Outlaw Hearts(172)

“Your mother’s at the Carriage Hotel, but she’s looking for a rooming house, something less expensive until the trial is over. Jess is with her, but she needs you.”

The boy smiled bitterly. “Needs me? You’re the one she needs. We all need you. Why in hell did she marry you, anyway? Did she know from the beginning?”

Jake could see already that the boy had put up a wall too high for him to climb over. It was going to take a long time for him to get over this, if he ever did. His chest felt tight, and it pained him to breathe. Lloyd! He couldn’t have had a son to be more proud of. He didn’t see him as a man, but as the little boy he’d loved so; the child who had ridden on his shoulders, laughed and screamed the first time he’d put him on a horse; the young boy who had struggled not to cry the day he gave him that first rifle.

“She knew,” he answered. “She also knew I needed and wanted to change my life. She knew things had happened to me that led me into a life I never really wanted—”

“Like killing your own pa?” Lloyd sneered. He watched his father literally wilt. The man closed his eyes and sat down on the cot, putting his head in his hands. “As much as I hate you right now,” Lloyd went on, “I couldn’t kill you, because you’re my flesh and blood! Only right now I have trouble calling you pa because I’m not sure I want to face the fact that a man wanted for murder and rape and robbery, a man who killed his own father, is my father! What does that make me? Do I have bad blood? Zane Parker apparently thinks so! He’s taken Beth away, and I don’t even know where! I love her! I need her! But she’s gone, and it’s all your fault! You’ve lied to me, all these years, lied about your past, about what happened back in California, everything! How could you do it? How could you kill your own father?”

Jake looked up at him, struggling against the old feelings of guilt and worthlessness Miranda had been telling him for years he shouldn’t feel. He rose, facing Lloyd squarely. “You tell me what you would’ve done when you were fifteen years old, feeling like you did then about Beth, if you found me raping her!” His heart ached at the horror on his son’s face. “What would you have done if you weren’t strong enough to stop me, and you could hear Beth crying and begging me to let her go? What would you have done, Lloyd? I was fifteen years old, and my father was big like me! The girl’s name was Santana, and we were friends, just like you and Beth! Sometimes you just do what you have to do! For a long time after that, I figured I must be just as mean and rotten as he was, so I lived a mean and rotten life! I didn’t give a damn about myself or anybody else! But you wouldn’t understand that, because you grew up in a home filled with love! I’ve never raised a hand to you in your entire life! My father beat me practically every day of my life. He murdered my mother and my little brother! It wasn’t until I met your mother that I began to learn the meaning of love, to learn how it felt to be loved! I made the mistake of wanting that to last forever, so I ran from my past. I wanted to protect you and Evie from the ugliness of it all, so I never told you; but the biggest reason was that I never wanted you to feel about me the way I felt about my father! I never wanted to see that shame and hatred in your eyes. I know how it feels, Lloyd. I know too goddamn well how it feels!”

Lloyd closed his eyes and turned away, grasping the bars of the cell. Jake’s eyes teared and he reached out to touch the boy’s shoulder, but Lloyd jerked it away. “Don’t, Pa.”

Jake took a little hope in the words. It was the first time the boy had called him Pa since arriving. He swallowed to keep from breaking down. “Son, if there was any way I could change all this, make us all just be back home, a happy family again; if I could erase all of this for you, I’d do it in an instant, even if it meant putting a gun to my head.”

“Did you rape women?”

“No,” Jake answered quickly. “No, I never did that. I’m accused of it only because of certain men I rode with. I’ve never raped a woman or hurt a woman any other way, never shot a woman or a child. You’ve got to believe that much. You must know that from the way I’ve treated Evie and your mother all these years.”

“Others will believe it. They’ll believe all the charges. Beth’s father believes them, and he’s taken Beth away somewhere.” He faced his father. “I love her! We had even made love, more than once, made promises to always be together, and now he’s taken her away!” Tears of anger and despair formed in his eyes. “How am I ever supposed to hold a decent job or marry a decent woman, being the son of an accused murderer and rapist? People will say like father, like son.”