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  2. Severed Heart (Ravenhood Legacy Book 2)

  3. Severed Heart: Chapter 10
Severed Heart (Ravenhood Legacy Book 2)

Severed Heart: Chapter 10

US PRESIDENT: GEORGE W. BUSH | 2001–2009

FALL 2004noveldrama

“SO, WHAT’S THIS I hear about you and Amy Miller? Because apparently, she can’t stop talking about our boy,” Sean chirps, poking his head between Dom and me, where I sit in the driver’s seat of my mom’s van.
A van that’s on its last leg and which Mom refuses to part with. A van we’re also in desperate need to keep running, thanks to Mom’s constant consent to let me chauffer the three of us around since I aged out, being the first of us to get my license.
The situation being temporary until we can finish restoring the classics Sean’s uncle gave us by way of a massive heart attack. The process to get them street-ready has been and will be slow and agonizing due to the expense, but one we deem will eventually be worth the wait.
Sean’s uncle’s widow opted to hand them over with no strings as long as we got them hauled off within her allotted time frame.
We jumped on it, and the minute she opened the yard, I spotted and stalked straight to the ’66 C20. Sean and Dom had done the same with their own cars. It was a fated feeling that day, as if all three vehicles were waiting, predestined for each of us. All three vehicles are now stripped and waiting at King’s—a garage Dom bought with his parents’ death settlement money, paid for, and titled the day after he turned sixteen.
To help with restoration, I called upon Russell, who’s worked on tractor equipment at Jennings & Sons during the last three harvests. All three of us took up with Russell fast before letting him in on the secret per Tobias’s order—an order he’d given us on a night that now remains at the forefront of all our minds.
Months ago, Tobias summoned us to his spot the same way he had before leaving for France. As we all crowded around the bonfire, half a decade after the first, the tension rolling off T had clued us all in that the meeting was going to be far different in nature. And it was, especially when Tobias unveiled his game plan for Roman.
“We’re going to go basic with our strategy,” Tobias declares, staring into the flames, a faraway look in his eyes. His timbre was laced with ire because of his unintentional run-in with Roman earlier that day while picking Dom up from the library.
“Meaning?” I ask, ears perked due to his grave, imparting tone.
“We’ve got to play this just right. The only way to defeat a man like Roman is to play sleeping giant,” he relays as an inkling charges through the air between the four of us.
“Think Helen of Troy,” Dom clarifies, already receptive to his brother.
There was an edge to the words spoken that night that I felt to my bones—an indescribable stillness before, one by one, we spoke our parts to play aloud, me being the first.
“I’m going to be a third-generation Marine. It’s a given, and if there’s one thing I know how to do—it’s build an army.”
From there, the conversation flowed, though the words seemed redundant as if it had been decided before any of us uttered a single one. It was only after, when I watched Dom approach Tobias just outside our circle, asking about the source of the war, and the mythological Helen behind it, that I tuned in, catching the ass end of their hushed exchange.
“What about Helen?” Dom had asked, his back to me where they stood feet away, as Tobias scanned the construction site of Roman’s nearby fortress.
My ears had perked further due to the long pause just after.
“We’re leaving Helen out of it,” T answers definitively.
Both a declaration and rule I silently but wholeheartedly agreed with before dismissing myself and stalking through the woods toward the ongoing war ensuing in my own home. They’d all given me shit that night, assuming I was strung out on a she. I was too irritated to even explain how complex the truth was—that my worry was divided between two women.
One of them being Regina Jennings and what my father might be subjecting her to that night.
The other was a woman I’d recently gathered from her kitchen floor before tucking her safely into bed. A woman who’s slowly starting to invade my thoughts since our run-in in her living room a little over a month ago.
“Come on, what’s up with you and Amy?” Sean prods, roping me back into the van, away from the silver-gray return stare I haven’t been able to shake.
“Jesus, man, we’re just talking, that’s all,” I sigh as Dom glances over to me, not bothering to hide his grin. “Is that all you think about?” I ask Sean’s rearview reflection, the question rhetorical.
“What’s with keeping it a secret?” Sean counters.
“Maybe because I didn’t want to get interrogated,” I retort dryly. Ever since Sean got his first taste, he’s become a little obsessed with the fairer sex. Though I can’t exactly say I’m any less guilty. Though it’s more the act of sex that I use to escape when granted the chance.
“Don’t play the gentleman, Tyler. Word is you are far from a gentleman.”
Dom raises a brow at me, and I crack my neck in annoyance.
“Miller is fucking hot,” Sean carries on, “but what I want to know is how in the hell you managed it. She’s had a stick up her ass since middle school, and she’s older.”
I remain silent, ready to rid myself of the fly buzzing between my and Dom’s seats.
“I have a theory,” Sean continues, “future high and tight likes ’em experienced and mean.”
“You’re an idiot,” I sigh.
“I heard no denial, did you, Dom?”
Dom smirks but remains quiet, sensing my mood.
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being a gentleman,” Sean tosses in, “I treat my girls very well. You’ll hear no complaints.”
“From all one of them?” Dom jests.
“Don’t hate,” Sean says as I turn off Main and stiffen, fingers tightening on the wheel when I spot my dad’s F-150. Sean remains oblivious as Dom reads my posture and follows my line of sight to where Dad’s truck is parked. Sean can be just as attuned when he wants to be. That thought is only confirmed when silent seconds pass before he finally reads the room.
“What just happened?” he asks, and Dom jerks his chin in response to shut him up.
“No, man,” Sean protests, “shit just got tense in here. Talk to me.”
“He doesn’t want to share the details of his hookups, asshole, let it go,” Dom covers for me. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I can get very little past Dom these days. The good part about it is that he won’t force me to address anything I don’t want to, whereas Sean believes group sharing is an entitlement.
Typically, I would come clean to both, along with Tobias, but this is different. Lately, I’ve been sharing a lot less, not telling them about catching Dad cheating or the strange headspace that had me chanting breath count in Dom’s living room afterward. For some reason, I’ve kept it all to my chest.
Probably because it’s too close to a very raw fucking nerve. One I decide I can no longer ignore as I silently pull up to Sean’s house to drop him off first.
“Fine,” Sean spouts resentfully, grabbing the duffle packed with his football gear, “but you guys are dicks for not telling me.” Sliding open the van door, he thinks better of his parting words and stares between us, all animation gone. “You good, Tyler?”
“Yeah, man, I’m good. I’ll hit you up later.”
“All right,” he says, palming my shoulder before he and Dom exchange a look I don’t bother to gauge or decipher.
Both know it’s been hell on earth for Mom and me at home, and neither has pressed me too much for details, but the heaviness is there.
Once out of Sean’s driveway, I pull to a stop sign and click the signal, though no one is behind me. Dom doesn’t say a word as I sit for a full minute, maybe two, while he patiently waits for me. “Can I ask a favor?”
He nods without hesitation or asking what the nature of the favor is. One I don’t give him before turning in the opposite direction of my signal.
Minutes later, I’m pulling up just outside the hole-in-the-wall at the end of the shopping center. Putting the van in park, I scan the building and mostly vacant parking lot before glancing back over to him. “Only step in if you have to.”
Dom nods, needing little else in the way of information, as I slam my way out of the van and stalk toward the entrance.
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Gimme Three Steps” blasts through the frigid air, filling my ears as I step through the tinted glass door. Once inside, I scan the bar, which is littered with dollar store Halloween decorations. Cheap, cardboard cutout jack-o’-lanterns collectively grin at me from where they’re taped to every post supporting the drooping tiled ceiling of the hole-in-the-wall my dad’s claimed as a second home. It takes seconds for me to spot him on his resident stool.
The difference between now and when I get the call to come and retrieve him is that the woman he’s seeing is currently hanging all over him. It’s as if there’s any decency in making sure she’s absent when I scrape him from his barstool. Fury lights a fire in me as I watch the man I once revered publicly cheat on my mother.
It’s his smitten expression that has me crawling out of my skin as she practically grinds on his lap. Rounding the bar, I bide my time in a dark corner concealed behind some draped glittering black-and-orange tinsel, bristling in wait. My patience is rewarded when, not long after, she peels herself off him, heading toward the hall that leads to the restroom.
Circling the bar, I watch him down the last of his pint and signal for another. Seething, I stalk toward him, gaining momentum and advantage I utilize when his head snaps only an instant before impact. Slamming my palms into his chest, I shove him with every bit of the fury rolling through me, a sickening satisfaction flooding my veins when he lands flat on his back, the pleather stool rolling away from him.
Gasps and shocked murmurs sound around me as I kneel to where Dad landed just as a set of worn boots approaches inside my periphery.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll mind your business,” I snap in warning to the interloper just as the bartender, Brian, speaks up on my behalf.
“Don’t step in, man, that’s Carter’s son.”
Within the next second, I’m dragging my laughing dad out of the glass door by his jacket and dropping his upper half on the frozen sidewalk. Snow dots the air as Dad slowly rises to his feet, stumbling a little before gaining his footing. His liquor-glazed eyes slowly lock and focus on me as he speaks through a smirk.
“So, tonight’s the night, huh? You want to fight your old man, Son?”
Rage overtakes reason, and I step up, throwing a right that connects with his jaw, putting everything I have behind it. He absorbs the blow as I do. Feeling the gravity of what’s just transpired blooming in my chest, I’m completely aware of how wrong it is—of how different our relationship will be from this moment forward.
“Not bad for a punk seventeen-year-old,” he says with a sickening grin, smashing at the thin trail of blood lining his lips with his fingers. To our right, I see Dom’s already out of the van, leaning against it, arms crossed.
“You’re a disgrace—” I see the insult hit him, his armor somehow penetrable for the moment—“to your marriage, to the name you gave me, and to the uniform.”
It’s mom’s anguished face I see when I step forward, landing another punch on his jaw. A punch he purposely doesn’t react to, which surprises me.
“What, Dad?! No lessons to teach, no fucking tough love or lectures to bestow on being a man!?”
I pound my chest with a fist, hearing the crack in my voice, which echoes the fracture happening inside while willing the weakness out of me.
“You’re a good son, Tyler,” he says, seemingly sincere, his own voice shaking.
“Don’t. Don’t bother. You have no idea who the fuck I am. You haven’t fucking seen me in years. Fucking years!”
“I know exactly who you are,” he rasps, reticent and calm. “I’m staring at my reflection twenty years ago.”
“Carter? Is everything okay?” a voice calls from the door behind me, and I can’t bring myself to look back at the woman he’s been cheating on my mother with for God knows how long.
“Get rid of her,” I order as Dad holds up a palm.
“Go inside,” Dad tells her, “I’ll be in in a minute.”
“But—”
“Grace, go!” She retreats inside as his guilty eyes flick back to me.
“Oh, the irony of a fucking name,” I mock. “You’re going to need all the Grace you can get because we’re fucking done, Dad. Do you hear me? We’re done with you as of this moment. You’ve destroyed our family, and you may be able to live with this, with what you’re doing to her, but I can’t. Tell Mom, or I will.”
“She knows, Son,” he says, his tone nothing but defeat.
“Bullshit.” I shake my head vehemently. “Why couldn’t you leave her? She knows everyone in this town. You’re humiliating her. You’re humiliating me. Our family. You’re fucking disgusting.”
“You’re a good son,” he repeats softly. “Truly, Tyler, you are, but what’s happening between your mother and me is beyond your scope right now.”
“You’re going to pull this shit, really? Claim it’s grown folks’ business? You brought her into our fucking house!”
Dad has the sense to lower his eyes.
“I idolized you,” I tell him. “I . . . and now, I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed to call you my father.” I step forward, chin lifted, doing everything in my power not to shed the tears shimmering in my eyes. “All you have left is the woman you destroyed your family with. Hope she’s worth it.”
“Your mother won’t leave me, Son.” His voice is now just above a whisper.
“I’ll make sure she does,” I hiss. “I’ll make goddamn sure she does. Tell her tonight.”
“You’re not hearing me, Regina knows.”
“She knows, huh? She knows that you fuck Grace in her bed? I’m willing to bet she doesn’t. You or me. Figure it out, fast,” I snap, stepping off the curb and nodding towards Dom, who opens his passenger door as I pull my keys.
“She won’t leave me because she won’t fucking touch me anymore!” Dad shouts at my retreating back.
“Now that’s adult business,” I spout without a shred of sympathy.
Crowding me, he slams my driver’s door shut. “But you’ve made it your business now, so you get to hear it.”
When I reel on him, he steps back and glances toward the bar before scanning the parking lot. My confusion lasts only seconds as he shifts further into the light and lifts his shirt. My reaction is an audible release of air when I see the scar, or rather, the ocean of slick, burnt skin that runs the entire length of his right side.
“Your mother hasn’t touched me in nearly two years . . . so yeah, Son, I went out and did what no married man should ever do because my wife finds me as disgusting as you do.”
“Mom would never—”
“You sure about that?” he counters, chest heaving.
I shake my head, full-on denying she would be so cruel. “Couldn’t be the fact that you’re a full-blown alcoholic and temperamental bastard now, could it?”
“I’m not saying my behavior didn’t have anything—”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“So fucking smug,” he scoffs, “so arrogant and sure of yourself. Well, hold on tight to that confidence, Son, or just wait. They’ll be happy to pump you full of it. But on the other side of that, you have no idea what coming home means. No fucking clue!”
“Well, you never took the time to tell me, did you? No, you drank that time away.”
“You don’t know what happens over there! You can’t ever know because it’s not fucking explainable!” He rips his shirt over his head, forcing me to look at the burns, to acknowledge they exist. I was just recovering from the fact that they did and probably have for years. How in the hell did I miss it?
“When?”
“Does it matter? It happened, and I deal with it.”
I scoff. “Yeah, I’ve seen the way you deal.”
“Son, when you grab your uniform, make sure you stand firm in your stance to be nothing like me.”
“I won’t,” I declare confidently.
“No, because you’ll do it better, right?” He shakes his head ironically. “You won’t hurt your son, or fuck with his head, or belittle him like I swore I wouldn’t. You won’t disappear from your wife day by day like I swore I wouldn’t. Go to war one man and come back another. You’ll be the exception, the better soldier, husband, and father. You won’t ever bring the war you carry on your back through your front door.”
I weigh his words about staring at his reflection and shake my head, disbelieving what he’s relaying. “You’re telling me that Granddad—”
“Like I said, I’m staring at my reflection twenty years ago. It took me nearly ten of those to forgive him to the point of speaking to him and let him within a fucking mile of you. The man you know and the man that raised me are two entirely different men.”
I stand there, shocked at his revelations and more stunned that my grandfather exhibited the same behavior.
“I’m a sunny Sunday in the park compared to what he was during the worst of it. So, yeah, your grandfather cracked, and your old man isn’t weathering his own storm well, but you’ll be the soldier to do it, right? Fuck”—he scrapes a hand down his jaw—“I hope for your sake that you are. But I’m telling you right now . . .” His eyes grip mine in warning. “Don’t do it.”
“What?”
“They’ll break you down only to build you up, making you believe you’re a god. They’ll make you feel invincible, but you won’t be. No man is. At the end of it, if you make it out alive, you’ll come home with scars you can’t hide, physical or otherwise, and the fact you can’t hide them will eat you fucking alive. Then you’ll remember what they told you versus what you actually fucking survived and see they don’t quite match up. But the most damning lie is that you will have the capability to leave it over there when you get home. That you’ll be able to find the fucking door. All this time, I’m still looking for the door to you and your mother, Son, because I’ve looked everywhere, and I can’t get back to you.” His voice breaks as I feel my resolve start to dismantle. “I can’t get back to you and Regina.”
I gape at him, nausea threatening. “You’re seriously telling me not to enlist?”
“I’m telling you that things have changed. The military isn’t the same as the one your granddad and I signed up for, and I don’t want you to find that out by gambling with your life. I’m telling you that I’m sorry I failed you. That I know I lost my way . . . lost myself. That I know you and your mother deserve better . . . and I’ll tell her. I’ll leave if she wants me to.”
The truth of what’s happening starts to settle in on us both, and remorse threatens, but I bat it away due to the constant sight of my mother’s tears.
“I love you and your mother, Son, with every fiber of my being. I know I was better off coming home in a box to both of you . . . or not at all, but I didn’t want to let you go.” He crumbles where he stands, as does my entire belief system. “But you both let me go a long time ago, didn’t you?”
He piles his hands on his head, his voice cracking so wide that I don’t recognize it.
“I chose the uniform too many times, and now I can’t find the fucking door.” He cries openly now. It’s messy and horrific, and I recognize the man speaking to me as the dad I grew up with. And that he’s not apologizing because he got caught but because he means it, but it’s too late.
“You could have talked to her,” I sling at him, hurt seeping through my anger. “Mom’s a goddamned psychologist, Dad. She could have tried to help you find the fucking door.”
He shakes his head, negating that as a possibility, and blows out a breath. “You’re a good son,” he whispers hoarsely. “I’m sorry.”
He turns and starts walking toward the side of the bar, opposite the front door, as I shout at his retreating back.
“Hey, Master Sergeant Jennings!” He snaps to and holds my eyes. “If you truly mean that, get the fuck away from my mother!”
Inside the van, I spin tires as I race away from the bar, reeling with his revelations as my heart finalizes the slow shatter it started years ago. Overcome, I force myself to pull over and stalk away from the van as my emotions get the best of me. Chest heaving, I feel the largest part of myself breaking away from me—years of Dad’s expectations evaporating as I look up at the night sky. Snow pours from it, seemingly from nothing but the gaping black space hovering above. Face upturned, I hit the frozen ground, unable to move in any direction as a guttural cry bursts out of me.
Dom’s boots appear sometime later as I rip at the frozen grass, dirt collecting beneath my nails as I rehash my father’s admissions.
“He’s right,” I sniff, hating he’s seeing me in this state—this fucking raw—but if I’m going to get emotional, I would rather Dom lay witness than any other. Dom sits next to me for a few beats before his words break through my audible pants.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Tyler,” he whispers hoarsely. It’s then I realize I’m not the only one who’s emotional. I don’t dare look over as I grip my knees, my fingers white, nails somehow bloody.
“We’ll figure this out, man. I swear we will. You don’t have to enlist.” His words come out mangled as he absorbs the blow alongside me. What most people aren’t privy to is that my chosen brother lives by his feelings, primarily those of his gut. If there were a way for him to suppress or box his emotions, he wouldn’t survive it. His heart is what fuels him, though he’s an expert at masking that truth. It’s in rationalizing that about him that an idea strikes me, a notion of a possible way.
“No,” I rasp out in both declaration and vow. “I’m going to be the one that breaks the cycle.”
I don’t have to glance over to know he’s nodding.
“Come to my house,” he finally says. “Stay with me tonight. Sleep in Tobias’s bed. Don’t go home.”
I can’t help but chuckle. “Sorry, man, but did you ever once think that your house would be the place I’d seek refuge?”
“Fuck you,” he spits, a smile lifting his lips. “Then again, no offense taken.” Neither of us moves as he speaks up a few beats later.
“She’s leveled out some, though, hasn’t she?” No mystery to the she he’s referring to.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” I admit. Delphine’s been trying to build some semblance of a relationship with Dom since Tobias left for France, and Dom’s done nothing but cruelly dismiss her. I wipe some of the frozen grass off my jeans as I stand. “She’s been trying since before T left, but I knew better than to point it out to you.”
“Think I should give her a chance?”
“I think you want to, and I’m not telling you one way or another, but, Dom—” I frown, unsure if I should tell him.
“What?” he asks in subtle demand.
“I read a few of the letters in her cigar box some months back. From what I can tell, what her ex-husband put her through, fuck man, it was horrific. I know it was wrong to invade her privacy like that, but after scraping her off the floor so many times, I had to know.”
“That bad?”
“Like I said, I only read a few of her letters, and what I did still fucks with me.”
He cut off my hair to the scalp.
Last night, he made me sleep in the snow.
Those written words physically pained me to read. What fucks with me most, and what I find incomprehensible, is that the formidable woman I’m accustomed to is the same woman who wrote those letters.
“Heads up”—I look over at him—“your mom’s return letters are in there, too, and are only marginally better. Abijah was no saint.”
“I thought you said you only read two?”
“Of Delphine’s,” I admit, guilty of the accusation in his eyes.
He arches a brow. “If I decide to start a diary, are you going to read it?” he cracks to lighten things, though my heart now bears a weight I know I’ll never be free of.
“Fuck off.” I wipe my face clear as fatigue starts to set in. “Sorry I drug you into that.”
His eyes snap to mine. “Don’t ever apologize to me,” he scolds. “I’m fucking glad I was there.”
“Me too.”
“Wish you would have confided in me sooner.”
“We all have our shit,” I relay on exhale.
“This is different, and I mean it,” he continues in a rare, serious tone, “you don’t have to enlist.”
“I’ve got some time to decide.”
“Yeah, you do, and whatever you do decide, we’ve got your back.”
Pulling into his driveway, I sit idly behind the wheel, feeling more exhausted than I can ever remember being.
“Coming in?” Dom asks as he gets out and grips the passenger door.
“Yeah, I’m going to drop the van off, and I’ll be back.”
Nodding, he closes the door before heading toward the house. Halfway to the porch, he glances back, shooting a rare concerned look before I give him a reassuring nod through the windshield.
After dropping the van and sneaking the key onto the counter, I exit my house undetected and start the short walk back to Dom’s. As I hit the street, I welcome the sting on my face in hopes that the biting cold will help clear my head while grappling with what had just transpired—along with Dad’s admissions. My mother can’t know he’s cheating. She can’t. She’s too prideful. She loves him too fucking much. She would never be so callous and turn him away for a burn he endured in the line of duty. He’s full of shit. He’s got to be.
Rounding the corner to Dom’s street, I spot Delphine exiting the front door, stopping just short of the iron railing enclosing the porch. The sight of her breaks up some of my inner turmoil as a spark ignites, the cherry burning at the end of her cigarette stoking the notion that struck me earlier. A spark that has me hastening my steps toward her and a possible solution. As she comes into view, I notice her attention is fixed on the falling snow.
Without overthinking it, I make a beeline toward her. As I pound up the snow-dusted steps and approach, I can visibly see when my presence jars her out of whatever memory she was just lost in as she flits her focus to me. Her expression bleak, seeming . . . mournful.
“I need you to teach me,” I say as I reach her, towering over her as I did months ago.
The silver-gray eyes that have been haunting me since she brought me back that day slowly focus on mine as confusion sets in her expression. “Teach you what?”
“Everything.”
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