Page 27 of Rocky

This was the most she’d opened up to me, and I could tell by the shift in her demeanor that my words hit home.

“Briar was four when I finally broke things off. He was so young. I didn’t think he’d remember anything.”

“I guarantee he remembers and knows more than you think.”

“How do you know? Did he say something to you?”

“Not in so many words, but I see things in Briar that remind me of myself at his age.”

“What do you mean?”

“My father abused my mother. He’s serving a life sentence for beating her to death.”

“Rocky, oh my God! That’s terrible! I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you. I was ten years old when me and my two brother’s lives changed forever. We lost both of our parents in one night because my father thought my mother was a punching bag."

“Wow! My father loved my mother to the ends of the earth, so I can’t relate to that part…but I can relate to losing both of my parents in one night. I wouldn’t wish that kind of loss and pain on my worst enemy.”

I sat next to her on the couch and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. Surprisingly, she leaned against me and rested her head on my chest.

“Damn, I didn’t know. How old were you?”

“It was a little over four years ago. I was twenty-one.”

“What happened?”

She cleared her throat. “My dad was a member of the Westside Riders in his twenties and thirties, until they started getting involved in stuff he didn’t agree with. Leaving the club didn’t stop his love for motorcycles, though. He loved them almost as much as he loved my mother and us. She hated them, but they made him happy, so she got used to them. One night, she went for a ride with him, and they were run off the road and killed by someone in a pickup truck. The person was never found.”

“Damn,” was all I could think to say. I finally understood why she flipped out on me about taking Briar for a ride. “I would’ve never guessed your father was a member of the Riders. Is that how you met Deacon?”

“I knew of him long before we dated because he’s a Rider, but I didn’t really know him. Before you even think my father let him get away with hitting me, I hid it from him and everyone else. My father would’ve killed him, and at the time, I was dumb and in love. I probably never would’ve forgiven him.”

“What’s your father’s name?”

“Ezekial Abrams, but he was known as Eazy.”

“Holy shit! Eazy the Enforcer is your father?”

“The one and only. Look around. There are pictures of him and my mother all over the house.”

I scanned the family room and saw a few pictures I hadn’t noticed before. I’d only seen him in old pictures from when hewas young. He looked familiar, but off top, I wouldn’t know it was him. In the family pictures, he looked nothing like the legend he was known to be.

“Shit, he looks like the everyday family man in those pics. The few times I saw him, he didn’t look like a man who was married with six daughters.”

“Yeah, he got that a lot. People were even more surprised when they found out he owned a flower shop. He loved flowers almost as much as he loved bikes.”

“That explains why all of his daughters are named after flowers.”

“Bingo!”

“So, if you were twenty-one when you lost your parents, your sisters were pretty young too.”

“Rose was a few months shy of eighteen and in her last few months of high school. I had to file for custody of them, or they would’ve been put into the system.”

I shook my head because I couldn’t imagine being tasked with raising my younger siblings at such a young age.

“You were dealing with the death of your parents, raising your sisters along with Briar, and being abused. That’s a lot, Rue. How is your mental?”

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