Page 25 of Sweet Chaos
“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe. God forbid anyone would think you actually cared.” She rolled her eyes. “She’s great, though. I never really knew her until she started working for us. Kind of weird, right? Sienna never let her hang out with us when we were in high school.”
“She was just a kid.” Sienna and Scarlett had never been that close. Their six-year age gap had always seemed so much wider when we were younger but now it seemed insignificant. As I was all too aware, Scarlett was twenty-one now, and no longer a kid.
“I guess.” Remy handed me a bottle of water from the refrigerator and took one for herself. I swapped my water for a beer, almost certain that I was the only one who drank beer in this house, and my sister kept the fridge stocked especially for my visits.
“Did you know Scarlett? I mean, did you ever hang out with her when you were in college?”
“She used to text me and shit. I saw her around.” I took a long pull of my beer, not really wanting to get into the details of my history with Scarlett.
“You used to text?” Remy raised her dark brows, waiting for more.
“What did you want to talk about?” I asked, steering the conversation away from me and back to her.
She wrung her hands and chewed on her bottom lip, a clear sign that she was nervous about something.
“What’s wrong?” I tried to keep the alarm out of my voice as my gaze dipped to the bump under her tank top. “Is the baby okay?”
“Yeah, it’s nothing like that. The baby is fine.”
My sister’s gray cat, Pearl, weaved in and out of my legs, meowing to get my attention. I scooped her up and held her in my arm like a football, worry gnawing at my gut as I parked my hip against the kitchen counter and absently stroked Pearl’s soft fur.
Remy gave me a soft smile. Before I could stop her, she snapped photos of me holding her cat. Her camera was always within easy reach and over the years, she’d taken far too many photos of me, knowing damn well I hated it.
I held up my hand as she zoomed in with her camera to get close-ups. “Stop with the fucking photos already.”
Laughing, she set her camera on the butcher block island and pulled up a stool. “Wait until you’re holding a baby. I’ll take millions of photos. Get used to it, Uncle Dylan.”
Uncle Dylan. Holy shit.
I set the cat down on the distressed wood floor and shooed her away. I didn’t even like cats but that damn cat always came to me anyway. Crossing my arms over my chest, I jerked my chin at Remy, prompting her to tell me what was wrong.
“Do you know where Mom is?”
“Why?” I hedged, reaching for my beer.
“I’ve given this a lot of thought and I just… I don’t want her to be part of our baby’s life.” Remy rearranged the fruit and avocados in a glazed blue bowl as she talked, needing to keep her hands busy even though it was a useless endeavor. “She never protected us or took care of us and I don’t trust her. She left us at a truck stop, Dylan. What kind of mother does that?”
The bad kind of mother. That was the day Remy and I made our blood oath. We promised never to leave the other behind. No matter what, we’d always be there for each other. We were six years old, hiding out behind the dumpsters at a truck stop, already street smart enough to know that we couldn’t risk anyone finding out we’d been left behind. It wasn’t the first time it had happened and certainly wouldn’t be the last, but that day stood out in our memories.
Remy had been scared shitless that I would bleed to death. Being me, I’d slashed my wrist with a shard of glass from a broken bottle to make our blood oath. Always the smarter one, and not as self-destructive, Remy had pricked her thumb to achieve the same goal.
“Don’t worry about Mom. She won’t bother you.” That was a promise I could keep. Rae St. Clair knew where her bread was buttered, and part of our agreement was that she needed to stay away from Remy. She’d caused Remy enough trouble, flirting with Tristan Hart when she’d paid a rare visit to our high school. Because of that, Tristan Hart had treated Remy like a whore. Then she’d made a move on Shane, not giving a shit that her daughter was in love with him. A fucking clusterfuck, just like everything was when our mother got involved.
“How much did you pay her?” Remy asked, leveling me with a look.
Fifty grand. But that was over a year ago, and I suspected she’d burned through that money by now and would be calling for more any day soon. I didn’t give a shit about the money though. If it kept her out of Remy’s hair, I’d pay our mother whatever she asked. I still felt responsible for her, although God knows why. She’d been a shitty excuse for a mother. But sometimes she called me just to talk. And for reasons I couldn’t explain and didn’t care to analyze, I always answered her calls. I still paid her rent and her health insurance every month and I still worried about her even though she’d never done the same for us.
“Don’t worry about it,” I repeated.
“Does that make me a horrible person? That I don’t even want her to meet her own grandchild?” She brushed away a tear. I’d noticed that pregnancy had made her more emotional.
“You have nothing to feel guilty about and you don’t have to justify this to me or anyone else. I was there. I lived through it with you.”
We had a shitty childhood. You couldn’t even call it a childhood. I don’t remember ever being treated like a child. We moved from place to place on our mother’s whim, always with the promise that the next town would be better. Spoiler alert: A change of scenery had never changed a damn thing. She was still a drunk, still spread her legs for money, and we were the baggage she carted along until her load got too heavy and she left us curbside.
“I know,” she said softly, brushing away another tear.
I hated seeing Remy cry. She’d always been so tough, more out of necessity than anything else so this felt… I don’t know, strange. It gave me a tight feeling in my chest. I finished my beer and helped myself to another one, flipping the lid into the swing bin under the sink. My mother… my shitty childhood… the weight of my crushing guilt… they drove me to drink.
