JACKSON
I hate waiting.
It was something that I had always hated. Granted, no one liked it. But it had the ability to get underneath my skin and piss me off like nothing else and now felt like the perfect example of that. The news that Agent Pierce had delivered over the phone had thrown me for a loop – the case was being thrown out because she was my step-sister, apparently. When I had pictured April and myself building a new family together away from Mom and Dick, it hadn't been like that. It hadn't included throwing away everything that we had been working toward.
Maybe that was why she was taking so long – she didn't want to confront me and have this conversation any more than I did. Seemed like a huge coincidence for her not to know about it. Maybe this was why she had taken interest in the case to start off.
"You're not going to believe what we got delivered today," Dad beamed.
"What is it?" I asked.
"The four-stroke scramblers for the Matchless '66 came in finally. We'll be able to finish up that bike now." He and I had been working on that bike for a while now, slowed down by the obstacles of getting every part we needed since it was an older model. By the time we had finished refurbishing it, it was worth over sixteen thousand dollars.
"You're kidding me!" I let out a laugh. "About damn time. Gonna make a lot of money off of that. I'll get it out again and start working on it tonight." I grinned.
Dad paused as his phone rang. "Just a second," he held up a finger to me. "Hello? … Yeah, yeah. I'm about to leave the shop now and I should be there in about fifteen minutes." I could just hear the other voice on the line – Mom. She must have been waiting for him.
I waited till he hung up to speak. "That Mom?"
"Yeah," he answered. "Supposed to meet her for lunch. She's waiting for me. Insistent that I leave now."
"Ah, alright," I nodded my head. Typical Mom. She didn't believe in waiting for anyone or anything. "See you later. I'll wait up to get started on it."
That was the last time that I had seen my father alive. The bike was completely refurbished now and sitting in the garage, underneath a tarp. I'd finished it a couple years later, after two stints in jail, and then put it underneath. It was plenty of money but I couldn't part with it.
The tapping of my fingertips against the table was loud. There was a cup of coffee that I haven't bothered to touch. She was late. She hadn't been late to our previous meetings but I guess now I was no longer important to her given that there was no benefit from meeting with me other than clearing her conscious. She couldn't help me much anymore. April and I were going to be on our own again. This time, I wasn't sure what our next move could be. All of the evidence that Pierce had touched was going to be thrown away from our relationship and there was no getting any of it back. The club wasn't going to be going to jail any time soon. Now, it just seemed like things were going even further in the wrong direction. We were fucked.
Ding. As the diner door opened, the bell above it went off. Ridgewood wasn't far from Eureka but enough that I didn't have to worry about getting recognized with her. The hoodie I was wearing covered up pretty much all of my tattoos.
There she was.
"Jackson." She gave me a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Sorry, I know I'm late."
"Yeah," I sat up and folded my hands on the table. "Surprised that you came at all," I admitted.
"I had to," she insisted. "I feel so bad about what happened. I had no idea – otherwise, I would have assigned this case to anyone else to make sure that something like this didn't happen. I mean, I knew that I was adopted, but I've never known about my biological parents. I can't believe that I came from someone like him, I can't even begin to imagine…" She rambled on.
"Living with him as a step-father isn't exactly great. You didn't miss out on much." I kept her from continuing down that path any further. I didn't need to hear it.
"Right, sorry," she replied quickly. "But I want to still help if I can. I've been looking into your father's death like we talked about on the phone." As she spoke, she pulled a manila folder out of her bag and set it down on the table between us.
I pulled it closer, opening it up. "What's all this?"
"Everything that I could find on the investigation of his death," Agent Pierce explained. "As you can see, there's not a lot. Local PD treated it like it was a black and white accident. Hit and run, they never convicted a suspect."
"Is there anything to suggest that it wasn't?" I asked.
"Well…" she sighed. "That's where it gets a little complicated. There was a witness. She came forward initially and gave a description of him to a sketch artist – it's in the back of the folder." I flipped to the back as she spoke. "Something scared her out of testifying and that's why the case ended up being shut because there wasn't any other evidence."
Looking at the image, it was clear exactly who she had described. Sure, there was fifteen years of aging between then and now. But there was no doubt in my mind that it was Dick.
"The club must have scared her out of it," I commented as I clutched onto the photo. "That's what Dick would've wanted."
"Probably," she agreed.
"Is there anything that we can do about it now?" I looked up at her.
"Probably not," she sighed. "Eyewitness reports aren't considered as reliable now as they were back then given all of the evidence that's come out against them. There's not any kind of physical evidence left. Unless Dick confessed directly, there's no way to put him away for it."
"What kind of confession are we talking about?" I leaned forward. "Mom said something to April. Basically confessed."
"It's hearsay unless she has some kind of proof of the confession." She shook her head. She'd have to admit to setting Dick up to do it, or vice versa. And I'm guessing that's not going to happen."
"No, it's not." Shutting the folder, I let out a sigh. This was looking like a dead end. "Thanks, I guess. I gotta go."
I didn't have to so much as I wanted to.
Abandoning my untouched coffee and leaving a couple of dollars on the table, I walked out of the diner and got onto my bike. The engine roared to life and I didn't hesitate to tear out of the parking lot, finding my way back on the highway to get back to Eureka.
Nothing about riding on the road could calm me in the way that it usually did. I had too many memories of Dick to tear apart. I'd been in jail when he and Mom had gotten married. The guys had told me about it a couple of weeks later when they had come to visitation. Less than a year after Dad had died and she'd gone off and married who I had thought had been his good friend, but instead, she had married his murderer. Given what she had said to April, it was clear the two had been in on it together. My opinion hadn't mattered. It still didn't, really. Not to them.
At least now it all made sense why Mom had been so insistent that he get to lunch with her.
The sun warmed the back of my neck in the brief drive from the diner in Ridgewood back to Eureka. Pulling up into the hospital parking lot, I park in the empty space next to April's Honda and ignored the reserved parking sign. Probably some other staff member out to lunch. I probably wouldn't be here that long.
"Where's Dr. Kepner?" I asked one of the passing nurses.
She turned and stared at me for a long moment before answering. "Either at lunch or in her office."
Muttering thanks, I made my way down to the cafeteria. If her being in the hospital had given anything good, it was the fact that now I knew the layout of the hospital and how to get around without looking like I was lost.
Red hair stands out in the cafeteria. I can see her sitting with Mark, Amelia, and Izzie. The latter spotted me and straightened up to wave me. I took a deep breath and gave her a smile as I walked over. I was surprised that she was still so friendly to me given the streak of bad luck that she had with the club. She had no reason. Usually, when someone died, we took care of their old lady and made sure they were all fine. But she hadn't been his old lady. They hadn't.
"Hey!" April perked up as she turned to saw me.
I kissed her forehead as I sat down next to her. "Hey, babe."
"Hi, Jackson," Izzie spoke.
"Hey," Amelia greeted.
"Thought I would come and visit you for lunch. Take Kieran home for the afternoon, too, if you'll let me take your car." My focus was on her even if I spoke loud enough for the others to hear. "Met with Maggie and she gave me a couple of things to look over."
"Oh?" April questioned with a slight tilt of her head, another silent question lingering on her lips.
"Looking into the job market?" Mark put himself in the conversation. April had mentioned that he had offered to hook me up with some kind of job – what, I wasn't sure. He seemed like a nice guy but I didn't want anyone doing what I should have been doing.
"No, not exactly." I shook my head. "Just looking into some family history. Stuff with my dad. He died when I was 18." That would stop him. Most people didn't like talking about dead parents.
"You were doing that some with Alex's dad too, weren't you? He mentioned once or twice that you had come to visit him in the hospital." Izzie said.
I let out a breath and nodded my head. "Yeah, I was."
"It's good to know about Kieran's grandpa." April rubbed my arm affectionately. "I wish that I had gotten the chance to meet him. He raised a good man."
"He would have loved you," I smiled fondly and placed my hand on top of hers. "Kieran too."
"You snagged one of the good ones," Mark commented and sipped through his plastic straws. "Not a lot of those left running around here. Trust me." He chuckled.
"He's just bitter because he got rejected by a hooker," Amelia snorted.
"She was not a hooker." He shook his head and put his cup down. "I don't pay. I don't have to."
"He's talking about Lexie, you know," April commented as she nudged me. "Showed me a picture. Apparently, the two of them met in a bar and he was not the mind-blowing one of the two of them." She explained.
"Really?" I laughed. "Yeah, she's not really the longterm type. Trust me – been there, done that."
Mark let out a victorious huff. "Knew that it couldn't have just been me." He smirked.
"Uh huh, sure," Izzie rolled her eyes playfully.
"I should probably get out of here before they decide to gang up on me instead of you," I said with a glance at Mark, placing a hand on April's shoulder and giving it a squeeze. She leaned over and gave me a soft kiss on the lips as she handed over her car keys. "I'll see you tonight. Text me when you need a ride home."
"See you later," April smiled.
Giving her shoulder one more squeeze, I got up from the table and headed in the other direction. The daycare was on the other side of the first floor but it doesn't take me long to get there. The daycare worker doesn't recognize me and checked my ID before she allowed me to take home my son. I wasn't sure if April had mentioned the incident with my mother or if it was just because of what I looked like. I'd have to ask her later.
Something about me behind the wheel of a car just seemed to set Kieran of. He cried the way home but he doesn't scream like he used to be, yet there was something more pitiful about the whimpering that I get. Maybe he was just meant to enjoy the bike and open road one day, like me.
"Come on, buddy," I encouraged him as I lifted him out of the car seat, bouncing him gently. "That's better, isn't it? Yeah. That's better. Don't worry, kid. When you're old enough, we're going to get you on that bike. It's going to drive your mom crazy but you'll love it. Your grandpa took me on the bike when I was way too young and I loved it. I promise you will too."
Babbling is the only response to my words that I get as we walked into the house. I gave him a bottle before settling down on the couch with him. The file with my father's information was out on the table, the eyewitness sketch of Dick out in the open.
"What am I gonna do with this?" I sighed.
Kieran gurgled and spit up on himself. I used the end of my sleeve to wipe his chin, lifting him up to burp him over my shoulder.
"I don't know either," I patted his back. "I don't know what grandpa would want me to do."
"Ba…" He only had a simple syllable to offer back.
"But I'm going to figure it out for you and Mom. I promise."
Keeping him held against the top of my chest, his hand reached up and rubbed against the stubble that was growing out on my face. He seemed to like the texture of it more than his mother did. He rubbed his hand up and down for a moment before it fell away and he just rested against my shoulder. I held him there for a few minutes before he fell asleep.
"You had a hard morning of drinking milk and pooping, huh?" I teased with a huff of breath, shifting gently to stretch out across the couch with him on my chest. I wasn't tired. The past few nights, I hadn't been sleeping much.
Thank God or Allah or Buddha or whoever was out there that I had him here.
Falling asleep on the couch isn't my intention given that I was supposed to go and pick up April from the end of her workday once she was done. I didn't want to ignore her text. But it's exactly what happens, nodding off with Kieran on my chest and an arm wrapped around him securely.
The front door to the house opened up and it took me a moment to process what the beeping of the alarm was, blinking myself awake and taking a deep breath. Kieran was still asleep no me and I could feel the pool of drool on my neck and shoulder from where he had slept. Sitting up gently as to not startle him awake, April was standing in the doorway with an adoring smile on her lips as she looked at the two of us.
"Hi, you two," she beamed.
"I was supposed to come to pick you up from work." I stood up, Kieran stirring in my arms. "Shit– I'm so sorry. I must have slept through your calling."
"I didn't," she shook her head. "Amelia gave me a ride home. She offered. Don't worry."
"Well, welcome home." She stepped toward me as I spoke, blowing a raspberry against Kieran's cheeks before stretching up on her toes and giving me a kiss, too. She took him out of my arms, snuggling him against her front.
"Oh, my sweet boy…" April sighed as she nuzzled her nose against Kieran. "Have you been looking at things with Daddy?"
"Hardly," I chuckled and rubbed the back of my head. "I opened up the file to take another look but there's really nothing there to look at it. It's the stuff that I knew all my life. He got plowed through, dead on the scene. There was an eye witness that I identified someone who looked… pretty much exactly like Dick but they didn't want to testify. I figure that the club scared them out of talking." I pointed out the photo on the table, sitting back down on the couch to look at the papers spread out across the coffee table.
"Even with them, it would be a big stretch, especially all these years later." She chewed at the inside of her cheek. "So does that mean that there's nothing we can do about it?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "Seems to be that way."
"So what are we going to do?" She asked.
"I don't know."
Without a clear cut answer, it was hard to decide where to go forward. I knew that April could get a job anywhere that she wanted to. She had good credentials and a winning smile – I was sure that was all that she really needed when she walked into a job interview. But I couldn't let her put everything on her shoulders. This was my problem that she had gotten involved in and I was the one who needed to be able to get us out of it. I would have to find something soon. I didn't want to keep her waiting forever.
The sun still beat down in September but it wasn't nearly as brutal as the summer sun had been. There was not a single cloud in the sky as I walked through the familiar path of the cemetery to make my way to my father's grave.
Robert Damon Avery.
1962-2005.
Standing with my shadow on his grave, I stared at the tombstone for a long time. I'd come here a few times immediately after he died and here and there after more time passed, birthdays and the occasional holiday. Sometimes it was nice to feel like I was here with him, but sometimes I just didn't feel like I was doing more than staring at a stone. Reading his journals had made me feel closer than this.
Right now, though, I just needed a little more.
"Hey, Dad…" I breathed out and shoved my hands into the front pocket of my hoodie. "Guess it's been a while since the last time that I was here." Probably not since his last birthday.
Tilting my head back and getting a little more of the sun warming my curls, I paused for a moment and just stood there. No one else was around, just me and him. It was a chance to say anything that I had been holding back – but really, there wasn't much there. I could talk to April or either at Kieran.
"I've found your journals. Been reading through them and doing some thinking. Alex's dad died. So did he, actually. Both of them were murdered," I sighed. "I wish we'd been able to talk more about this than when you had been alive but I get why. There was a lot going on with you and Dick and you didn't have as much pull as you thought you did. It makes sense." My weight shifted from foot to foot. "You're right. The club shouldn't be doing what it's doing. I don't think I can get them out, but… I think I can get myself out. And April, and Kieran, too. You would like them a lot."
That was something that I was confident about. He would have liked her. She would have liked him a lot, too. He had been a good man. I wanted to be more like him and less like Dick.
That meant finding a new job.
There wasn't a lot that I was good at besides being a mechanic. Then, I was pretty average admittedly. But I knew how to get the job done. Dad had always run the business, Alex's dad had handled the numbers and whatnot after that – it was something that I would have to figure out. I didn't have a business background. That was something I could figure out, hopefully.
On the full moon in mid-September, instead of being in bed with April, I was sitting on the back porch with her laptop out.
Kieran had woken up in the middle of the night with a dirty diaper and once he was in a clean one and back down, I couldn't bring myself to get back to bed myself. Not having the next step was driving me crazy and I knew that it had to be bothering April, too. But there was only one thing that made any sense to me.
Start my own business – my own mechanic shop. But that meant knowing how to run a business. Sure, Google had plenty of ten to twelve-step plans to do it, but all of them required a lot of money. I knew that April had a solid six-figure salary with her work at the hospital but I didn't want to ask her to do this. Getting a loan from the bank wasn't going to work out with my background and lack of educational experience. So there was one step that made some sense… Go to school. Get an associate's in business administration, and go from there.
"What are you doing out here?" I flinched hearing April's voice, squinting as I twisted my neck around to see her standing over my shoulder. She'd been quietly sneaking up on me.
"Just thinking," I shrugged my shoulders as she sat down next to me.
"Business administration?" She questioned as she leaned into me, her head resting on my shoulder. I pressed a kiss on top of her head. "You want to go back to school?"
"I was thinking if I did, maybe I could start up my own auto repair shop," I admitted. "It's a stupid idea," I brushed off.
"No, it's not," she replied quickly. "I loved school. I loved it so much even though… you know, my parents. But I really loved school and learning. I think it'd be great for you. You could show off how smart you are to more than just me."
I laughed. "I'm not that smart."
"Yes, you are," April jabbed my ribs lightly. "You're not just some dumb biker. I wouldn't be here with you if you were. You're smart and you're committed. When it comes to school? Being committed is what makes you smart. You commit yourself and you work hard and that's what gets good grades. Trust me. You would kill it. I would help you, too."
"I love you." Somehow, she had the right words to say. I shifted slightly as I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and pulled her in against me, giving her upper arm a little rub. "I love you so much." Those were words that I didn't say to her enough.
"I love you too, baby," she nuzzled against me affectionately, head turning toward me slightly as she kissed my shoulder. "And I think that this is a great idea for a next step. Get accepted somewhere far away from here, use that as your excuse to go. Then never come back. It'd be an easy out. Give us a bit of time to figure out the details while you're in school, and then just… go wherever we want to go. Move to Timbuktu."
Maybe not Timbuktu, but it sure as hell wouldn't be Eureka.
Technically online school was an option, but that wasn't something that I wanted to tell the club. I could tell them I was going so we could keep up with the times on the business front and let them accept that. It was a good cover, April was right. I hadn't thought about it that way when I had looked into it but maybe it really could work.
A week later there was a meeting with the club set up formally which meant that there was something big that needed to be discussed. Whatever it was, Dick had been keeping me out of it. That was likely Mom's doing.
I'd made a list – not entirely vetted necessarily but locations all across the country to keep away. Keiser University in Florida, Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, Empire State College in New York, the University of Maine at Augusta. There were options everywhere, more than I realized for older students, and I was favoring the ones on the east coast. I actually had a chance at making all of this come together.
Late in the evening, everyone was gathered around the table with Dick at the head of it. It took a few minutes for everyone to get settled, and I noticed that Deluca had his cousin with him again. That was unexpected. There must have been something going on there that I didn't know about.
"Alright, alright," Dick banged his fist against the wooden table. "Quiet down."
A few seconds passed before a hush was established across the room.
"I know that things have been pretty slow on the gun front since the ATF bust but now that the case is dropped, we can deep into getting things running again," he announced as he looked around the table. It seemed like his eyes lingered on me for a moment longer. "Which is why Vito is here today. They've got a new proposition for the club that everyone needs to hear."
"Thank you." His Italian accent was thick as he began. "We've recently gotten a new source of some narcotics and need to find a few more sellers. You have a nice little town here, yeah? try white and enough money. With the opioid epidemic that you've got going, we think that it's going to be a good place to start some more business going with you guys. You owe us a debt from the gun issue that you have going on and we've been very patient and forgiving. But it won't last forever. You want to play off that debt faster? Then this is going to be the way to do it."
Fuck.
"What kind of narcotics are we talkin' about?" Owen questioned, leaning forward on the table. I leaned back and withheld a sigh.
"Dilaudid primarily," Vito answered. "Very addictive."
Details of the drugs were passed around the conversation and I could feel my chest getting tighter. I wanted nothing more than to get out of this club and if they were about to get even deeper into trouble with selling drugs, then my family needed to be out of here. I knew a couple others around sold heroin and other drugs – they wouldn't like this. This was going o cause violence in the streets. There was no way to ignore that.
"What about the others?" I finally questioned after a few minutes of discussions. "The other clubs, they're dealing too. They're not going to like that we're intruding on their territory. They've always looked at us for guns and nothing else."
"Get back into controlling the gun market again and it'll be no worry," Vito chuckled.
"Get into both and there'll be plenty of money to go around." Dick echoed with a nod of his head. "Kill two birds with one stone."
Killing something was right.
"We will need an answer about what you want to do tonight," Vito said.
"Which means that we need to vote on it now." No time to talk anyone out of it. Voting no was going to make me the odd man out, I was almost certain of that. I had to keep my head down. "Who's in?" Hands across the room rose up. Mine did slowly. "Anyone against?" Everyone's hands went down.
More fists banged against the table in celebration and Vito stood up with his phone out, leaving the room to make a phone call. He wasn't actually in the club, just came and went through his connection with Deluca, which meant that there wasn't a reason for him to stay for the rest of it. But now would be a good time to announce what I had been thinking about. The sooner that April and I could slink away, the better.
As it quieted down again, I took a deep breath before finding my voice again. "There's actually something that I want to address while we have everyone here." I glanced around the table as everyone's eyes turned toward me.
"What's going on, son?" Dick asked and I tried not to cringe at the word choice.
"I've been thinking about the business side of things with the shop. I know that Alex's dad did a lot of the running for it and that you've taken over since," I began. "But I think it'd be good to keep up with the times. I want to go to school, get a degree in business administration. Make sure there are no loopholes in what we're doing."
"Jacky boy, you want to go to school?" Owen gave a boisterous laugh. "You've got to be kidding me!"
"Someone's got to keep this place running and it's not going to be your dumbass, Hunt," another member chimed in, more laughter following from around the table.
"Not a bad idea," Dick commented, rubbing his chin. "Someone does have to keep this place running and we'll need the books neater than ever."
"Exactly," I agreed with a nod of my head. "I'd have to step away a couple of years, you know, to do a good job and not half-ass it. Keep up with the kid growing, too." That was the part I was a little more worried about them buying. "April thinks she can help me get into a decent place and get a real education." Okay, she hadn't said that. But they didn't talk to her.
"Huh," Dick clucked his tongue. "Boys, what do you think?"
There wasn't the same enthusiasm around the table as there had been about the prospect of selling drugs, but the noises and mutterings that come are pretty agreeable. Alex might have been the only one who said no, he probably would have thought it was a stupid idea and wouldn't want me ditching town. But he wasn't here anymore and he didn't have to know how bad things were about to get.
But they were in favor.
That was pretty much all of the relief that I could have asked for given what else everyone was in favor for. I would have to take what I could get. They'd pretty much given me permission to go. They just didn't know that I wasn't going to be coming back.
As everyone began to stand up and filtered out of the room, I forced my shoulders down and to relax so no one suspected that there was something more going on. I could get out of there and get home to my girl, let her know about the good news. She would be relieved. She wanted to get out of here even more than I did and my desire to leave was growing every day.
"Jackson," Dick called my name before I could get out. "Slow down for a second."
Shit. "Yeah?" I turned around to face him.
"I just want to talk, son." He motioned for me to sit down at the table and I did so. He looked down at me for a moment before sitting back at his position at the head of the table. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
"What's up?"
"Your mom and I have been talking." Oh, no. A long pause followed. "She's let me in on some information that frankly, she should have told me a long time ago, but I suppose I'll have to settle on knowing it now. You're lucky that no one else has found out that you're the rat. Catherine's always been good at keeping secrets." The more he spoke, the angrier I got.
"Yeah, like how my father really died." I snapped. "She's kept that one hidden for years."
"You should be dead right now, just like your father." He replied.
My hand curled into a fist and I stood up quickly. "So what are you going to do about it?"
"It's not about what I'm going to do about it. It's about what you're going to do." Dick stood up. "If you open your mouth about any of this to anyone else, you'll be joining Robert. You're going to do exactly what I say and there's not going to be a single complaint about it."
Without thinking, I threw my fist at his face. Two knuckles popped upon collision. "Don't talk about my father."
"Bastard," Dick swore as he stepped back, spitting out blood. "You can do your little school adventure. I couldn't get a rat's ass about you staying given your mother is the only reason that you're alive right now. But before that? You're going to be the one taking up the drugs with the other clubs since you're so concerned about it. That's all going to be on you. You're going to be the face of all of this." So if it all went to shit, it would come down on me with any feds.
"Kiss my ass," I swore at him as I turned around on my heel sharply to walk out.
"If you don't, you're not the only one that it's going to come down on." He threatened. "You think that plot in the cemetery is going to have enough room for April and your son?"
I stopped in my tracks. "You wouldn't."
"You know that I would." Without another word from him, I walked out.
Mom and Dick could threaten me and my lie all day long. But the second that they even came near touching April or Kieran? I would kill and bury both of them without hesitation. April and Kieran were themes important people in my life and I couldn't let anything that I was doing hurt them anymore, not like that. But right now, all of those outside options that I had been building up for both of us were beginning to look bleak.
A streak of black was freshly stained onto the road right before turning into the driveway of our house. Driving too fast was a habit and it was only made worse when I was pissed off like this. I wanted to do more than punch him. I wanted to strangle the life out of him.
The front door of the house slammed shut behind me as I came in, dropping my keys on the table and sucking in a deep breath. I needed to calm down. I didn't want April to seem like this and I knew I was in no condition to be around our son like this, either. But I wanted to break something, I wanted to punch something and I wanted to scream. The already swollen state of my knuckles wasn't enough to let out everything that was culminating inside of me now. I wasn't going to let this go. Dick couldn't do this shit to me. He couldn't do it to them.
"Jackson?" April called out. "What's going on?"
My head shook as she entered the room, running both hands over my face and lacing my fingers together behind my head. My mouth felt dry suddenly.
"Hey, hey…" she tried to soothe as she stepped forward and placed her hands on my chest, rubbing it gently. "Calm down. Talk to me. You can always talk to me." It took a moment of her patting me gently to try and gather myself enough to speak.
"The club's getting involved in drugs. It's my fault. It's to make up for the money lost from the ATF raid." I shook my head and my hands fell back down by my side. "Shit! And Dick knows. I knew there was a chance that all of this could backfire but I didn't think it was going to be like this."
April doesn't say anything at first, looking up at me with wide eyes before her arms wrapped around my neck and she stretched up on her toes to hug me. "It's going to be okay, baby." She murmured in my ear as she held onto me tight. My arms naturally went around her slim waist and I pulled her against me, breathing her in. At least right now, in my arms, she was safe and sound.
"I don't know what to do." My eyes burned with tears as I tried to keep them back and from overflowing. "Everything I do goes wrong. Every single thing I have done to try and make our lives better and safer has turned back against us."
"You are going everything that you can." She pulled back, her hands resting on my shoulders and barely going anywhere. "I believe in you. You're doing the best that you can."
"And what if that's not going to be enough?" I questioned.
"It will." Her optimism pursued despite my growing negativity. "We are going to make it work, Jackson. It's been made very clear that it's not going to be easy but we are going to make it through this. We're getting out of this town. We'll move to New York or Maine or wherever we need to, and we will have our life and our family there. You're going to get your degree and have a successful business. It's going to work. Remember what you promised me?"
"That we were going to get out of here." That it was going to be better for both of us. I couldn't forget that I had promised her that – it seemed like now, my entire life revolved around trying to fulfill what I had told her.
"Exactly. You are not a person who makes promises he doesn't keep." She held my face securely in her hands, tight enough that maybe it could just piece me back together a bit. "Come here. Let's sit down."
April guided me over to the couch and we sat down together. For once, I was the one leaning on her. My head ended up in her lap and she held me like that, fingernails running over my scalp just the way that she knew I liked it. A few minutes passed as I began to calm down.
"We'll get out of here. We'll fill out those applications and get you in for the spring semester." She suggested. "I trust you."
"Thank you," I spoke after a few minutes, my hands on her knee and giving it a slight squeeze.
"For what?" She asked.
"For being the one who always believes in me. I haven't had that since my Dad died." I admitted.
Her hair brushed against me as she bent down, kissing the top of my head. "Thank you for being worth believing in."