Not that bad?
“Then I started to notice that something was off. Our dad drank a lot. He’d wake up with hangovers—which was nothing new for me with my mom—but then I started seeing drugs, too. That was new to me. His house parties were filled with these horrible fucking people who talked to us like you shouldn’t talk to kids.” Jared’s eyes started to pool with unshed tears, and his voice was barely a whisper. I started to get scared.
What the hell had happened?
After a few seconds of pause, he let out a huge sigh. “I kind of got the feeling that Jaxon might’ve been messed with by these people. Like “messed with” other than just roughed up.”
Messed with? I sucked in my breath as realization dawned.
No. Please, not that.
He sat down next to me on the bed, still not making eye contact. “One night, about three weeks into my visit, I heard Jax crying in his room. I went in, and he was hunched over the bed holding his stomach. Once I got him to turn over I saw the bruises all over his abdomen. My dad had kicked him—more than once—and he was in a shitload of pain.”
I shut my eyes, trying not to picture the young boy.
Jared continued, “I didn’t know what to do. I was so fucking scared. My mother never hit me. I had no idea that people did these things to kids. I was sorry that I’d come but also glad, for Jax’s sake. If my father did this to him while I was here, I couldn’t even imagine what he did when I wasn’t around. Jax insisted that he was fine, and that he didn’t need a doctor.” Jared’s shoulders slumped, and I could feel the tension roll off his body as he spoke slowly and quietly.
“My dad targeted Jax. He was the bastard and worthy of less respect in my father’s eyes, apparently. He didn’t hit me until later.”
“Tell me.” I needed to know this. I wanted to know everything.
“One day—not long after I found out how he really treated Jax— my father asked us to go to a house and pretend to be selling something. He wanted to break inside and rob the place.”
“What?” I blurted out suddenly.
“From things they would say, I knew money was tight, especially with his expensive habits. Jax would tell me that this was normal, that he did this for my dad a lot. He never refused. My father abused him for anything and everything: burning dinner, making messes... Jax knew that saying no wouldn’t do any good. We’d still have to do the job but just with bruises. But I refused anyway. And my dad started hitting me.”
Nausea burned my stomach. While I was wasting away my summer resenting him for not calling or writing, he was being hurt. “Did you try to call your mom?” I choked out.
“Once.” He nodded. “It was before my father started abusing me. She was drunk, of course. She didn’t see it as a bad situation, so she didn’t come to get me. I tried to tell her about Jax, but she didn’t consider him her problem. I thought about just getting out of there, running away. But Jax wouldn’t leave, and I couldn’t leave him.”
Thank God she’d cleaned herself up otherwise I’d have to hurt her.
“So I gave in to my father,” Jared admitted flatly, his eyes waiting for my reaction. “I helped him and Jax do jobs. I broke into houses, delivered drugs for him.” He walked back to the window and peered out at the tree. “One day, after weeks of hell, I refused to listen to him and demanded to go home. And I was taking Jax with me.” He pulled his t-shirt over his head and showed me his back. “He took a belt to me, the end with the buckle.”
I ran my fingers across his scars. The edges were rigid, but the dip of the welts was smooth. There weren’t very many, and his skin was still gorgeous.
He paused for a moment and turned to meet my gaze, the ghost of his pain still deep in his eyes. “So I finally just ran away. I stole fifty bucks and jumped a bus home. Without Jax.”
Chapter 32
I could see the agony in his eyes. What had happened to his brother? Jared had thought that life with Katherine was bad, but his father turned out to be a horror. And he had to make the decision to abandon ship without his brother.
“Did you go to the police?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not at first. There was no way I wanted to deal with that. I just wanted to forget about it. But when my mom saw what happened to me, she forced me to go. I never told them what happened to me, but I did report what happened to my brother. She insisted on taking pictures of me just in case, though. The police took my brother away from my dad and put him into foster care. I wanted him with me, but my mom’s drinking didn’t inspire any confidence with the state.”