He looks at me, and his face is a hard, blank mask. Looks away. “Fuckin’ Rev and his big fat fuckin’ mouth. Seriously liked him better when he barely put two words together all fuckin’ day.”
“Didn’t need what he said to figure it out, Chance. Like recognizes like.” I still have his wrist, and he’s letting me hold on to it. “I knew already. Or, strongly suspected.”
“Bullshit. He gave out shit that wasn’t his to give.” His voice is that low rumble again, quiet but vibrating with power, with deep emotion.
“He didn’t,” I insist, glancing at him and then back at the road. “And he didn’t give away anything I didn’t already suspect from our conversation.”
No answer.
“Chance, talk to me.”
“Why?”
I frown in his direction. “What do you mean,why? I told you, like, eighty percent of the worst shit about me within hours of meeting you. Now you’re gonna clam up on me?”
He stares out the window.
“Okay, well I get it. You wantmeto share, but willyou? Of course not.” I let go of his wrist and hold the wheel with both hands.
He looks in my direction—I feel his gaze more than I’m able to actually see his eyes. “My mother was an addict.”
I reach out again, touch his wrist, just my fingertips on his skin. Say nothing. Just wait.
“She was an immigrant—illegal, I’m pretty sure. I dunno how, but she got hooked on tweak. Met my dad during one of her clean spells, and they fell in love. What I figure is, she didn’t bother to inform my dad of her addiction. Thought she had it beat, so she just kept that little tidbit to herself. Only clean didn’t take for her. She got pregnant with me, used while she was pregnant. I was born hooked.”
“My god, Chance.”
“She used on and off, my whole childhood. I remember it. I remember wakin’ up, my dad would be at work, and Mom would fuckin’ vanish, leave me with my cartoons and come back hours later, fucked up. I was, shit, like, three, four? You know how fucked up you have to be for a four-year-old to understand you’re fucked up and remember thatdecadeslater?” He shakes his head. “She’d go on days-long benders, drinking, tweaking, doing blow. Doing whatever it took to get either cash for a hit or just the hit itself. Dad would find her and bring her back. I remember the arguments. Him yellin’ in her face about how he found her in some meth den, blowing a dealer for a hit. Still he took her back. He always brought her back.”
I hear the pain in his voice. Wrap my fingers around his wrist, hold tight. “Chance,” I murmur. “I’m so sorry.”
“He…fuck, I don’t know why he stuck with her. Why he didn’t just take me and…go. Get me somewhere safe. Any-fuckin’-thing woulda been better than just sticking it out like he did. I mean, look, I’m all about loyalty. I get he loved her. And I even can believe she loved him, and me. When she wasn’t high or off chasin’ the high, she was a hell of a mom. Cooked some bomb-ass food, played with me, took me to the park and shit. But the problem was, her addiction was stronger than her love—for meorfor Dad.”
“That’s a shitty thing to know about your own mother.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, “it sure as hell is.”
“You’re afraid you’re like her.”
“Fuck that. IknowI am.” He says this in a voice that’s hard and angry and tight.
“You abandoned a child to chase a high?”
“No, Annika,” he snaps, “I don’t have a kid. I just know I’m that fuckin’ weak.”
“You thinkI’mweak?” I ask, looking at him. “For getting hooked? For all the shit I told you? And you gotta know there’s shit I haven’t told you. I haven’t told you the worst of it.”
He glances at me, head tilted, angled slightly toward me. “You’re clean. You ain’t weak.”
“You’re clean, so same for you.”
“Because I live in a fucking basement. I never leave that building, Annika. Legit, I’ve left itoncein the past two and a half years. That one time, I was with Rev and Kane the whole time, and I was freaking the fuck out on the inside. And I wouldn’t have left in the first place if it hadn’t been a matter of life or death.”
“What happened?”
“Myka got kidnapped by some assholes from Rev’s past. Some seriously shitty, not-good assholes working on the orders of a fucked-up, jealous piece of shit cartel boss. They took Myka to try and rile up Rev. Which worked, but not in their favor.”
I laugh. “I don’t know the man at all, but it doesn’t strike me as a good idea to piss off a man like him. He just seems like he’s good at doing violent things.”
