ALL THE RAGE (writer: T.M. Frazier)(67)

There would be plenty of time once I found him to lose my shit later.

Smoke shrugged and took another swig of beer. I reached for Nolan’s bloodied jacket in my bag and tossed it at Smoke. “This ring any bells? Hockey player?”

Smoke eyed the jacket and then looked up at me. “Rage, I didn’t do this,” he said simply. “I never meant for you to kill him, and I never had no plans of killing him myself. Kid could live till he’s three hundred for all I f*cking cared.”

“But the job. You wanted me to—”

Smoke held up his hand with the cigarette, silencing me. He sighed and turned over the jacket, inspecting the bloodstains. “Rage, the kid was never a target. The kid was never anything. Neither were his parents.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, backing up as Smoke took a step toward me. I sat back down on the edge of the bed when the back of my knees hit the mattress. The girl shuffled over so I wouldn’t hit her feet. “Then what was he?” I asked. Smoke tossed the jacket at me. I reached out to catch it before it could hit the floor. “Smoke, what the f*ck is going on?” I asked, but it came out as a whisper. I could still smell Nolan’s soap on the jacket, and as the blood hardened on his jacket, I was becoming more and more impatient.

Smoke blew out a frustrated breath. “Rage, you been living in this world for a while now. And I don’t regret bringing you in. But you got no roots in the real world anymore.” I opened my mouth but Smoke shut me up when he continued. “And no, a call to your parents here and there don’t f*cking count. Your life was quickly becoming as f*cked up as mine. I didn’t want that shit for you. Still don’t.” He paused like he was thinking of how to keep going. “After seeing you that first night in the woods and you looking all f*cked up about the demons in you, I wanted to teach you everything I knew ’cause I recognized someone who was like me.” He took a deep drag of his cigarette and set down his beer, opting for an open bottle of whiskey on the floor instead. He grabbed the bottle and took a long swig, his throat bobbing as he swallowed down the amber liquid. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “As much as I wanted to teach you about all the shit that I know, so that you wouldn’t go through the same shit I did and have to figure it all out the hard way, I recently learned that being who we are, doing the shit we do, it ain’t all there is to life. I wanted more for you. I wanted you to have a piece of normal. Nolan, he was—”

“What? Nolan WAS what?” I demanded, again jumping up off the bed and coming to stand before Smoke, my eyes level to his chest.

“Nolan was my gift to you, kid.”

“What?” Was all I could manage to say as the truth came spilling out from Smoke’s mouth as quickly as the whiskey kept going in. That’s why Smoke didn’t want me lying to Nolan. That’s why he wasn’t in a hurry for me to leave the cottage.

That’s why he kept telling me to go back.

“Nolan’s uncle, the guy whose house you unfortunately blew up, is someone I’ve known for a long time.” Smoke leaned back against the wall. “You owe me three hundred grand by the way. That’s what it cost to rebuild his house and keep him from coming after you after he called me to find your ass and bring you to him.” He took a drag. “I met the kid—Nolan, but everyone called him Goon—a couple times over the years. I’d even been to a few of his hockey games. Kept tabs on him over the years. When I heard about his injury and that he’d been going through a rough patch, I thought of you,” Smoke admitted, taking another long pull of whiskey. “Liked that he was in an MC. He wasn’t a * but he wasn’t a sack of shit either.”

The girl in Smoke’s bed slipped out from the sheets on the other side, pulling a black T-shirt over on her head that must have been Smoke’s due to the sheer size of it. She quietly headed into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

“You thought of me for what?” I demanded, still unsure of what the hell he meant by all this. “What the f*ck did you do, Smoke?”

Smoke dropped the bottle on the floor and closed the space between us. He threw his hands in the air then ran his fingers through his long, slicked-back hair. “Dammit, Rage! Don’t you get it? He was for you! I thought he could be your way to keep one foot in the land of the living and keep you from becoming the f*cking female grim reaper!”

I pushed against his chest. “That makes no sense. If any of what you’re saying is true, then why did you tell me I could kill him if I wanted?” I crouched down on the floor and rested my forehead in my hands. The room spun. I’d never been so confused, or worried, along with something else that was making everything inside me hurt like poison making its way through my system.

Smoke laughed softly. He leaned down to me, just like he had that first night in the woods. “I heard the way you talked about him. I knew you had it bad for him ’cause I ain’t ever heard you talk about no one like that. Figured it would take you having to be faced with losing him for you to get your head out of your ass.”

“I could have killed him,” I whispered, the reality hitting me in the face like a bucket of cold water.

Smoke shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.” He raised an eyebrow. “Or maybe not. Was willing to see where it went and how far gone you were.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What about his parents? What about the information you sent me to get from Nolan about them?”