head.
“Why not?”
“I...I have to take care of her.” His voice broke.
It took everything I had not to jump up, yell bullshit and drag him away from the despicable human being passed out on the bed.
“Who’s gonna take care of you?” I asked.
His face went red, he stood up from his hiding spot and his hands balled into fists. “I can take care of myself!”
I almost wanted to smile. He was a fighter. Thank God, he was a fighter. “I don’t doubt that for one minute but I’d really like for you to come with me. How about we go for some food?” I was always hungry when I was his age and I hadn’t been fifteen pounds underweight.