All Chained Up (Devil's Rock #1)(60)

His uncle wanted him to have a life outside of work and looking after him, and he didn’t bother disguising that fact.

“Alice mentioned that you’ve got a few admirers at Roscoe’s.”

Knox laughed once, shaking his head. Of course they were talking about him and his nonexistent life, as they deemed it. Those admirers were regulars and had more mileage on them than his uncle’s old Dodge. He wasn’t interested in any of them. Briar flashed across his mind. Fresh-faced and smelling of pears. Shit.

He patted his uncle on the shoulder. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Knox made a move toward his bedroom down the hall, but his uncle’s beefy hand shot out to grab his arm. His grip was still surprisingly strong. Even after the stroke, after losing Katie . . . after Knox and North went to prison and Aunt Sissy died, his hands were still strong. So capable.

They were the same hands that had picked up Knox and his brother when they’d fallen off their bikes as boys. He was the only father they had ever known. Knox wouldn’t fail him. He couldn’t. Not again.

He met his uncle’s rheumy gaze. “You can’t run from life,” his uncle said. “From living. I don’t want that. Neither would Katie or your aunt.”

Knox sucked in a breath and blinked suddenly burning eyes. It was the first time his uncle had mentioned Katie or Aunt Sissy in years. Certainly the first time since Knox had gotten out of prison. It frightened him a little . . . in addition to making him want to blubber like a baby. It was one thing knowing they were gone, but another thing to talk about them being gone, lost forever, so openly. He didn’t talk about it with anyone. He never had. It tore him up too much.

He blinked fiercely, feeling so damned weak and small. He had a flash of himself when he was seven years old and his mom had driven them all the way from Plano to drop him off at her brother’s place. Uncle Mac’s gonna take care of you and your brother now. Don’t cry. Be brave.

And Uncle Mac had taken care of them. He took Knox and North in when their mom went to live with some deadbeat that didn’t want kids. He and Aunt Sissy fed them casseroles, got them haircuts, and drove them to little league. A year later his mom had died of an overdose.

“You need to make a life for yourself,” Uncle Max said gruffly. “A little happiness. Believe it or not, you deserve that. Find someone to spend your life with . . . to love. A woman. Kids.”

He shook his head, “Uncle Mac—”

“Nothing’s worth anything unless you have that.” His voice dipped deeper. Rougher. Like he was battling emotion, maybe holding in tears. Knox hadn’t seen him cry since the night they found Katie in the bathroom, an empty bottle of pills next to her. He hadn’t cried at her funeral.

Knox hadn’t been there when Aunt Sissy died four years ago, but when Uncle Mac called to tell Knox and North the news, there had been no tears in his voice. Only weariness. A weariness that Knox took deep inside himself. Because it was all his fault.

If he had kept his shit together all those years ago, maybe Katie would still be here. Maybe Aunt Sissy would never have been so weak that winter and she could have beaten the pneumonia. Maybe, the following year, his uncle wouldn’t have had that stroke. It was a horrible chain of events. A domino effect that Knox blamed himself for starting. He had been the first one to drop, after all.

“You’ve never disappointed me,” Uncle Mac said gruffly. “But if you quit on building a real life for yourself, you will have.”

Knox nodded, not knowing what to say. Or think. He settled for, “Okay, Uncle Mac.”

His uncle released his arm with a satisfied nod as if the matter were resolved. Knox went to his room. It was exactly the same as when he graduated from high school. Same trophies and plaid quilt comforter. Even his old baseball mitt sat on the dresser. When he entered this room, he felt like he was stuck in a time warp. A teenager again and not a man that had lived through all he had.

Suddenly, the air felt too tight in his lungs. He had to get out of here. Turning, he headed back down the hall.

“Hey, I’ll be back later, Uncle Mac. Don’t wait up.”

Uncle Mac waved from his chair, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction. He probably thought his talk did some good and Knox was going out to live it up.

Knox didn’t know where he was going. He only knew that he couldn’t sit in that room tonight, reflecting on his lost boyhood. Before everything went to hell. Especially with his uncle’s words echoing all around him: Find someone to spend your life with . . .

He made it sound so simple. Like he could go pick out a woman, decide to be happy, and all would be well. Nothing was that simple.

He drove down the county road until he hit the highway. Then he passed Roscoe’s and kept going, heading into Sweet Hill. He drove almost blindly, some other force, a deep-buried instinct, guiding him. The way Briar had looked before she turned and left him in the back of Roscoe’s. That nagged at him, tangling with all the other bullshit weighing on him. He was a Grade A * who treated nice girls like shit. And his uncle thought he deserved happiness.

His uncle didn’t get it. Knox had tossed out any chance for a life like that when he was twenty. Sometimes you f*cked up so badly, you didn’t get a chance for normal. You definitely didn’t get a chance for happiness. His uncle didn’t realize that.