The line went dead. I pocketed my phone. And I drew a deep breath.
I didn’t know which was going to make for a more interesting few weeks: Brock arriving, or Melissa if that ever entered the picture. Right now, it was very clear the answer was Brock since he’d actually be here by the end of the day.
But it was funny how shit always seemed to come back from the past when I least needed it.
* * *
Melissa Cook
It was an unusually cold day at our small home in Odessa, Texas.
There wasn’t much going on. Dad had gone to work, where he’d probably remain for the rest of the day, even though he never really had that much to do. Mom would probably remain upstairs, reading a book and trying to put on a cheerful face whenever she emerged.
And I would work on myself, doing some of the mental health exercises a therapist had once given me before I could no longer afford her, before doing some online freelancing work.
Life here, being back with my parents in my mid-twenties, felt like Groundhog’s Day, a sort of repeated cycle that was a bit like purgatory. It wasn’t great. My parents were never the affectionate type; when both Hailey and I had wound up moving to Arizona, my father kissed us on the forehead and wished us luck, easily the most emotion and vulnerability he’d shown to us in our two-plus decades of life.
But it wasn’t hell.
That was Arizona.
But what should I have expected from dating a fucking biker who belonged to a gang called the Devil’s Patriots?
If that man were here now, he’d say it’s not a gang. It’s a club. A gang just commits random acts of violence, but a club exists to provide its members its own de facto society.
But I liked calling it a gang. It felt like my one way of having power over what had transpired. Corey could say all he wanted about how he belonged to a club, as if he were some fucking twelve-year-old who had built a treehouse, but I knew better. He was part of a fuckinggang.
Small wonder that one of the few states that could get hotter than Texas was considered hell for me.
As for heaven?
I hadn’t found it yet.
In small spurts in the past, I’d thought my life with Corey was like heaven. But I suppose that was the truly fucked up part about hell, right? That it made it seem like it was heaven, only for the veneer to eventually fade away and show you the truth.
But, hey, as much as it sucked having a father who couldn’t connect, a mother who could only muster in short spurts the falsehood that everything was fine, and a close sister more than a ten-hour drive away, it didn’t suck nearly as much as having Corey say he was Spawn to me now, leave me threatening voicemails, call me at weird hours of the night, and—
“Mel?”
My mother’s pet name for me. I fucking hated it.
“Yes, Mom?”
“When was the last time you spoke to Hailey?”
Why were we having this conversation spaced an entire floor apart? I got up from the couch, walked up the stairs, and headed to my mother’s bedroom.
“Mel?”
“I just didn’t want to shout across the house. I’m here. I haven’t spoken to her since last Friday or so. Why?”
“Did you check your email? She quit her job.”
She…what?
What?
No, no, no, no. Hailey was the responsible one. Hailey was the one that followed in my footsteps toward the successes and avoided my mistakes. Hailey kept a job and held it. Hailey…
