Daddy was quiet for a moment. "Are you telling the truth, Jax?"
Jax suddenly felt like ants were crawling all around in his stomach, eating at the few bites of ice cream that were there. He looked away. "I—I don’t know."
"Don’t lie to me, boy," Daddy said with a scary voice.
"I—I almost won."
"So you lost?"
"Yeah, but—"
Jax’s head smashed into the side window with a crunching sound. He cried out in pain as the world flashed bluish-green.
"I told you not to lie to me, boy. Why don’t you ever listen?"
Jax’s head pounded. It hurt so bad that he wanted to scream, but he bit his lip to avoid crying. Daddy didn’t like crying. All he wanted was to make Daddy happy, but he would always mess up and Daddy would get angry at him and have to punish him for being bad.
"Sorry Daddy," Jax mumbled, fighting back the tears in his eyes. He was so disappointed in himself. He deserved it. "I’ll try harder next time."
Daddy took a deep breath.
Just as Jax thought Daddy was going to calm down, Daddy’s arm shot out. Jax’s head slammed into the window again. And again. And again. And again . . . He didn’t know how many times he heard the crunching sound because after a while everything went from bluish-green to black.
When he opened his eyes again, he figured he had fallen asleep and just woken up. His head throbbed and ached all over. It felt like a T-Rex had played jump rope on his head while he was sleeping and now an Indian was banging on it like a drum. The ants were now crawling all over his eyes, making it hard to see.
He slowly turned to look at Daddy in the driver seat and saw that Daddy’s face was no longer red and scrunched up. Daddy didn’t look angry anymore.
"Put on your seatbelt, Jax," Daddy said. "I don’t want you to get hurt."
The world was still fuzzy and spinning, and Jax wasn’t quite sure he understood the words that Daddy had said even though he knew he had heard them.
Belt. Seat. See what bells? . . . There are bells ringing in my head but I can’t see them . . .
After a few seconds, Jax somehow managed to do as he was told.
He looked down at his shirt and saw the ice cream had spilled all over it.
As Daddy started driving, Jax tried scooping the white ice cream mixed with red drops on his shirt into his mouth. He thought that if he ate enough, the ants would crawl out of his eyes and go back to his stomach, and then he would be able to see better. But after a few gulps, he realized he couldn’t eat anymore. The ice cream tasted like metal.
It made him want to cry even more. He bit his lip harder and balled his fists into his shorts. His eyes felt stingy and wet, but he wouldn’t let the tears come down. He wasn’t going to blink. He wasn’t going to disappoint Daddy and make him angry again.
Crying would just make it worse.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
BURN
Riley
The bikers had stopped fighting and turned their attention toward the source of the whistling—the man who had gotten out of the black Cadillac.
The man had wild shoulder-length hair, grayed with streaks of white. The maroon shirt he wore was unbuttoned, and beneath it was a stained beater that protruded a bit over his belt. His jeans looked worn. His face had bags and deep lines; he looked like he was past his forties, but despite his age, there was something about him that was striking. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
The man began walking over. "What's going on here?" he asked in a deep voice. His words lacked any trace of uncertainty, his question more like a command than an answer.
I looked at Jax. His brows were knitted together tightly, his eyes were wide, and his mouth was a thin line. He looked shocked, anguished even, as if he recognized the man coming toward us, and that the man was a ghost. A sudden dread coiled in my stomach.
The streetlamp began to flicker, casting menacing shadows along the empty street. With each step closer the man took toward us, it felt like the night air was getting thicker.
The group of drunk, half-beaten bikers backed away from Jax, each stepping to one of two sides, parting almost in reverence to make a path for the man. I hurried over to Jax to be by his side.
As the man approached us, his shadow eclipsed both me and Jax. I could see now that he was as tall as Jax, and his shoulders were just as broad, if not broader.
He came to a stop a few feet in front of us. "Huh?" he grunted, his dark eyes boring into each of us in turn. "Who the hell are you guys?"
"Darrel," Bandana said as he settled by the man’s side, "this ass**le’s trying to look tough in front of his girl."
I moved closer to Jax, afraid something bad might happen. Although we’d been outnumbered before, Jax had been able to handle all of them by himself. But now, it seemed like their boss was here. Darrel sent off real bad vibes. I didn’t know whether it was in that look in his eyes that seemed like he was assessing you, identifying your weaknesses, picking apart your flaws, or in the confident way he walked, like a man who possessed no fear. Whatever it was, I could sense that he was a man capable of being extremely dangerous.
I touched Jax’s arm for security, but he didn’t so much as turn his head to acknowledge me; he just kept staring forward with blazing intensity, at Darrel, as if he sensed the same danger as I did.
"Oh?" Darrel stepped forward, narrowing his thick, gray eyebrows as he studied us. "What are you guys doing here?"
I looked to Jax for a response, but his jaw was clamped tight. He seemed to be trying as hard as he could to restrain himself from speaking. His mind must’ve still been on the fight.
"We were trying to leave," I said, in an attempt to defuse the situation.
One of Darrel’s brows raised. "Were you now?" He casually looked at the other bikers who were holding injured limbs and tending to open wounds. "Seems unlikely. In fact, it looks like you were trying to cause trouble in my neighborhood."
The hairs on the back of my neck raised at his accusation. And that he referred to this area as his neighborhood disturbed me. A part of me had hoped that the appearance of this man would stop the fighting for good, but I started to get the sense that his arrival had just made the situation worse. Much worse. I had to choose my words carefully.
"We didn’t mean to," I offered. "We were just acting in defense. We’re sorry."
"Don’t apologize," Jax growled, surprising me. His clenched teeth were bared, and his eyes were fixed on Darrel like a hawk. "We did nothing wrong."