That was the day I left.
I’d lived on the streets until I was old enough to get a job and rent a place to call my own.
But it wasn’t a home.
It was a room with walls, a floor, and a ceiling.
But fuck no it wasn’t ahome.
Now she draped an arm around me and placed her head on my shoulder, the stench of alcohol coming from her and making me nauseous. “I’ve missed you, little man,” she slurred, like fifteen years hadn’t passed and I was still her little boy, desperate for her to love me.
I shrugged her off me and she stumbled back, her sloppy smile slipping from her mouth.
“Not your little man,” I growled.
“Son,” she whimpered, sadness engulfing her features.
“Not your son,” I snarled. I threw some money on the counter, watching how her eyes hovered over the crumpled bills in eagerness. Leaving the rest of my beer, I turned and left the bar before I lost my shit and did something I regretted.
Outside I was about to climb back on my bike, anger, resentment, and hate burning through me and more than ready to leave that town and never come back, when she called my name. Hadn’t heard my name on her lips for so long I felt a stabbing in my heart.
I hated her.
I despised her.
I pitied her.
“Please, Jacob, don’t be like that. I’m your momma. I’ve missed you,” she slurred, stumbling toward me in her too-short skirt and high heels. She looked disgusting, like a crack whore with no soul, and my hate for her increased.
She missed me…
The words rattled around inside my empty heart.
I straddled my bike, watching how her eyes lit up at the sight of it, and I knew right away what she was thinking. She thought I had money. She thought I’d had it easy, that maybe I’d landed on my feet. She saw me as a way to fund her pathetic existence.
What she didn’t see was the devil I’d become.
She stood next to me, a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve missed you, Jacob, come back home and let me cook you something to eat.”
I turned to glare. “Get the fuck away from me.”
Her eyes narrowed, the soft look on her face turning to anger. I remembered that look too well, and I knew what came afterwards. But I wasn’t a little boy anymore. I wasn’t there to take her beatings. I wasn’t there to be punished for her shitty life and bad choices. I was a man now and I hadn’t had a mother for a long time. Maybe not ever.
Her hand reared back and she slapped me across my cheek as hard as she could, which wasn’t hard in the least. Years of drinking had wasted her muscles away to nothing. I was more than three times her size and not afraid of her—or anything—anymore. She’d hardened me to the world, to life. It was the only thing I had to thank her for.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out my gun, pressing the barrel to her forehead. She squealed in fear but had the good sense not to move. I pressed it harder, enjoying how the skin puckered around the barrel.
“I said, get the fuck away from me,” I growled.
Her eyes were wide, filled with fear, sadness and guilt. “I’m sorry,” she whimpered, and that was the last thing I wanted to hear. Her apology meant nothing to me. It didn’t excuse the starvation or the beatings or the nights when she brought men home and they’d had their fill of her but weren’t sated so she allowed them into my room.
It didn’t excuse any of it.
Nothing ever would.
“I love you, son,” she slurred sadly, and if I’d had a heart it would have shattered. As it were, my heart was a dead, hollow thing in my chest already. “You’re still my little boy.”
Even after all the years since, whenever I thought back to that moment in time, I still couldn’t remember the exact point in which I decided to pull the trigger. I don’t remember anything but riding away from her and not looking back. I remembered the feel of the trigger under my finger and the sound of her body hitting the ground, but nothing more.
