Slay (Storm MC 4)

“Does Blue know Marcus has pulled Storm back into drugs?”

“I haven’t spoken to him for a while now, so unless he’s heard it from someone else, I don’t think so.”

We need to get that information to him somehow.

I stared at her. I struggled to understand what made a woman still want her husband even after she knew all this shit about him. I could grasp her falling for him when she was younger, but how could she still love what he’d become? “Don’t you think it’s time you started putting yourself first, Sharon?”

She swallowed hard and that anxious look returned to her eyes. “I don’t remember how.” It was barely a whisper, but it fucking hit me in the chest.

It was like a piece of the puzzle fell into place for me.

My mother doesn’t remember how, either.

“The first step is to get him out of your life.”

The look on her face told me she had no idea how to do that.

Fuck.

I clenched my fists as the demons reared their ugly heads.

Marcus had infected our lives with his sins for long enough. I may have grown up hating this woman for all she represented, for everything she had that I didn’t, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything other than compassion for her now. She’d done nothing wrong other than falling in love with a man who didn’t have the capacity to love her back. He’d taken her love and smashed it into pieces.

He’s broken all of us into pieces.

It’s time to put the pieces back together.

***

I needed to see my mother after Sharon left. She’d stirred so many feelings and thoughts in me, and I had to get some of them off my chest. Thinking of everything Marcus had put us through caused my skin to itch with agitation, and adrenaline surged through me at the thought of leaving all that shit behind.

The first thing I saw when I pulled into Mum’s street was Marcus’s bike sitting outside her house.

The second thing I saw was him yelling at my mother in her front yard.

The third thing I saw was red.

I parked the Jag and stormed towards them. Rage blurred my vision but I managed to land a punch on his face. He stumbled back, holding his face, anger radiating from every inch of him. When he regained his balance, he came at me and punched me in the gut.

Pain.

I embraced it.

This was nothing compared to the pain of my youth.

The torment of my life.

My mother’s screams barely registered as he and I fought.

Nothing registered except my inescapable need to inflict pain on my father.

My thirst for his blood.

Every punch was for every moment he hurt us.

For every moment he ignored us.

For every moment he trashed the love we ached to give him.