Dark Child (Wild Men 5)

But here we are, rolling through the streets, past familiar houses and shops, hell, familiar trees and hedges and fields.

I’m home.

But it doesn’t feel like that anymore, more like a faded photograph of times past. Home is holding my girl in my arms, home is seeing my family around me and playing my music.

Whatever happened in Destiny, it made me feel like a stranger in my own town since I was a kid. And now I’m gonna find out what it was.

Even if it means talking to Ross and forcing myself not to punch his arrogant face.

After all, you don’t punch family, even if it’s family you wish you didn’t have.

We’ve called Ross a few times since last night, and he ignored us, but he finally answered Gigi’s umpteenth attempt to say he doesn’t know what the hell we want from him, that we can go fuck ourselves—but that he’d be hanging out at Billy’s Bar, a new place I don’t remember from my childhood.

Octavia said that telling us where he is means he wants to talk to us.

The rest of us think Ross doesn’t give a shit, but whatever. If he’s where he said he’d be, we’re descending on him like a flock of vultures on a corpse.

An unpleasant shiver racks me. Yeah, okay, come on, Merc. Stop thinking about corpses. This isn’t funny.

Only, today, that’s what we’re here to talk abo

ut.

Ross’s favorite spot seems to be a newly opened bar. Figures. We glance between us before we climb out of the pickup, then back at the garish green building.

It’s actually not all that far from Little River and the Pagoda.

Another shiver goes through me, and hell, I accept it, let it flow through me as I reach to the side and open the door for Cos to climb out.

I won’t let this fuck me up, and my family, any more than it has. I’ve already thrown out the sleeping pills. My only chance at getting any sleep ever again is to figure this out, and fingers crossed, it works to dispel my dreams and leave me the hell in peace.

So I’m kinda amped up after all my internal pep talk as I jump out of the pickup, but despite my attention being squarely on the bar and meeting Ross, I feel Cos slipping her hand in mine, and hold on tight.

We lead the way, and I’m vaguely aware of the others following across the road and over the cracked and flowering sidewalk to the half-open entrance. The stench of alcohol and fuck knows what else wafts from inside, and I’m already regretting bringing Cos and my sisters here.

The determined glint in their eye when I turn to suggest they stay out, though, stops me. What the hell, right? Besides, Matt and Jarett are with us, so if someone tries to cop a feel, and I have to kick ass, they’ll lend me a hand for sure.

However, once inside, the place turns out to be pretty much deserted. Dim lamps highlight a few patrons sipping their choice of poison at the long bar, perched like crows on rickety stools.

Oh my fuck, knock it off with the similes today, will ya? Not funny at all. Too many English Lit classes can do that to you.

To my simultaneous relief and annoyance, Ross is there, like he said he’d be. There’s a spotlight on him, or it seems like it, his pale blond hair flaring like a silver halo under the light of a lone bulb overhead.

He doesn’t turn as we approach, his focus on the glass in front of him. Whiskey, most probably, the cheap kind. His hair is too long, sticking up in uneven tufts, his hands grimy, black under and around his fingernails, as if he’d been digging in mud before.

Mud, and a body by the river.

Shaking the images off like a dog shakes off water, I turn and lift Cos up on a stool beside him, then insert myself between them, aware my sisters and their men placing themselves on his other side—as if to stop him from fleeing the scene.

“You,” he says, voice raspy as if after too many cigarettes, and now I’m beside him, I smell the tang of old cigarette smoke. It turns my stomach.

“Yeah,” I agree. “It’s me.”

Slowly he lifts his head and looks at me. His pale eyes are bloodshot, his lips cracked, and yet it’s disconcerting, seeing a face that’s pretty much a reflection of my own.

It always gutted me, that the town bully, the greatest douchebag the world had seen—in my opinion back then, anyway—looked so much like me.

Then again, I hadn’t known he was my half-brother. I’d thought it was only a cruel joke of life that we looked so alike.