of times I brought Dewayne to the house.”
“I don’t think I understand, baby.”
Jasmine’s body is pulled taunt, like if she moves she might snap and break into a hundred pieces. She’s in my arms and yet, she feels like she might as well be a million miles away.
“When Dad was in prison… things happened. Shit messed him up really bad. He even tried to kill himself, drove his vehicle over the dam…”
Several things become clear to me. Things happening in prison could mean a hell of a lot and none of it is good. My hold on Jasmine tightens without thought. The next thing that comes to mind is the evening I found Jasmine at the dam in Kentucky and she spoke about someone else’s demons, she was speaking about her father’s.
“He tell you that?” I ask clearing my throat. It’s a shit thing for a father to lay on a child. I’m a crap father, trying to do better, and even I’d take that to my grave, not involving my daughter.
“No. Dewayne did,” she says and now it’s clear that she’s lost in her memories.
“Baby, maybe we—”
“Dad didn’t know Dewayne, but he knew Dewayne’s uncle, and before he died he was the one raising Dewayne. He made sure to tell Dewayne all about just how he had one of the Savage MC head men under his control and everything he did to my father.”
“Fuck…” I hiss, my imagination going everywhere, but the thoughts and questions running through my head aren’t ones that I will ever ask her—none that I would want her to answer.
“When my father got his revenge, it left Dewayne without a home and bent on getting revenge. I was clueless, naïve and innocent at the time…”
“Blowback,” I sigh, the sound weary to my own ears.
“Yeah. I gave myself over to the relationship. Trusted him to take care of me. He made me feel loved. When he asked for things that I wasn’t comfortable with, I did them because I loved him, and I thought he loved me. I told you that before and I’m not blaming him. I was adult enough to be in charge of my own actions and whatever else Dewayne is—and he’s a lot—he didn’t force me.”
“He didn’t want to force you.”
“No, it was more fun for him to get me to do it willingly,” she confesses.
“How did you find out?”
“He took great pleasure in telling me after a night of partying with him and two of his buddies, laughing the whole time. Bragging how he made the Savage Princess beg to be a whore for the children of the men who made her dad their bitch.”
I make a sound that is more animal than man. A wounded cry, filled with fury. I’m going to kill the motherfucker. There’s not a doubt in my mind.
“I was ashamed, shocked, sickened… until that moment I didn’t know any of my father’s past. I don’t think I ever knew the world could be that ugly.”
“Your parents have no idea you know, do they?”
“No. They think I have no direction, maybe that I’m a lost cause. Maybe I should talk to them, but if my father knew… It’d bring it back. It would open those wounds. It would hurt everyone.”
“So, you let them think the worst of you. Christ. How could your mother ever like this motherfucker?”
“Dewayne can be very nice and unassuming. I know I never once saw the evil that lurks inside of him and I’d like to think I can read people pretty damn clearly most of the time.”
“Please tell me the asshole has left you alone since this happened?”
“He pulls shit every now and then. He had me arrested for parking tickets once. None I had received but dated back to almost when we first started dating. He had a friend of his write them and turn them in, so my parents or his superiors couldn’t trace them back to him. Dad was so upset with me that he let me spend the night in jail, a night Dewayne volunteered for duty and took pleasure in taunting me. Luckily, it was county lock up and there were too many people and cameras for him to do too much.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I can’t blame Dad. He had no idea the tickets were bogus. He just thought his daughter ignored over a year of tickets because she thought they would magically disappear. The speeding tickets, the shoplifting allegations, they were all part of me running wild.”
“Jesus, Red.