I lay curled in the corner of the couch, my face resting on the bag of peas, until Vera and Pop showed up within minutes of each other. The expressions on the faces of Pop and Vera couldn’t have been more opposite. Vera looked at me with a sort of resigned pity. It was the look of a woman who had seen her fair share of swollen cheekbones and tear-drowned eyes. It was a look of commiseration.
My pop’s face looked like I imagined the wrath of God would. His eyes were narrowed, his lips were thin, and his hands were tapping against the sides of his legs as if playing an imaginary piano. I had only seen his hands look like that one time before—when I was eleven and a rival gang dared to breach the front gate and killed one of the recruits.
Grease spoke up, breaking the silence, as we all just looked at each other. “Still the fingers, Poet. Let’s hear her out before we kill him.”
“Son, you think I’m gonna let you do shit? You’re outta your mind,” he replied. Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, he continued, “He’s mine.”
As they started talking, Vera broke away from Pop’s side and slid in next to me on the couch. She put one arm around my shoulders, and as she pulled me in close, she ran her fingers gently down the side of my bruised face. “I’m sorry this happened, baby girl.”
I shook my head at her. “Where’s Trix?”
“Tommy Gun’s old lady’s got her. She was at the club, so I had her come on over to the house. Trix is fine. She’s playin’ outside.”
I nodded and started to speak, but Pop cut me off as he pulled another chair out of the kitchen.
“What’s goin’ on, Brenna? Ain’t never seen that boy hit a woman in his life. Just don’t have it in him.”
I cleared my throat. “I know. I never thought he would either.” I glanced at Grease, who stared back with no expression on his face.
My head was on Vera’s shoulder with her cheek resting on part of my hair as she spoke from above me. “They all got it in ’em. Just takes more for some than others to make it come out.”
“Yeah, I’d say this was, um…more,” I told them, bracing myself for the fallout of what I was going to reveal.
As I told the story, I started at the beginning, and I didn’t leave anything out. I told them about the night we met, how I’d wanted to stay, but I didn’t. I told them about my decision to marry Tony and the repercussions of that. Some of the story Pop and Vera had already heard, but it was all new for Grease, who had started pacing restlessly. I told them all of the things that I wished I had told Dragon. About how much I missed my son. About how after we were home from the hospital, I’d wake up at night in a cold sweat because I’d thought I could feel him moving around in my belly.
When I started speaking of Draco, I heard Vera sob once above me, but when I tried to lift my head, she just held me closer. When I told Pop how much I missed him, he cleared his throat and walked out of the room and then all the way out of the house. Eventually, he reappeared, once again stoic.
I didn’t leave anything out, even the confrontation between Dragon and me that morning. I told them everything. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to do by being so transparent.
I was so mad at Dragon. I was in shock that he’d hit me and hurt that he’d left me lying on the floor. But overwhelming all of those feelings was a knot in my stomach that reminded me how badly he was hurting. I didn’t want them mad at him. I didn’t want them looking for retribution.
I wanted them to understand all of the things that led up to this overwhelming betrayal. This wasn’t a smack because I’d looked at another man or burned dinner. He hit me because right now he was out of control, completely lost and hurting, and I was the reason. He was lashing out because it was too much to deal with. I understood it as much as I hated it.
He was like a wounded animal, and I was the hunter who’d wounded him. I didn’t know if he would ever forgive me, and that hurt worse than the betrayal of my swollen face.
If he’d wanted to hurt me, really hurt me, he could’ve. I had no illusions that if Dragon decided to beat the hell out of me, there was nothing that could have stopped him. He didn’t. He hit me once, almost in reflex, and then pulled back as if he were surprised. I’d seen the look on his face.
Even though I knew all of these things, even though I knew that there was nothing left on earth that would make him swing his arm back and bring it across my face again, I didn’t know if I could ever forgive him. That hurt worse than the thought of him never forgiving me.
I hit her. I fuckin’ hit her.
Fuck me.
When I left the house, I called Casper to come keep an eye on things. As furious as I was, I wasn’t about to leave Brenna unprotected. Unprotected—what a fucking joke. I wasn’t any better than her douche bag of an ex-husband. I’d seen the look on her face.
When I’d opened up Brenna’s box of important papers, I thought I’d just grab Trix’s birth certificate and head over to the club to meet with our lawyer. The suit we did business with was a good guy, but he didn’t usually handle custody shit. For what we were paying him though, he could hire outside help.
I was getting annoyed with the amount of shit Brenna had in the box when I finally found it, all by itself in a brown envelope. I stuffed everything back in the box and carried the certificate into the kitchen. I wanted some fucking coffee, but I couldn’t look away from Anthony fuckin’ Richards’s name on my child’s birth certificate. It burned in my gut that Brenna had allowed it.