Twist (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  Leah shrugged. “I don’t even know what I’d study. I don’t know what I’d like.”

  Burt came and sat on the single chair they used on those rare occasions when someone had to wait to see him. “You like to sing and read and write. You like history. You like working with little children, teaching them. Those are just the things I’ve learned about you, watching you grow up. I imagine there’s much more in your head that you enjoy and do well. But just in those things I mentioned, there’s a wide world of degrees and careers.” He leaned forward, toward her. “The thing is, Leah—you can figure it out while you’re there. Take some general education classes. The whole point of those is to find your interest.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “What’s stopping you? It’s not your dad anymore, right? You don’t have to take care of him. Max, or whatever you call him—would he stop you?”

  They’d never talked about this, but Leah knew Gunner wouldn’t get in her way. “No. He’d help me.”

  He’d probably pay for it, if he could. Leah wasn’t entirely sure of his financial situation. The bills got paid, and he gave her grocery money and stuff like that. He didn’t want her to use her own paychecks for living expenses, so she’d been saving most of her income, such as it was. But they neither spent money wildly nor hurt for it, so she wasn’t sure how much money he actually had or earned.

  Or, for that matter, how he earned it. She understood that the club earned in ways the IRS didn’t sanction, but she wasn’t especially interested in knowing exactly what that meant.

  “Then what’s stopping you?”

  She didn’t know. Feeling defensive and dumb, she stared stonily back at her boss until he sighed and stood up.

  “Okay. Get that ballot to the printer, and type up my remarks for the Chamber of Commerce, please.” He went back to his office and closed the door.

  Leah sat and stared at the blotter calendar on her desk. All the notations for the things she had to do and remember, and all the little doodles around the edges, drawn during phone calls when she’d been on hold or bored by some resident’s longwinded gripe.

  With the exception of the pink heart she’d drawn around a day at the end of the month—Gunner’s birthday—the whole blotter was a study in boredom. She drove almost an hour each way to get to this part-time job in a town that wasn’t hers anymore because it was the job she’d had, the job she’d been handed.

  The only choice she’d ever truly made in her life was to stand up to her father and move away, and even that choice had happened only because circumstances had forced it. Leah was letting life happen to her. Just like she’d let strangers fuck her—and gotten high so she could tell herself that she wanted it, that she liked it.

  That was just stupid. More than stupid. It was weak.

  Well, fuck that.

  She opened the bottom drawer again. Gathering up every brochure and notice Burt had left for her, she sorted them in piles on the blotter. Anything out of state or beyond commuting distance, she threw away. One choice she absolutely knew was the right one: she lived in Tulsa now. With Gunner. And she wasn’t going anywhere.

  The colleges local enough, she sorted into community colleges, public universities, and private universities. Then she made a stack of financial aid and scholarship information. Then she checked the application dates and requirements. She’d taken the SAT in high school, mainly because the guidance counselor wouldn’t get off her back about it, and she’d scored well: 760 verbal and 690 math.

  When she had a manageable stack of universities she could apply to for the following fall, and the community college she could apply to for the coming spring, she pulled her notepad over and drafted out a plan. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, but Burt was right. She needed to do something. To act. To choose.

  ~oOo~

  On her way out of Grant that afternoon, she made another choice, and turned onto Sumner Street, then onto Nightingale Lane. Assuming her father’s habits had not changed, she knew he’d be home.

  As before, knocking like a stranger on the front door of the house she’d grown up in felt alienating and sad, but she knocked briskly and then girded herself to come face to face with a Biddy.

  She didn’t. The door opened, and it was her father.

  He looked terrible.

  Not in the hung over, desiccated way with which she was familiar. He was neatly put together, still wearing his collar, under a pullover sweater, as was his habit in the autumn, but without his jacket, so he hadn’t been home long. His hair was trimmed and combed in its typical way, and his face showed the light shadow of beard that said he’d shaved that morning. He looked neither thinner nor fatter than she’d known him to be. In all those features, he seemed normal.

  But the circles and sags under his eyes were darker and more pronounced, and there was a vacant space behind his eyes. What was terrible about his look was the sadness.

  Strangely, selfishly, Leah took some heart in that. She didn’t want him to suffer, but she wanted him to miss her.

  An obvious burst of pain clenched his face when he saw her.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Angel.” The word was as much a plea as a greeting.

  “Can we talk?”

  He didn’t answer, or even nod, but he stepped back and swung the door wide, and Leah walked into the house she’d grown up in.

  ~oOo~

  After he directed her to the dining table, he made tea and brought them each a cup. Her father didn’t take coffee after noon.

  “You look well, Leah,” he said as he sat in his usual place at the table. “Are you well?”

  “I am. How are you?”

  He gave her smile both sad and resigned. “Well enough. As you can see, I’m on my feet.”

  “Can I ask…are you still…” She didn’t know how to ask the question. He clearly knew what she was trying to ask, but he didn’t offer her any help. Finally, she simply blurted it out. “Are you still drinking?”

  “No, you can’t ask.”

  Leah took that to mean that he was, and she was ashamed at the sense of relief she felt. If he’d gotten sober after she’d left him, she didn’t think she could handle what that would have meant about her and about their relationship.

  “Are you still with Max Wesson?”

  “He goes by Gunner now, except for his dad and sister.”

  He nodded but didn’t correct his question.

  “Yeah, I am. I love him, Daddy. He’s a good man.”

  “And you live together? In sin?”

  Jumping straight to judgment and condemnation—he hadn’t softened at all, then. Leah swallowed hard before she spoke. “Daddy, please don’t. I love you and I miss you. I’m here because I want to find a way to be in each other’s lives. I want to know if you can accept who I am.”

  “Do you know who that is?”

  “I’m figuring it out. I know I’m more than just your daughter. I’m more than just your angel.”

  “More? Or less?”

  “Daddy.” Her heart felt bruised, and her stomach turned. Did he love his image of her so much more than he loved the actual her? Her own father? “Please. Don’t you love me enough to accept me even if I’m not perfect?”

  “I do. I love you more than anything on this earth. I miss you every single day, angel. The hole you made inside me threatens to swallow me up.” His eyes went suddenly wet, and he turned away. Staring out the window, he went on. “Of course I don’t need you to be perfect. Only the Lord Himself is perfect. But I cannot abide your willful pursuit of imperfection. What makes us worthy is that we strive to be worthy.”

  His eyes returned to hers, and his tone took on the bite of disapproval again. “Living in sin with Max Wesson, turning your back on the good life you had, the righteous path you were on, to follow the path of a known criminal? Whatever you’re striving for now, it’s not the Lord’s way, and I can’t accept it.”

  “Gunner’s not a criminal, Da
ddy. He doesn’t have a record.” She knew that was a fine hair to split, and her father’s steely silence in response indicated that he knew it, too.

  “My heart is broken without you, Leah Grace. Maybe my spirit as well. Your home is here waiting for you. Your life. Come back to it. Please. Please, come home.”

  Understanding what all this meant, that she was holding a flowered china cup filled with oolong tea and facing the true end of her relationship with her father, Leah could barely speak. But she made her voice as steady as she could and asserted, “I don’t want the life I had. I don’t fit in it. I want the life I’m making for myself.”

  His head sagged forward, but when he lifted it again, his expression was firm. “Then I don’t know what more we have to talk about.”

  ~oOo~

  “Please don’t do this, please don’t do this.” Leah grabbed Gunner’s arm as he turned sharply toward the flagstone walkway from her father’s driveway to the front door. Her throat felt stretched from all the tears she’d cried in the past few hours, and she could hear more of them in her voice, but they didn’t come. Her swollen, bleary eyes couldn’t make any more. “Gun, please.”

  She’d thought he was taking her for a ride to make her feel better. When she’d realized what he was doing, she tried to get him to turn back, she’d even yanked on him while they were on the road, risking pulling them both off balance, but he’d resisted her, his muscles tense with that hot, electric hum, and taken her straight back here.

  Now, he jerked his arm free of her restraining grip. “I’m not putting up with his shit. He doesn’t get to decide he doesn’t have a daughter because you didn’t turn out like he’d custom-ordered a fucking doll. At least, he’s gonna hear from me what a fucking prick he is. Stay out here if you want, but I’m getting in his fucking face.”

  He stormed up to the porch. Leah stood at the bike for a second, wanting desperately to be anywhere in the world but where she was. But she couldn’t let him go in on his own. What if he hurt her father? Would he? Yes, he might.

  When Gunner didn’t knock but shoved the door open and stalked straight into the house, Leah quit waffling and hurried after him.

  As her foot hit the porch floor, she heard a feminine shriek.

  “Gunner, no!” she yelled and bolted through the open door.

  She found him in the kitchen, confronting her father and a woman she’d never seen before.

  The woman was about her father’s age, with the kind of blonde hair that women of that age had when they’d gone grey and weren’t ready to deal with it—an ashy, busy blonde, cut in a salon style that was part Rachel and part Princess Di, with a lot of Oklahoma mixed in. She was pretty, in a soft, flouncy way. In her hand was a wooden spoon; she held it up like she’d intended to use it as a weapon.

  She wore one of Leah’s aprons, which had been Leah’s mother’s, and the makings of a meal were spread out over the island countertop. A rich, strong aroma of baking chicken and cheese weighted the air. Her father had come from the living room, it appeared. His clergy shirt and pullover had been changed, and his plaid shirt had two buttons open at his throat. Her father was a one-button-open kind of man, so Leah marked the difference as nearly indecent.

  He held a glass with a finger or two of scotch. Yes, he was still drinking. Considering the hour, Leah knew that he would not yet be drunk.

  It took her one second to note all of that; her father’s drink was still sloshing in his glass when she said, “Gunner, stop. Don’t.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the woman. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Her father gave them a glance and then directed his attention to Leah. “Leah, what’s going on here? Why did you bring him into my house?”

  “She didn’t,” Gunner answered, moving directly between him and Leah as if to shield her. “I’m here because you’re a fucking asshole, and I’m not going to let you get away with treating Leah like this.”

  Her father finished his drink and set the glass on the table. “Get out of my house, both of you, or I’ll call the sheriff.”

  “Best get on the horn, then, because I am not going any fucking where until you hear what I’ve got to say.” Leah could hear in his voice that he was smiling. He reached back for her hand, and she took it, letting him pull her up alongside him. Yep, he was smiling, a black, menacing snarl more full of anger than humor. “This is your daughter. She’s amazing, she’s a fucking miracle, and you owe her an apology. She’s not your maid, she’s not your caregiver, and she’s not your fucking wife. She’s your daughter. You’re supposed to take care of her.”

  “Joan, do you mind giving us some privacy?”

  “Not at all,” the woman mumbled, undoing Leah’s apron. “The casserole has half an hour left. I’ll just…I’ll…I’ll go.”

  “No. I don’t want you to go.”

  Leah felt a little bit sorry for Joan, who stood there, clearly uncomfortable, puzzling out how to stay and also give them privacy.

  “Okay. I’ll…just be on the front porch, then.” She wandered toward the front of the house. They all watched her go.

  As soon as she was out the front door, Leah’s father took three quick steps toward Gunner, seeming almost as if he might strike out—which would have been a uniquely terrible idea. But he didn’t. He came closer, stopped, and said, “I will not take judgment from someone like you, Max.”—Gunner’s hand twitched around Leah’s at the name—“You have ruined my daughter’s reputation. You’ve destroyed her life. You’ve destroyed my family. There is nothing you have to say that I want to hear. Get out of my house.”

  “I don’t fucking care what you want to hear, asshole. You’re listening. If I have to tie you to a goddamn chair, you’re listening.”

  “All that spews from your mouth is filth and blasphemy. Why should I listen to that?”

  “You’re a drunk who let your daughter give up any kind of life to take care of you. What makes you think you’re better than me? Because you don’t fucking cuss? Because you stand up on Sunday and act like you’re better? Well, fuck you. I know how to treat somebody I love.”

  “Love? You don’t love her. If you loved her, you’d want more for her. At the very least, you’d honor her with marriage vows. All you want is her young flesh. She’s nothing more than a plaything for your sin.”

  Gunner’s fist shot forward so quickly that Leah had no time to react until her father slammed into the wall, jostling a framed cross-stitch of Psalm 118:24, one of the many tokens women of the congregation were always giving him.

  This is the day which the LORD hath made; let us REJOICE and be glad in it.

  She’d been standing there watching them like a tennis match, a spark of anger catching inside the tinderbox of her misery and humiliation—anger that these two men were fighting over her like she was a prize to be won, anger that her father would talk about her that way, and anger that they’d forgotten she was standing right there, holding Gunner’s hand. When her father reeled back, his lip bleeding from nearly the same place Gunner had punched in the summer, that spark burst into flame.

  “STOP IT! STOP, STOP, STOP!” She stomped her foot.

  Gunner seemed to calm down enough not to hit her father again, but that was the only indication that he’d heard her shout. Otherwise, he ignored her, shook free of her hand, and got right in her father’s face. “You think I don’t want to marry her? Fuck you. It’s everything I want. I think about it every fucking day. But she’s nineteen years old. She needs a chance to figure out what she wants. You couldn’t be bothered to give her that, all you care about is what she does for you, but I fucking love her. I want her to be happy, so I’m not gonna get in her way.”

  The whole world began to spin around Leah, and for a second she thought she might actually fall. Never had the word marriage come up between them. Never had they talked about any plans farther into the future than the next week or two.

  Gunner wanted to marry her?

  “You kno
w what, Lee?” He turned to her, seemingly unaware of, or at least unconcerned about, the bomb he’d just dropped, and took her hand. “You’re right. I’m sorry. This was a fucking stupid idea. He doesn’t deserve you, anyway. Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” he father muttered, wiping at his mouth. “Wait. Leah, I’d like to speak to you alone.”

  Gunner chortled like that was the funniest thing he’d heard in a while. “No fucking way, asshole. Last time you talked to her alone, she cried for two hours straight. Fuck that.”