Blood & Bones: Cage (Blood Fury MC 5)

“What are you doing?”

“Do what I said.”

He always did whatever his mother said because maybe, if he did, she’d give him a smile or a hug, or tell him she loved him.

She never did.

But he always hoped...

Maybe she would this time.

He’d taken off down the hall, found the open box of black garbage bags and ran back to his parents’ bedroom.

By then she had so much stuff on the bed. Possibly everything she owned.

As he’d stepped closer, staring at the mountain, she snatched the box from his fingers.

“What are you doing, Mom?” His heart had been racing so badly, his chest became as tight as the drum he’d found in a dumpster a few weeks ago. The drum he wasn’t allowed to play in the house, but only outside.

And even then, it still disappeared.

Randy said Mom had thrown it away, somewhere Chris wouldn’t be able to find it, because him playing it gave her a headache.

His mother, with an unlit cigarette hanging out of her mouth, began to pull bags out of the box.

“Are you leaving?”

She didn’t answer him, only kept stuffing bag after bag full.

“Randy!” she yelled. “Randy, get the fuck in here. Now!”

She was piling bags up on the floor, all of them full of her things.

“Yeah?” Chris’s older brother came and stood in the doorway, his face unreadable.

His brother’s eyes, the same dark brown as their father’s, had swept the room. But he said nothing. He stood there casually, not caring that their mother was leaving and hadn’t told them to pack, too.

“Start loading those bags there in my car,” she’d jerked her chin toward the pile of full trash bags, “while I pack the rest of my shit.”

“I can do it, Mom,” Chris had volunteered quickly, even though at twelve, Randy was taller and stronger than him. “But I’m going with you.”

“No, boy, you’re staying here. Boys need to be with their father.”

Boys needed to be with their mother, too. Didn’t she know that? Even he knew that and he was only eight.

“But, Mom—”

“Get out of your brother’s way,” was all she said as she made sure Randy was doing what she told him. She turned back to the bed, shoving more clothes and other stuff into more bags.

His eyes landed on an empty trash bag that had fallen to the floor. He grabbed it and rushed back to his room and that was when he began to pack.

She was not leaving without him.

Now, with his own full bag, Chris stepped out into the hallway, no longer hearing any activity coming from his parents’ room.

With the bag bouncing off his legs, he ran back there anyway to check.

Empty. His mother was gone, her bags were gone and he had no idea where Randy was.

“Wait, Mom!” he screamed. “I’m going with you!”

He rushed down the hallway, his stuffed-full garbage bag becoming heavier with each step. “Mom! Don’t leave without me!”

He dropped the bag to the floor and began to drag it behind him so he could move faster. He had to catch her before she left.

He wasn’t staying here.

He wasn’t.

Another hiccup-sob surged up from his gut as he reached the front living room. She wasn’t there, either.

Neither was Randy.

The front door was wide open and he could see his older brother standing outside on the porch, staring out at the street.

Alone. Quiet. With both hands on his hips.

Chris dragged the bag, which held everything important to him, through the door and out onto the porch, pushing past his brother who blocked the two steps to the yard.

“She’s gone, kid.” He turned his head and spat into what used to be a garden in front of their small house. Before the weeds choked the flowers the previous renter must have planted and had been left to die once his family moved in.

Chris kept going, the heavy bag thumping down each step, even though her car was gone.

Even though their mother was nowhere to be seen.

No sign of her anywhere.

“Why?” he screamed. His stomach ached painfully, like it had been hollowed out with an ice cream scoop. “Why would she leave us?”

She’d come back for them. She had to. They were her sons. What mother didn’t want her own children?

“She’s a fuckin’ whore.”

“No, she ain’t! Dad’s the whore!” he shouted at his brother.

“Dad ain’t a whore, stupid. Dad didn’t do nothin’ Mom didn’t do. Saw her suckin’ dick plenty of times. And it wasn’t Dad’s.”

What? Now Randy was just plain lying!

At the bottom of the steps, Chris dropped his bag on the narrow sidewalk and, with a roar, rushed his brother.

Before he could make it to the steps, Randy jumped down and tackled him. Chris fell backward and his head just missed the edge of the concrete.

“You’re an asshole!” he screamed, grabbing Randy’s hair and ripping on it.

A wild, flailing fist made contact with Chris’s cheek and the pain caused him to lose his breath.