“No one’s around,” Ransom said. “And we’re in the shadows of the portico.”
“Besides,” Ryder went on, “we’re practicing for the play.”
“Yeah,” Axel said innocently. “I didn’t mean to use no real rock.”
“Well, his fucking father might have real bullets. I don’t know where he’s at.” CJ walked to where Nardo lay. “We have to move him, so I can check on Harley.”
“Rory’s with her,” Ransom said, sticking his head out the door.
“Ryan’s looking for Nardo’s daddy around the athletic center.”
“Alone?” CJ said.
“Uh-huh,” Axel answered.
“Has that fuckhead lost his fucking mind?”
“We couldn’t talk him out of it, CJ,” Ryder said. “I think he wants to sacrifice himself to make amends for what he did.”
“Come with me.” CJ regretted throwing Nardo over his shoulder, the moment the heavy motherfucker was there. At first, he wavered, staggering under Nardo’s weight, but he grunted and forced himself to continue.
He wouldn’t make it to a bathroom. At least, the door had opened to the back of the auditorium and not the hallway. Dropping Nardo on the ground, CJ leaned against the wall, sweat pouring from him. When he could fucking breathe again, he shrugged out of his coat and held it out to Ransom. “Gag him.”
“We can smother him with it,” Axel offered.
“No! Fuck. Call Dad. I have to find Ryan.”
As mad as he was at that motherfucker, he didn’t want him to die unlesshefucked him up.
Ryan had spent most of the past hours reliving every moment of yesterday evening after the girls arrived at the clubhouse. He was ashamed and regretful, and scared he no longer had friends. His cousins would once again look at him as that freak who didn’t deserve their time.
Just when he’d began to feel like one of them, this happened.
His mother was suspicious, because his father could barely look at him. On top of that hell, Ryan couldn’t get the screams of that Gnome out of his head, the smell of a burning body. Diesel’s viciousness, only turned away from Ryan at Uncle Christopher’s decree.
But Diesel wasn’t a motherfucker to let shit go. Uncle Christopher cosigned his crazy because it was easier than displacing CJ on his pedestal.
Once Ryan accepted the role he had among his family, especially around the Caldwell boys, his life was easier. No one could upend Uncle Christopher’s vision for his eldest son.
Very few people picked up on the subtle differences that their father showed CJ and Diesel. As much as Uncle Christopher tried, he still treated Diesel like a ward and not an actual Caldwell boy.
Ryanknewhow that felt. To be a Caldwell boy was to be the alpha and the omega. They were the golden boys, especially CJ.
Once Ryan accepted that unerring truth, he realizedhismother didn’t love him any less or see him as lesser. Diesel didn’t have anyone as a buffer. He looked to Uncle Christopher for validation and approval, so he rejected most of the emotional support Aunt Meggie tried to give.
Ryanunderstood. He’d rejected his own mother, too.
Since Diesel didn’t see himself as a true Caldwell boy, it was easy not to see Rebel as his sister. And if anyone could pick up on the nuances of the family dynamic, it was her.
Over the course of his long, miserable night after Diesel dropped him off, not caring that Ryan was in shock, he’d come out of his stupor. And thought,really thought, about Rebel, Mattie, and Harley. Diesel. Rebel and Diesel and the many recorded conversations she’d had about him and with him.
Rebel knew Diesel wasn’t good. She saw good in him, but that was so fucking different than how Aunt Meggie believed to her soul that Uncle Christopher was a good man who sometimes did bad things. Rebel didn’t fear Diesel, look at him as someone to use for sex, money, or drugs, and she didn’t coddle him.
She treated him better than almost everyone. Except Axel.
It was unfortunate she was so fucking young. How everDieselsaw her didn’t matter. Ryan had violated what he considered his. His sister. His to groom. His towhatever. In Diesel’s eyes, Ryan deserved to die.
In Pops’s eyes, too. And CJ’s. Everyone’s. For what he’d done to not only his cousins, but Molly as well.
