Page 12 of Acceptance
“Sure,” he says with a shrug and follows her out to her Mustang. “Hey, Lex?”
Turning, she’s taken aback at how shy he looks. Something she’s never seen when it comes to Venom in all the years she’s known him. “Yeah?”
“Um… Is there any chance you’d let me… you know… drive this someday?”
“Sure. Wanna drive on the way back here?”
His eyes light up, and she hates how unfamiliar he still is when it comes to even the simplest forms of generosity. “Really?”
“You break my heart when you look at me like that over something so insignificant.”
He smiles and looks happier than he’s been in a long while. His breakup from Marnie Banks has been rough on him, especially with her moving to Griffin’s Beach to follow him.
Though Lex may not know the specifics of why Venom feels the way he does about himself, she knows that it has something to do with his mother. And if she ever gets the chance to meet the woman, she plans to make her pay for every terrible thing she ever did to this broken soul.
“Where are we going?” Venom asks.
“Well, I could have asked Colt to come with me, and he would be happy to do it, but I thought you could use some violence to help with the conflict waging war in your head.”
Tilting his head, he snorts. “You think I’ll get to hurt someone?”
“I’m about ninety-nine percent sure you’ll get to hurt someone.”
“You’re like a fairy godmother. Now, where are we going?”
“Lucas and Hailey’s old house.”
She pulls down the street she’s driven down countless times to see the home Lucas and Hailey ran away from. The house that was hell compared to living in an empty one with no electricity or running water. It still bothers Lex to think about.
After Hailey’s mother killed herself, she lived with her father and stepmother. Lucas’s mother. Their father died in a car accident, leaving them both with Iris who later married Harold, an alcoholic who beat them while she turned to drugs to dull her demons.
“Oh, this motherfucker. I came with Grayson to get the mother’s signature to sign over guardianship to you guys. I scared that asshole so bad that he shit himself. This will be fun,” Venom says as he climbs out of the passenger seat.
They walk up to the door, and Lex knocks. Pulling her hand back, she cringes at the weird film coating her knuckles. “Gross.”
“Wait until you see the inside,” he says. “This place really needs to be condemned.”
The door opens, and a large man with brown teeth answers. Teeth as in more than one, but there are more missing than present.
His stretched-out tank top looks like it was once white, and it barely covers his beer belly. The boxers look even worse and as though they were used as toilet paper recently. His stench makes her gag, and she leans back to take in a breath of fresh air.
“What the fuck are you doing back here?” Harold barks. “We signed the fucking paper.”
“I need to talk to your wife,” Lex says as she fights breathing through her nose.
“And who the fuck are you?”
She forces a smile. “I’m the woman raising the children you abused. God, it’s like you can taste that smell.”
“You’re the bitch who destroyed my wife when she found out you adopted her son? She almost OD’ed because of you!”
He leans in so close that she has to fight back the vomit rising in her throat. “Wow, your breath would peel paint off a car.”
“You ain’t seeing my wife unless I get to have my way with you first, Blondie,” he says. His smile shows all six of his teeth. Six.
“What the fuck did you just say?” Venom growls, pushing his way into the house and forcing the morbidly obese man backwards. “Don’t you ever talk to a woman like that, motherfucker.”
Fear fills his eyes, and he backs down. “She’s asking a favor. Thought it was worth a shot to get something in return.”
