Pieces of Us (Confessions of the Heart, #3)(102)

He straightened, and panic roared through my nerves. Wild and uncontained. I grappled to get his hand back into my hold. “Don’t you dare leave me, Maxon Chambers.”

One of the boys started moving around in the next room, waking with the day, most likely Dillon with his endless energy.

Maxon stiffened, as if he had no idea where he was supposed to go. If he should stay or if he should leave.

“I’m going to fix this. Whatever it takes, I promise you, you and your boys will be safe.”

He started for the window, and that panic screamed.

I moved for him, wanting to reach for him, grab him, beg him not to go.

He was halfway out when I whispered the words, “Your love isn’t selfish, Maxon. Lovin’ someone isn’t selfish. The most selfish thing you can do is live for your fear. To live for your past. Live for us, instead. Love for us. Give your courage to us. That is all you have to do.”

“Mom?” Dillon called, and Maxon gazed at me through the window.

He sent me the saddest smile before he was gone.





Thirty-Two





Mack





Seventeen Years Old





“I’m out.”

Mack watched the words penetrate his father where he was leaned over a car he was parting out. His spine stiffened, and he slowly swiveled around to face him.

He might as well have stayed with his back to him. Wasn’t like Mack couldn’t feel the hostility vibrating through the monster, anyway.

Clarissa’s father, Kiel, grunted his disgust from the other side of the car.

Mack didn’t give a shit what either of them thought. He just let his hatred blaze back.

His father’s blue eyes flashed disgust as he took a step toward him. “What did you say?”

“You heard me. I’m out. I’m not doing this anymore, and I sure as fuck am not dragging my friends into it.”

Things had gone south for Ian and his brother Jace. The two of them had gotten into a fucked-up tangle of greed and pride with their piece-of-trash-mother’s boyfriend. Jace had taken the fall. Mack knew it. Knew it all the way to his core. He wasn’t going to let Ian get embroiled in the middle of something just as corrupt.

Desperation equaled destruction.

Mack knew that now. Too well. And he was ready to stand for something. Something better.

His father cracked a malignant grin. “What, you think you’re better than this? You think you’re different than me?” His tone was mocking when he asked it.

Anger constricted Mack’s chest, and he lifted his chin. Maybe he did. Izzy promised night after night that he was. When he’d lie tangled up in her arms and legs, bare flesh against bare flesh, she’d whisper that he was better than the trash he’d been bred to be. That he was better than following in his father’s debased footsteps.

That he had something so much better then a wicked, worthless heart.

He wondered if his father saw every thought play out in Mack’s mind because that grin turned into a sneer. “That little bitch has been after you again, hasn’t she?”

A cyclone of resentment twisted through Mack.

All the beatings.

All the words.

The loss of his mama.

The agony. The grief. The hatred.

Through all of that, Izzy had been the one good thing that remained.

Mack took a violent step forward. “You don’t get to talk about her like that.”

Kiel growled, asshole pushing up to his feet, wifebeater stained and his teeth yellow and a big-ass wrench in his hand.

He was nothing but a bad joke.

A cliché.

Just like Mack’s father.

His father who was chuckling a cruel, dark sound. “And what do you have to say about it?”

“I’m saying I’m done with this life. With you. As soon as I graduate next month, I’m leaving with her.”

With a shake of his head, his father scrubbed a greasy hand over his face and smiled.

Mack didn’t make the mistake of thinking he might be offering him his congratulations.

A second later, his father was pressed up in his face, two of them chest to chest, aggression sparking between them.

“Warned you a long time ago about them, Mack. Told you to stay away. They’ve messed with my life enough. You let her fuck with your mind? I’m gonna fuck with her body. See how she likes that.”

“You touch her, and I will kill you. You won’t see the next day. I promise you.”

Smugness held fast to his father’s expression. “You are who I say you are. You do what I tell you to do. You sit pretty, shut your fuckin’ mouth, and do your job. Or else it’s gonna be you who ends up in the ground. Got me?”





*



Mack climbed out of his car. Late afternoon light glimmered through the lush leaves, the only beautiful thing about this place. He looked around when he sensed that something felt . . . off.

Like the peace he was breathing was artificial.

An undercurrent of upheaval riding on the atmosphere.

A knot climbed his throat, and he was struck with the same rage and revulsion that took him over every time he stepped foot on his father’s land.

Though today, it was intensified.