Page 22 of The Broken Beginning: Part One

His eyes flew to mine then. “No, baby. These are all for you, and if you ever let me find out that you are going without food again – especially while you’re carrying my grandchild – I will tan your ass and lock you in your room back in my house so that I know you’re at least being fed every day.”

“But, I-”

“No fuckin’ way, Lil! You listen to me, if you ain’t got money for groceries, you let me know. If you can’t find me, you let Boone know. If for some reason we are both gone on a club run, then you let Timeless know and he’ll get it taken care of until we can get back and sort shit for you. Do you understand?”

I hung my head in shame and answered. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now, that’s cleared up, I have somewhere to be. Get all this shit put away and get something to eat while you’re at it.”

He turned to leave, but something caught his eyes as he moved through the living room. I stepped aside far enough so I could see what it was, and my breath caught as my father dropped to his knees and cried right there in my living room.

“Lily!” My name was a hoarse murmur from his lips. Before I could take two steps in his direction, he threw his head back and roared his displeasure to the heavens above. The pain that filled that sound would stick in my memories for years to come. It was the sound of a father who knew he had failed his daughter. My eyes flitted from the man in pain on his knees to the source of his distress. The little Christmas tree that still sat on my end table with the three unopened presents that waited to be claimed by their owners.

I watched as he shook off the awful feeling and then pried himself from the ground. Unfortunately, his hands met with my work apron, and it only brought another round of questions.

“You’ve been working at a pizza joint?” When I nodded my head, his shoulders shook. “How long? When do you have time to do that?”

“I go after school.”

“You come home at night?” Another nod of my head in answer. “Late?” He asked. Again, I just nodded. “How the fuck are you getting home after work, Lily?”

I shrugged and took a step back from him. “Sometimes, I get a taxi if I earned enough money the week before. Other times, I catch a ride or…” I left the rest hanging as he interrupted.

“Or? Are you fucking walking home from the pizza joint late at night?”

“Only sometimes when there’s no one headed this way to give me a ride.” Before he could get angry, I decided to quell his fears. “It doesn’t really matter anymore though. They’re barely scheduling me since I burned my belly on a pan.”

“Since you did what?” My dad spun so fast I didn’t have time to move. My shirt was yanked up above my belly so he could see. Then, he dragged a finger over the burn mark that was there. It had already healed up, but the mark it left behind was a noticeable reddish-pink puckered line about two inches long.

“Lily, I’ll be back by later,” he told me and then my father was gone from my house quicker than I’d seen him move for anything in his life.

I was left standing there at the edge of my kitchen staring at heaps and heaps of groceries that needed putting away.

In his wake, I was left feeling completely humiliated and chastised. There was no excuse for me not to eat better. He was right about that. But doing so meant spending the only money I had or sucking up my pride and asking for help. It also fueled the worries that I already had about being able to make enough money to support myself and a baby. It was about time I found a regular job, and that meant I’d probably have to quit school too. Those were the things I spent my time thinking about as I put my groceries away, rather than wondering where my father had run off to in a hurry. I already knew the answer to that.

8 - Living Large

Merc

Everything went to shit the day I had to watch Lily get on a damn school bus while I picked Brinley up on my bike. I wondered why Brin asked me to pick her up in the back lot that day, since I normally grabbed her from out front. It quickly became obvious that she had an agenda, and it was to be seen by my wife.

“What the fuck was that about?” I asked her when we got to the hunting shack. The place had been cleaned up since it was where we always had to go in order to meet up. For the past couple of weeks, I had to pick Brinley up and take her there because her father took her car away. Then, he pretty much kicked her out of the house when he realized that not only was she still seeing me, but someone had clued the asshole into the fact that I was married to another girl, and she was having a kid.

Brinley had nowhere else to go, so the shack became her new home for now. I filled the place with everything she would need since she didn’t have a job. She had groceries, a better bed, though we couldn’t fit anything bigger than the futon couch that converted to a single bed. Still, she was set, and I bought a space heater that kept it cozy on the cooler days.

“She needs to know her place. It should be her living in this shack and me living in your house and you know it!” Brinley’s temper had been growing worse lately. I supposed that was to be expected when she fell from exalted princess of her daddy’s castle to the lone inhabitant of the one-room hunting shack I had to offer her. “And I can’t keep waiting around here for you to come take me places. I was late to school this morning! I need a damn car!”

“Fine!” I yelled and then threw a couple grand in cash at her. The plan had been to get her a little beater car to get around in anyway because there was no way I could blow off another fucking club meeting to make sure the princess had a ride somewhere. “Take that and get a damn car. I have to get back to the clubhouse.”

“That’s it? You aren’t going to take me to go get the car? You didn’t even kiss me today. Were we going to even fuck or sleep together tonight? Anything that normal couples do?”

“Get off my dick about this shit! You know I blew off an important meeting to come pick you up. I have to go before they decide to fine me for this shit. It’s bad enough that I said I was doing something for Lily, a fine will be the least of my worries if they find out I was lying about that. But using her as an excuse for being late is the only fucking thing that will save my ass from a punishment at this point.”

“Well, you know her skanky ass is on a school bus right now, so obviously she can’t blow your cover.” Brinley spat out.

And there went that feeling in my gut that I was fucking things up in irreparable ways. The girl I thought I loved was becoming someone I was starting to hate. The one who I was married to was riding a goddamn school bus home while pregnant, knowing I was there to pick someone else up today. I knew it was guilt I felt about Lily seeing that more than anything else, and still, I had been the dumbass who kept Brinley on my bike and watched as my wife got on that bus. My wife. I didn’t even know why I started to think of her that way. Probably because that’s all our fathers ever said to me. “How’s your wife doing? How’s the baby? Is your wife okay? Does your wife need anything?”

If she did need something, she never told me about it. Then again, I never asked, and we never really saw one another. Another pang of guilt hit as I glanced around the one-room cabin that was filled with shit that Brinley required to survive, yet my wife hadn’t asked for a single thing. I assumed our dads were getting her whatever she needed, and they were just annoying me with the questions to try to get me to think of her.

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