“I know.”
“Good.”
I don’t know what’s going to happen to me here, and a part of me is terrified to step into the house. I don’t see how I have a choice. I’ve already gone far enough with Zeb, that this would be the absolute worst time to start pitching a tantrum and try to escape. I just get a bad feeling from Ruger and a dark urge to run.
He scares me.I hope his wife Zayna is a lot nicer. You would have to be a saint to be married to a man like him, I think. Either that or just as much of a sinner.
Chapter Eighteen
Isaac Sinclair | “Ghost”
Magnum and I polished off half a thirty rack of Rolling Rock – the worst of the gas station beer we could find – before Wyatt called and asked if we were good to meet with him later. He left his wife and kids behind to drive up for a meeting, which means he’s going to be in a pissed off mood over… well…everything.He’s not happy about the shit that went down with Tylee hiring Zeb to drug Damara and the situation with the kids has him even more pissed off. I’m hoping that his anger fueled him to talk some sense into Tylee so I can see the kids again.
She won’t answer my calls and I haven’t seen them in the longest amount of time that I’ve ever gone without seeing my own flesh and blood. I can’t protect them if I haven’t even laid eyes on them. The three of them are so small and vulnerable. Before, I wouldn’t have ever thought to question Tylee’s mothering. Now, I feel strangely anxious about leaving her unattended with the kids.
I’ve known this woman my whole life. Could she really hurt them? Then again, I would have thought that Tylee could have never stepped out on me before. But now, I’ve been questioning it. Magnum and I are three-quarters of the way done with thatthirty-rack and playing pool in his basement when Damara leads Wyatt and the rest of the boys downstairs.
She shakes her head looking at me and Wyatt as if to say that she knew letting me into her house was a bad idea. I don’t blame her for hating me. I’m in my forties, a damned mess, a single father, living like an alcoholic, and she hates that I won’t shower unless she makes loud hints about how badly I smell.
Her last hint was pouring cold water on my head allegedly “by accident”. I asked Damara what she was doing when she filled up that damned hot pink Stanley cup with water and she said “nothing” before pouring it straight on my head without flinching. Magnum’s protection makes her bold, but I suspect she could take me down if she really wanted either with poison or a pillow to the face. I walk a righteous path with that woman. Even if she glares at me like she wants to kill me anyway.
“Wyatt, here are the drunk idiots,” Damara says. “I brought Wyatt and he brought Hunter, Ryder, and Owen.”
“Do I not exist to you?” Gideon asks.
“You do not,” Damara confirms before turning her back and shutting the basement door.
“Can you make sure she didn’t lock that door?” Wyatt grumbles, stomping down the stairs.
“Please tell me you have more of those,” he says, indicating that the source of his distress was the absence of beer more than anything else. I can fix that. I’ve already moved on to whiskey.
“Here,” I tell him. “Last Rolling Rock.”
“Oh, you are depressed,” Wyatt says, snatching it greedily from my hands. “Who the fuck drinks Rolling Rock?”
He doesn’t seem to mind enough to stop himself from drinking it. The beer pours down Wyatt’s throat. I need to be way more drunk to put up with seeing my in-laws under these circumstances. He’s slow to get down to business and I’ve known his family long enough to know that isn’t good news.
“How you holding up?” Hunter asks, thumping me on the back before he takes a seat on the couch next to Magnum, who answers as if the question were meant for him.
“He’s been a pain in the ass since he got here,” Magnum responds.
“Not you, idiot,” Hunter says. “I meant Ghost.”
“I haven’t seen my kids in days. I just want to know if you found Tylee yet.”
Wyatt sits on a separate metal stool that he drags to an authoritative point in the room. Magnum and Hunter look like defense attorneys – if they were also guilty as fuck. I don’t like it. Ryder pulls up a spare bar stool between the couches in the basement, a hand-rolled cigarette sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He lingers in the back, unlike Wyatt, who keeps his green dice rolling purposefully over the tattooed tops of his fingers.
Most habits you get in prison are hard to kill, even when you’re on the outside. I hate the smell of cigarettes but most of us owe Ryder Sinclair our life from something he did at some point or another. The room smells like sweat and grease already, and I wish I could either crack a window or get far more wasted.
“How much has he had to drink?” Wyatt asks Magnum like I’m not in the room.
“Too much. But what do you expect? He’s depressed. Guy misses his kids.”
“Where’s Tylee?”
Wyatt looks too pissed off. This can’t be even remotely good news and I want so badly for things to be different. This is fucking humiliating. What would Wyatt do if his wife ran off? He would probably kill people.
“Tylee is the least of our concerns, but she’s definitely one of them.”
