Ace is tense beside me as James slowly unravels the story.
“I’m almost two years older than Charlie, but I was only in the grade above. He was always a loose cannon, causing trouble, and I was always cleaning up his mess. Maria was from the Heights. She didn’t go to our school, but Charlie met her on a field trip and they hit it off. He was in tenth grade and I was a junior. She was like a breath of fresh air. Sweet and funny and not at all like I thought she would be.” Sadness washes over him as he stares out at nothing, lost in his memories.
“Our parents weren’t happy about their fledgling relationship. They told Charlie he wasn’t to see her anymore. Of course, he didn’t listen. I’d drive him to the edge of the Heights to meet her but, more often than not, we’d all hang out.”
Ace lets out a shuddering breath, and I run my hand over his, offering him a reassuring smile.
“The more Charlie was around Maria and her friends, the more he changed. By the time I left for college, I barely recognized him. But Maria was smitten and the two of them were inseparable.
“The first time it happened, I was home over the holidays. Charlie turned up drunk with Maria in tow. Dad lost his shit, and they had a big fight. I tried to intervene, but Charlie turned on me as well. He said some things and Maria… well, she got upset. I drove her back to the Heights and when we pulled up outside her house, she kissed me goodnight. It was innocent enough, at first. But something changed between us… something I think we’d both been ignoring for a long time.”
“What the fuck are you saying?” Ace’s tone is chilling.
“It was only supposed to be one time. Maria was Charlie’s. She wasn’t mine.”
“You had an affair…” Ace chokes out. “With my mom?”
But there’s something else in James’ eyes; a secret he’s been keeping. I don’t know when I realized it, but I’m hardly surprised when the next words fly out of his mouth.
“You asked me yesterday why I had photographs of you and the twins in my office—”
“No.” Ace leaps up, the missing pieces of his life finally connecting. “Don’t say it. Don’t you dare fucking say it.”
James stands, his expression full of regret. “I wanted to tell you, so many times, I wanted to…”
“It’s you. You’re our…” Ace’s voice cracks, pain and anger rolling off him. “No. There’s no way. You left us…”
I shoot up, wrapping my hand around his arm. “It’s okay,” I say.
I’m waiting for the blow up. For him to punch something or break something… or worse.
But it never comes.
Anger vibrates through him, his eyes pinning James to the spot. “It’s really true?” Disbelief coats his words.
“There’s still so much you don’t know, Ace. Charlie wasn’t a good man. He hurt your mom, he used to—”
“Stop, just stop.” Ace rips his arms from me and starts pacing the plush carpet.
“Ace. Son…” James’ eyes widen as he realizes his slip.
Ace freezes, glaring at his father. “You don’t ever get to call me that. You left us. And now you’re trying to tell me that all along you were our father? YOU FUCKING LEFT US THERE.” His roar echoes off the walls, making my heart splinter.
“Ace…” I approach him, but he’s lost to his anger. I see it swirling around him like a dark vortex.
“I can’t do this.” He lets out a shaky breath. “I need to get the fuck out of here.” Ace storms out of the room, taking the air with him.
“I, uh… I should go after him,” I say to James. Devastation is etched in the lines of his face. I want to comfort him, to say something—anything—to make it better.
But I can’t get past the fact that he left Ace and his brothers in that trailer park with a mom who couldn’t keep it together long enough to do the right thing.
“Of course. But Remi, please, I never meant for this to happen. I thought… Fuck,” he breathes, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I’ve made a real mess of things.”
“Yeah,” I offer him a sad smile, “you have.”
Running after Ace, I catch up with him just as he’s about to leave the house.
“Ace, wait,” I cry.
He stalls, his hands gripping the door jamb. I can feel the pain and anger rippling off him. Slowly, he turns around but barely meets my gaze. “I need space, Remi.”
“I know… I do. And I want to give it to you.” I take a cautious step forward. “But I’m worried about you. You just found out something huge, and I don’t want to lose you.”
He tips his face to the ceiling and sucks in a harsh breath. When his eyes settle on me again, tears burn my throat. “He’s our… father.” He barely manages to get the word out. “I thought it was bad having a father like Charlie… but this is worse. James knew. He knew we were his and what our lives were like, and he did nothing.”
Without thinking, I run to Ace, throwing my arms around his neck. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”
At first, I think he’s not going to react, but then his arms slide around me, crushing me to his chest. “What the fuck am I supposed to tell my brothers?”
I hold him tighter, my heart breaking for the boy who has carried the weight of the world for far too long.
“I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m right here.”
Ace eases back, and I’m sure I see moisture clinging to his dark eyelashes. “I promise I’m not going do anything stupid, but I can’t be here right now.”
“Let me come with you.”
Indecision flickers in his icy gaze, but then a mask slides over his face and I know I’ve lost this battle.
“I need some space, I need… fuck, I don’t know what I need, but I know I need to go.” He starts to pull away, but I snag his arm.
“Ace, please…”
“Just trust me, Remi. I’ll be fine, I promise.”
Ace presses a kiss to my head, and then he’s gone.
Taking a piece of my heart with him.
I find James right where I left him. He’s hunched over his glass, his head hung low. I don’t need to see his expression to know he’s filled with guilt and shame. It lingers around him like a bad smell.
“He left?” He finally meets my gaze.
“Yes.” I take the seat opposite him. “But he seemed, I don’t know… sad.”
“You expected him to lose it?”
“Didn’t you?”
“I think that’s partly why I didn’t tell him right away. I was worried what it would do to him. Ace is such an angry young man.”
“Were you ever going to tell them?”
“Eventually. I’ve spent a long time waiting for this moment, and then I got the call that Maria was dead and it was like I didn’t know what to do.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” The words fly out. Maria’s death is something none of them seem to have dealt with. Ace barely talks about her, and I’ve never heard the twins so much as mention their mom.
“That’s very kind of you to say.” His lips curve slightly. “But my feelings for Maria faded a long time ago.”
“What really happened, James?”
“Me and Charlie were like apples and oranges. I was groomed for greatness. My father was a formidable man. He constantly came down on Charlie. Nothing he said or did was ever good enough. In some ways, he pitted us against each other. But it was never an issue. Until Maria.
“After that first time we…” He swallows the words. “We both agreed it couldn’t happen again. But then time after time my brother would mess up, and every time we’d find ourselves right back where we started. It became a cycle neither of us could break until she announced she was pregnant.”
James gets up and pours himself another drink, perching on the edge of his desk. “Charlie was so excited. Promised to clean himself up and get a decent job. He started making all these grand plans for their future. I was devastated. I think a part of me had always hoped she would leave him. But I knew my family would never accept her, and she knew Charlie wouldn’t survive without her. It was an impossible situation.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“She didn’t tell me, not right away. But the second I saw Ace, I knew. God, it was so hard watching Charlie with him. My son.”
James inhales a sharp breath. “But my brother was different. Calmer. He really wanted to do right by them. So I stepped aside. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“The twins?”
“Another moment of weakness. Charlie’s bad habits didn’t stay away for long. After Ace was born, he and Maria were rarely intimate and he’d started seeing other women. I begged her to leave him. Begged her to do the right thing.
“When the twins were born, it was the final straw. I couldn’t stand by any longer. She had to make a decision. Me or him.”
“She chose Charlie…” I gasp.
He nods grimly. “I stayed away after that. Of course, I checked in on the boys occasionally. But as far as Maria was concerned, we were done. And then one day, out of the blue, she called me. I’ll never forget the fear in her voice.
“We met out of town. I knew it was bad, but when I saw her body… the bruises… I’ve never felt anger like it. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to strangle him with my bare hands for ever laying a hand on her.”
“I don’t know what to say…” Their story is far more complicated than I could have ever imagined.
“I have carried this around for so long… I can’t deny it feels like a weight has lifted, getting it off my chest. But it shouldn’t have happened like this. I should have…” He stops himself. But I need to know the rest.
And something tells me he needs to purge the sins of his past.
“What happened to Charlie, James?”
“Maria wanted to leave him. She was scared of how volatile he’d become and suspected he knew about the boys not being his. So I made arrangements. Everything was set, but he found out. He found out and he threatened to…” He swallows hard, running a brisk hand over his face. “I realized then that Maria was never going to be free. All those years I spent wishing she’d choose me, not realizing that fear motivated her to stay. Maria begged me to back off. She said things would calm down once I disappeared again, Charlie would see sense. But the damage was already done. The anger and pain I felt festered inside me, growing into some ugly beast.
“So I paid a guy to make Charlie disappear. I didn’t want to know the specifics. I just wanted him gone.”
A chill zips up my spine. He makes it sound like paying someone to kill his brother is nothing, but then, I know all too well that love brings out the crazy in people.
“I only ever wanted to keep them safe, Remi. It’s all I wanted. But in the end, it cost me everything. Maria couldn’t look at me after Charlie’s body turned up. I begged her to let me see the boys, to tell them the truth, but she said if I ever came near them again, she’d tell them what I’d done.” Pain bleeds from his words, and I want to comfort him. But it feels like a betrayal to Ace. He still doesn’t know the whole story—he still has so much to learn about his life.
And James has no idea Charlie is alive.
I hesitate, wondering if it’s the right thing to do. But Ace deserves to have someone stand in his corner.
Taking a deep breath, I say, “Charlie isn’t dead.”
The blood drains from his face. “It isn’t possible.”
“It is. Ace saw him, James. Right before Maria died.”
“I… dear God. That’s how he found out? That’s how Ace knew?”
I nod, my heart aching for this messed-up family.
“But how? I saw the body, I saw…”
“Ace doesn’t know. But Charlie is alive. Which means he could come back. He could try and hurt you. All of you.”
If Charlie is as unhinged as they both say, he could want revenge. A violent shudder rolls up my spine.
James makes a garbled sound in the back of his throat. “What have I done?” he cries, tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. “I have lived with what I did every second of every day. I thought I could bring them here and things would get better. But Ace hated me from the minute he stepped foot in the door, and it was like Charlie was still here, forcing a wedge between us… but he is. He’s alive.”
“You should have talked to them. The second they got here, you should have sat them down and—“
“Do the twins know?”
I shake my head. “Ace is trying to protect them. But maybe it’s time for everyone to know the truth.”
“You’re right. Of course, you’re right.” He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “There are so many things I wish I’d done differently. But I can’t fix the past, Remi, no matter how much I want to.”
“You’re right.” I stand up. “You can’t fix the past, but you can try to fix the future. Ace has spent most of his life feeling inadequate and abandoned. His dad died. His mom turned to alcohol and drugs. And you left him there to pick up the pieces, only for him to discover that everything he knew was a lie. That kind of trauma isn’t just going to go away. He needs people to look past the tattoos and piercings and bad choices and see the lost little boy inside. The boy he’s too afraid to show anyone.
“He needs people to give him a chance. And he needs people to stop letting him down.”
James rakes a hand through his hair, and for the first time, I see Ace staring back at me. “You’re a good girl, Remi. And I’m truly sorry for trying to get in the way of you and my son. He needs you. I fear after all this, he’s going to need you more than ever.”
“And I’ll be there for him.” I hold my chin in defiance. “I’ll always be there for him. The question is, will you?”
I didn’t go home. After leaving James with some soul-searching to do, I texted Mom and told her I would be staying at the Jaggers. She was still worried about my relationship with Ace, but I was past caring.
He needed me, and I wasn’t about to be another person who let him down. So I waited in the pool house, praying he’d come to me in one piece.
After a while, I gave up watching television and got into bed. I’ve been lying here for what feels like hours, staring up at the ceiling, imagining where he is. I want to believe Ace will do the right thing, that he won’t fall back into old habits, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried.
As I lose the fight to sleep, I whisper into the darkness, “Come back to me, Ace.”
Almost as if in answer, I hear footsteps outside. Jolting upright, my breath catches as the door creaks open. “Ace?” I run my eyes over his face and down his body, looking for any signs he’s hurt.
“I’m okay.”
He doesn’t sound it.
Ace pulls off his hoodie, kicks off his boots, and unbuttons his jeans, letting them slide to the floor. I watch as he stalks toward the bed, his eyes swirling with indecipherable emotion.
“Where did you go?” I ask, unsure I want to know the answer.
Ace pulls back the cover and slips into bed. His arms go around my body as he fits me against the hard lines of his. I feel him relax, the tension seeping from his muscles as he breathes me in.
“Ace?” It comes out small.
“I’m okay,” he whispers against my hair. “I’ll be okay.”
“Where did you go?”
“Nowhere really. I just got on my bike and rode. It wasn’t until I reached the Heights I even realized where I was going.”
I go rigid, fear trickling down my spine.
“Shh,” he soothes. “I’m okay. I didn’t stop. I doubled back around and went down to the beach. There’s something about sitting on the sand and looking out at the sea… It calms me.”
I ease out of his hold and crane my neck to look at him. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“No.” A faint smile plays on his lips.
“No?”
“You see, I realized something. I realized I had all I need right here, waiting for me. You ground me, Remi. You.” Ace dips his head, brushing his lips over mine. “I’m sorry I ran.”
My hands slide up his chest as I touch my head to his. “I’m sorry your dad is such a fool.”
“My dad… fuck, that’s going to take some getting used to.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Tomorrow maybe, but right now I just want to close my eyes and sleep.” His grip on me tightens as if he thinks I might disappear at any second.
“Sleep, Ace,” I say. “I’m right here.”
I’ll always be here.
