Toward the Sound of Chaos by Carmen Jenner

Author:Carmen Jenner [Jenner, Carmen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carmen Jenner
Published: 2016-05-17T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Jake

My head pounds like a jackhammer to a freshly tarred road. Nuke licks at my face. I push him away and come up on my knees. Big mistake. Everything aches from lying on the floor. The pier house is a wreck, the furniture that my granddaddy restored in pieces around me. So is a cheap bottle of whiskey, I notice, as I cut my hand on the shattered glass. I groan and sit back against the couch, watching my blood pool and pour out of me the way I have a million times before. What’s one more scar? One more drop? If I had the balls, I’d make that cut a little deeper, nick a vein, and just bleed out all over this floor. It’d be a lot damn easier on everyone.

Up at the house, Spencer yells, but I can’t make out the words. My front door slams and he hollers at his mamma. I get to my feet and take several labored steps toward the door. Outside, it becomes a little clearer. “No. I ain’t going.”

Elle. Fuck. She’s leaving. Not that I blame her. As usual, I went and screwed it all up. After she turned in last night, I took a couple of sleeping pills because I didn’t want to wake her and Spence. The nightmares were bad, so I left Nuke inside and wandered down to the pier house for a drink to take the edge off. But it never ends with just one.

As I climb the stairs up to the yard, flashes of what I did slam into me so hard I stop and catch my breath. I scared her. I made her feel unsafe. I forced her to put her hands on me. Shit. I brought her here to protect her, and I fucked it all up.

“Spencer Mason, get in the car,” Ellie demands, her back to me as she faces off with her son.

“I ain’t goin’,” he shouts. “I wanna stay. I wanna live here with Jake Tucker.”

“You can’t,” she says, her voice thick with sadness. “You belong with me.”

“I hate you!” Spencer screams, startling a flock of birds from an old live oak bordering the yard.

“Would you just get in the car please?”

Spencer darts around her and runs right to me, slamming into my body with all the force of a hurricane. I grunt as he wraps his arms tighter and holds on for dear life. He sobs. It’s too much. I wanna break away and comfort him all at once, and I don’t know which is the right thing to do here. Every nerve in my body screams at me to run, and every heartbeat tells me to stay, to fix this. To mend what I broke.

“Don’t let her take me, Jake Tucker.”

“She’s your mamma, Spence. There ain’t a man alive that could keep her from gettin’ to you. She loves you, and it’s her job to protect you.”

“I don’t want her. I wanna stay here with you and Nuke.”

“Can you

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