Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(103)

Because when had she earned the right to call my son sweetie?

Was it when she made him cookies?

No, because she’d never made him cookies.

Was it when he was being adorable after getting a birthday or Christmas present he especially wanted?

No, because she’d not been with him for a single birthday or Christmas.

Was it when she blew on scrapes on his elbows and knees the many times he’d gotten them?

No, because she was never around when he got into scrapes.

Not even when he suffered the worst scrape of all, when his father was scraped out of his life.

“Shut your mouth,” I clipped, and she reared back like I came at her physically. “And get out of my house.”

“You want us out, but these guys,” Sarah sneered, indicating Hound and Tad, “are welcome. Right? Are they ones that got my brother’s,” she leaned toward me, her face twisted, “throat slit, Keely? They can sit at your table but we can’t be in your home?”

“Jag, Dutch, deal with this,” Hound ordered, and I could tell he was barely reining it in. “Now.”

“Come on, guys,” Dutch tried gently. “Let’s get you outside.”

I ignored all this.

“Yes,” I said to Sarah. “Absolutely. Although Tad is Beverly’s fiancé and sells insurance, Hound is Chaos and yes. He’s welcome at my table. Because he earned his place there by being here,” I pointed to the floor, “for me and my boys. You, on the other hand, didn’t even meet them until Dutch had hit double digits.”

I knew I hit true with the look in her eyes but still Sarah curled her lip and opened her mouth to speak, but I got there before her.

“If you speak one more word to me, Sarah, I swear to fuck I’ll scratch your goddamned eyes out.”

Sarah gave me a brave look but I could tell she thought I’d do it with the way she braced like she was about to run.

“I cannot believe I’m hearing my own daughter speak this way,” my mother whispered in horror.

“You can’t?” I asked her. “So, when did you earn my respect, Mom? When did any of you earn my respect?”

I indicated them with an out-flung arm but ended it jabbing a pointed finger her way and kept speaking.

“But we’ll start, specifically, with you. Was it when you came to me on my wedding day to tell me my father was thinking of never speaking to me again and you’d be forced to do the same if that was his decision if I married the man I loved, who I then gave babies? Or was it when you both carried out that decision? Or wait. Was it when you came to me in my sorrow and grief after we all lost him and held me and told me this was terrible, it was awful, you wished I wasn’t experiencing the crippling depths of pain I was experiencing but you were there for me? Or was it when you were actually there for me, my sons, helping me to find reasons to get out of bed every day and make sure they were bathed and fed and got the Halloween costumes sorted that they wanted? No? Those last things weren’t you?” I asked sarcastically. “You’re right. They weren’t. You were nowhere near me and my boys.”

Before my mother could reply, I turned eyes to Simon and Blair.

“And you,” I hissed. “He was your boy. And you didn’t even show at his wedding. You also didn’t show at his goddamned funeral. And you think you have any right to be standing in the home he provided for me and our sons?”

“I do,” Simon returned arrogantly. “Because your sons have my blood in them.”

“Their blood runs Chaos,” I snapped. “If I did one thing right by my boys, if I did one thing right by my husband, I made it so they were raised with all the love and loyalty and goodness and light that their father gave them, that their father wanted to keep hold on, and by God, I did just that. What they did not get is they are not pompous, critical, holier-than-thou assholes like you.”

“We’re not getting any younger, Keely. Those boys are in line for trust funds and if you allow this to carry on with this gang,” Simon fired back, “we’ll be forced to do what we did with Graham and make different arrangements.”

“Do it.”

I went solid at Dutch’s voice.

Obviously, when the time came that my family and Black’s had wanted to re-enter my sons’ lives, I’d put them off until my boys were old enough to make the decision (at ten and eight, precisely), and I left it up to them.

As for me, they made no effort to make amends with me, but it wouldn’t matter. These people had killed anything that was left that they had from me when they’d let all of us deal with our loss on our own. And I had never been a shrinking violet (one of my problems, according to my mother), so I made that known.

But I felt it was my sons’ decision, so I let them make it.

Both of them had wanted that piece of me and that piece of their father.

They still held distant. It wasn’t like they didn’t get it, how all of these people had let us swing.

But they’d let them in.

Dutch more than Jagger because he had that kind of heart. He had that part of his father. He tried to learn everyone’s perspective, and even if he didn’t understand it, he did his best to accept it.

Jag was like me.

He could hold a mean grudge.

But he’d followed his brother. I just got the sense he never fully committed to it.