A ringing in my ears drowned out whatever Cody was spitting at AJ, like a hissing cobra, but I didn’t really need to hear him to know that the way he was touching her was unwelcome and painful.
He grabbed a fistful of AJ’s hair and jabbed his pointing finger into her cheek.I saw the indent it made on her skin and watched him press his mouth next to it.
AJ wouldn’t look at me.She couldn’t see anything because she’d lowered her eyes to the ground.She didn’t want to challenge him and make things worse.
I, on the other hand, had every intention of fucking his shit up.
My ears let up for just a second, the ringing quieting and trying to subside.Maybe it was my body’s way of trying to ease the anger so I’d change my course, and maybe this time I wouldn’t make the stupid choice.
Unfortunately, the silence only lasted long enough for me to hear Cody’s insipid voice when he said, “You stupid cunt.Fuckin’ whore, embarrassin’ me like that in front of my mother?”
What came next was a slur and a blur of sound and motion.
I had no clue how Cody ended up beneath me, could barely remember dragging him away from AJ by his hair, but I straddled him and pinned him with my legs, and I just kept punching.
Like the universe had given me the thing I needed to release all the bad shit I’d been feeling.
All the jealousy I felt about Bax getting to hear my son call him “Daddy” poured out of me.The anger I felt at myself, at Bax, and even Brand and Abey for simply being who they were, for being so fucking lucky they knew who their father was, even though he had been the worst father in the world.
All of it propelled me to hit this fucker harder.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I should’ve stopped.If my sister had to arrest me and I ended up in court, I could land in jail again.No one would be surprised.And this time, I didn’t even have the excuse of being high.
I didn’t deserve Stuart, but after this beating, it would be a final thing.
But this man and the way he spoke to this woman—the beautiful, loyal, tenderhearted woman I loved down to the scars on my soul… He didn’t have the fucking right.
Reason had left the building.
My weight held the asshole to the ground beneath us.He clawed at me, scratched and dug his fingers into my skin to try to stop me as my fist made contact with his nose again and again, but the rage wouldn’t let me really feel the pain.I felt the bridge of his nose fracture, though, when my knuckle crunched it, but it didn’t stop me.
I saw Merv’s face front and center in my mind, her lies like a symphony swirling around her.The pain they caused me was the sour, out-of-tune note that ruined it all and made the music suck.
But I also saw her beautiful, shining smile I still remembered from childhood, and I watched as Noah Lee berated her and demeaned her.He flat-out fucking verbally abused her in front of her kids.And he hit her.She tried to hide it from us, but I knew.I’d always known.
This jackoff, this Cody fucking Mahone, represented the hateful man I’d grown up with.And then, in my mind’s eye, hebecamethe man I despised, the father I’d had to mourn when he was still alive.Cody became the wife beater, the shit-talking dick who’d hurt my mama.Who’d hurt my sister.Who’d hurt me.
If he could have, Noah would’ve made me cease to exist so he wouldn’t have had to feel like a failure whose wife found the love and care she needed in another man.
Whoever the fuck that was.
Cody Mahone had earned the misfortune of representing the one person who it seemed still had the power to make me insane.
But deep inside, I knew Cody wasn’t Noah.
Finally, the truth of that realization hit me head on, the way Cody had tried to but hadn’t quite managed, because I was bigger and angrier than his lazy ass had ever been, and I’d vowed long ago never to allow another man to beat me down.
The world around me began to pulse.Reality shimmered around the edges of my rage, and Stu’s sweet voice echoed in my head:
“You’re my dad, aren’t you?”
“Can I call you Deedee?Yeah, D.D.for Daddy Dixon.”
“I love you, and I don’t care if you’re my uncle or my dad.”
Tears streamed down my face.I tried to tell myself it was the release of all the diseased thoughts in my head making me cry, but the truth was that it was acceptance.
I accepted that this was my life.That Noah was dead and gone and I’d never get to face him and tell him what a sorry sack of shit he was, and that he hadn’t deserved my brothers and sister.He hadn’t deserved our mama.And that as of this moment, he had no power over me anymore.I wasn’t afraid of him.
