Long Way Home (Thunder Road #3)(74)

Mom’s lips thin out and she closes her book of puzzles. “This is a conversation we need to have at home.”

“Mom—” I begin, but her pointed glare shuts me up.

“Home,” she repeats. “This is a conversation for home.”

I can’t wait for home. Mom has come close to talking to me about my father twice in my life; both times she made the promise to tell me later and I can’t run the risk of time causing her to change her mind again. “Now. You tell me now.”

Mom looks left, then right, then grabs my wrist, dragging me with her to the end of the bar. I loom over her and the confusion and anxiety in her eyes causes my skin to feel like it’s shrinking on my bones.

“James knew I was pregnant with you.”

Her words hit me like a fist to the head. “But you said—”

“Because James asked me to keep you a secret from his family.”

Stunned, I brace my palm against the bar. “So you and Dad were a couple?”

“James didn’t love me and it’s okay because I didn’t love him either. We were friends. Good friends. Through high school and beyond. He was in love with somebody else, but this woman played with his heart. He came to me when he needed the bleeding to stop. I never minded giving my body to my best friend when he was in pain and I never regretted that doing so created you.”

“But Cyrus has always acted like you were...” I can’t finish.

“A one-night stand? Chevy, even if I was, it’s okay. I’m secure in who I am and other people’s definitions don’t define me. But the one-night stand—it’s what James wanted them to think. They didn’t know much about our friendship. He told me he wanted a life separate from the club. At the time there wasn’t anything bad happening, but they seemed to fill every crevice of his being and he wanted to be himself for a few minutes and I was that person he could be himself with.” The edges of her lips turn up. “Your dad and I used to read books aloud to each other. He liked horror, though, and it would give me nightmares at night. I bet you never knew that.”

I didn’t and I drop onto the stool next to me as I struggle with the feeling that I’ve been sucked into an alternate universe.

“James got me and I got him. He wanted a life away from the club even when he was in high school. I was his one friend out of the club and he wanted me to stay a secret. He was scared that if anyone found out they would try to suck me in and he’d lose me to everyone else. And he had good reason to think so—you know my home life was...lacking.”

“Sounds like he loved you.”

“He did once when I didn’t, then I did once when he didn’t, then we didn’t at the same time. We were better off friends than together. Better off lovers than in love.”

I wince. “Never needed to hear the last part.”

Mom steps closer to me and tucks my hair behind my ear. “James left Snowflake after he graduated. He’d come home to appease his mother and see me, but he loved Louisville. Loved his job there, loved his life there, loved it all, but toward the last six months of his life, James became moody. I used to think it was because of this woman who had him tied up in knots, but it was darker than that, he became darker.

“The last time he came home, I told him I was pregnant with you. He was in shock, but he took it well. He told me he’d support me and you any way he could. Promised he’d be involved, but he asked me to move to Louisville. He told me he was breaking ties with the Terror and he didn’t want them to know about his child. He wanted you to be raised away from them.”

“Why?”

She shrugs. “Things were beginning to heat up between Eli and Meg at the time. The war between the Riot and the Terror was beginning. I assumed after he died it was because of that.”

“But you raised me in Snowflake. You were the one who went to Cyrus and told him you were pregnant with me.”

Mom slumps into the stool beside me. “I didn’t go to Cyrus. He came to me. You were six months old and we were barely making it. I had worked at this bar before I was pregnant with you so I could save up enough money to go to the community college in Bowling Green. I was using that money to support us and pay for babysitting so I could work. The money was going fast. One night, Cyrus showed up at the bar asking me if it was true. If you were his grandson.”

“What? How did he know?”

“He didn’t say, but two days later the Riot visited me at my apartment and told me they were the ones who told Cyrus about me and you. They said that there was a war between the Riot and the Terror and they told me they would protect me and you, but in order to do so I would have to disavow the Terror, move to Louisville, and once there they would take care of us.”

“Why did you choose to stick with the Terror? With Cyrus?”

She lifts one shoulder, then lets it fall. “They say the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. I never wanted anyone to take care of me or you. Only person I wanted in control of my life was me. I had enough of that controlling nonsense growing up. The question I have always asked myself is how? How, when it came to James, did the Riot know something the Terror didn’t?”

I close my eyes as pain rolls through me. Because my father was a traitor, that’s how. When I reopen them, I’m looking at a brand-new world—or at least the world I should have always seen. “Why didn’t you tell me?”