“That’s wonderful! You need a nice girl to settle down with. You are too special and have too much to offer to be spreading it around all over town, like I know you and your friends like to do.”

I lifted an eyebrow and rolled the Pabst Blue Ribbon can between my palms. “How do you know what me and the guys like to do, Ma?”

“I was young once, Jet. I know the allure of a handsome young man in a band. All you boys were a handful when you were younger, and I can only imagine the kind of trouble you find yourselves in now that you are all grown and independent. Tell me about this girl. She must be something, if you couldn’t remember to mention to me that you’ve been back in town for a while.”

I could hear the accusation in her tone. She knew why I didn’t come around much, didn’t stay in touch .Yet she couldn’t stop herself from trying to hold me close. I took another swig of the beer and looked at her with a lopsided grin.

“She’s different—smart, ambitious, and driven. She’s different from what I’m used to. I like her, a lot actually.”

I saw my mom’s eyes get big, and for the first time in a long time, there was an emotion in them other than abject despair.

“Well, that’s good. You need someone who is as ambitious and as talented as you are.”

I wasn’t sure what it was going to end up being so I just stayed silent and finished the beer and got up to toss it in the trash. I crossed my arms over my chest and gave her a level, serious look as I decided to change the subject from my sex life.

“Ma, did you know the old man hit me up to send him back out on the road with some of my friends in a band?”

Instantly, the light that had filtered in her hazy gaze at my earlier good news died. It was replaced with the flat look of loneliness and the acknowledgment that she only existed to him as a doormat and place filler, while he went out and lived his life without her. She twisted her hands together and looked down at the table.

“You father is an old man now. Why would he want to go back out on the road with a bunch of young kids? What purpose would that serve?”

I raked my hands through my hair, and bit my tongue to keep from snapping at her that there was no purpose other than his indulgent, self-centered way of living. But that kind of attack never got me anywhere. I blew out a breath through my nose and clicked my tongue ring against the back of my front teeth.

“Mom, when has he ever done anything that served a purpose? He straight up told me that if I didn’t make it happen, he was going to come home and take it out on you. How can you just sit back and let him do that to you? How can you let him manipulate either of us like that?”

My rings rapped out a fast beat on the counter while I waited for her to answer me. For years, I had waited for her to see that I could take care of her and that she didn’t need to subject herself to his whims and his thoughtless behavior. I couldn’t stand that she just told me over and over that she loved him and that she wouldn’t let her family fall apart, even though I hadn’t willingly been in the same room with my father since I was a teenager.

She wouldn’t look at me and her voice was barely a whisper when she replied, “You just don’t understand how it is with us, Jet. You never did.”

I pushed off the counter and walked to where she was actually folding in on herself in front of me. I put a hand on her shoulder and squatted down so that she had no choice but to meet my searching gaze. “Ma, don’t you think the problem is that I understand it too well? You know you can do better than him, better than this. You always could.”

I saw her bottom lip tremble and that pulled at something under all the anger that lived in my chest. I hated that every time I tried to pull her out of this nightmare, I ended up hurting her. She should be thanking me, running as fast as she could away from this place, and yet she stayed rooted so firmly that no matter how hard I dug, I couldn’t get her out. The roots were planted too deep.

“If you can make him happy by sending him back out on the road, maybe you should. It’s not like he really asks that much from you.”

I abruptly stood from where I was kneeling beside her and felt a white hot blaze shoot down my neck. I wanted to shake her. I wanted to shove my fist through the closest wall. I wanted to storm out of that shabby kitchen in this awful house on the wrong side of the interstate and never look back. What I did instead was close my eyes, bend, and kiss her on the top of her head.

“We’ll see, Ma. I have to work with these guys. I don’t know that I want to ask them for that big of a favor. It was good to see you. Take care of yourself.”

I was going to go before I did something stupid, like scream at her, but she grabbed my forearm, her fingers digging into the melting clocks all over my skin. Her eyes were so sad when she looked up at me, that I literally felt a part of my heart die. “Bring your girl by. I would love to meet her.”

This was the last place on earth I wanted to bring Ayden, but I forced out something that had to resemble a grin. “Sure, Ma, maybe someday I can swing that.”

Ayden was the opposite of this woman I loved, in so many ways it almost hurt to think about it. She was so strong and so independent that she would never let another person dictate the direction her life or actions would take, or devalue her worth. I hated the idea that Ayden would see my broken-down mother and wonder why I hadn’t done more to help her or been able to stop this from happening to her in the first place. Those very questions picked me apart from the inside out every day. Looking at my mother now, I remembered every time she had chosen this life and that asshole over me, and it burned away some of the safeguards I had put into place to protect my heart from the inferno of the rage that lived inside me.

My phone picked that minute to ring, and Memphis May Fire came blasting out of my pocket. I told my mom I had to go and wasted no time in running down the front steps. I felt like I was not only running away from her, but also from every bad thing that had ever happened in that house. Nash’s tattooed head was staring back at me from the face of my phone, so when I poked at it to answer the call I didn’t bother to fake a cheery greeting.

“ ’Sup, dude?”

“Where are you?”

I slid into the car and rested my head on the back of the driver’s seat. “I went to visit my mom. The old man has been on my case about setting him up with Artifice and I thought maybe for once I could just shut it down, but no. As usual, I just don’t understand, and she’s just going to let him run around on her and run her over. It fucking sucks.”

Nash knew my history with my folks better than the other guys. When I left as a teenager, he had been having his own issues at home with his mom and her richer-than-God new husband. Luckily, for both of us, Nash’s uncle Phil had been bound and determined to keep us out of jail and in school. He scooped us both up and, with a mixture of tough love and simple badassness, made us act right. No one went against Uncle Phil, and to this day he was our go-to grown-up when we couldn’t get our act together on our own.

“One of these days you’re just going to have to give up the ghost, Jet. It doesn’t make any sense to keep trying to pull her away from him if she’s dug in that deep.”

“I know, but she’s my mom and I can’t seem to stop.”

He muttered a swear word and I heard him talking to someone else. “We’re all going bowling. You should meet us at Lucky Strike on Sixteenth.”

“Why bowling?”

“Because football is over and Rule is pacing the apartment like a caged tiger. It’s driving me nuts. Rowdy will be there in twenty, plus they have beer. What else are we going to do on a Sunday?”

I really wasn’t in the mood, but hanging out by myself was sure to be a recipe for disaster in my current mood. “Did you call Cora and see if she wants to go? She’s been acting a little off the last couple days.”

“No answer. I left her a couple messages, though.”

I frowned because she had been home when I left, moping around the kitchen about something. The shop was closed on Sundays, so I knew she didn’t have to work, and it wasn’t like her to blow off a call from any of the guys.

“Let me swing by the house and see what’s going on with her, and then I’ll hit you back.”

“Sure thing. By the way, that was a real shit thing to pull last night at the show. Ayden is a down chick; you’re lucky she didn’t hang you up by your balls afterward.”

“I know. I apologized. We’re working on trying to figure something out.”

“Good, because if Rule doesn’t break you in half for messing with her, I will.”

I didn’t need him to warn me twice. She wasn’t a groupie, a stranger who no one cared if I blew off and forgot about from one heartbeat to the next. She was a girl that was woven into the fabric of our lives, into the pattern of our unit, and if I hurt her on purpose they wouldn’t let it go lightly. The ironic thing was that she was more than capable of taking care of herself and that the threats from the guys were completely unnecessary.

I shoved the phone in the console and cranked Morbid Angel on the radio as I ran back across town to check on Cora. The screaming lyrics and insane bass made some of the anger still floating around under the surface burn out. I could hate my dad all I wanted, I could beg my mom to leave until I was blue in the face, but things were never going to change and it just couldn’t be my cross to bear forever. I had built my life trying to live beyond the legacy my dad had left me. Now I was starting to see it was well past time to start living it based on the legacy I was making for myself.

I parked on the street with every intention of just running in real quickly to see what the little blond fireball was up to. As I was climbing out of the car, the front door to the house slammed open and a guy I didn’t recognize came flying down the front steps, with Cora hot on his heels. I felt my jaw drop open when I noticed she was waving a Taser around and screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs. I went to move, to run after the guy, but before either of us could get to him, he threw a leg over a motorcycle that was parked at the curb and took off like a bat out of hell. I tried to look at the license plate, but Cora threw her tiny frame at my chest so hard that I fell back a step and almost toppled over.

“What the hell?”

She was shaking a little and I took the Taser out of her hand just in case she accidentally stunned me.

“I don’t know. Someone knocked on the door and I just thought it was a neighbor or a solicitor. I mean, come on, this is Denver, not Brooklyn; that crap isn’t supposed to happen here. As soon as the door was open, he shoved me back and started coming into the house. I ran to the kitchen, because I still have all the stuff I bought for protection when Shaw lived here and was worried about her ex. He came after me and kept asking where it was.”

I shook my head in confusion because she was talking a mile a minute. “Where what was?”

“I don’t know. Just it. He freaked when he saw the Taser and I think he heard your car pull up. He took off.”