Page 53 of Outlaw Xmas
“Jack?”
Jack’s eyes darted to Chas. He pulled Jack to him. “He’s not into that.”
Bracing himself, he stepped out in the cold, and with his hand on Jack’s shoulder, they went to their car.
As they drove to Pinewood Hospital, Jack blew his breath on the window and made patterns on the steam with his finger. “Do I have to start going over to Mom’s again?”
“No way.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. I mean, if you want to, I’m not gonna st—”
“I don’t want to. I love Addie. She’s my mom. Is that bad?”
Chas shook his head. “Not at all. Addie loves you too. Your blood mom wasn’t so good to you. It’s okay not to love her the way you do Addie.”
A satisfied smile spread over Jack’s face as he settled back in his seat. Chas reached over and ruffled his hair, then turned on the radio.
There’s no damn way I’m letting Brianna start trouble.Clean or not, Brianna only had one agenda in life—getting whatever she could for her. It was her world and she didn’t give a shit about anyone. She gave up her parental rights to Jack years before, and there was no way she was going to start anything up.
Snowflakes swirled around and landed on the windshield.
“It’s snowing again. Maybe Ethan can come over and we can build a snowman. Can I ask him?”
“Sure.”
Jack took out his phone, and as he tapped his text, warmth spread through Chas. Seeing Brianna reminded him how lucky he was to have Addie in his life. His family was everything to him.
The SUV rambled down the slick, snow-packed street.
Chapter Sixteen
The Crazed Grinch
Laughing as hechecked off the names of three more families, he leaned back against the car’s leather seat and turned the heater up. An eerie stillness sheathed the world outside as the falling snow choked the land, covering trees, lawns, roofs, and cars. It was like he was in a cocoon, safe and protected, all the windows covered by white making his world inside the vehicle charcoal gray.
As he stared ahead, a small boy appeared in the theater of his mind. The image was in full color and the boy sat on the soft cushion of a brocade chair, the fire’s glow highlighting wet tracks on his face. His father, bent over, stuffed brightly wrapped presents into a large black bag. Standing in the corner of the room was his mother, her hands covering her mouth as she looked at the scene unfolding before her.
Gripping the steering wheel, memories from his younger days flooded his mind. He’d come from a wealthy family, lived in a mansion, took equestrian lessons, and had a lifestyle a lot of children would’ve killed for, but they didn’t know what was hidden behind the columned porch and hand-carved front door. Inside, a monster ruled them—all of them. The mother he’d clung to before he went to school had betrayed him and his sister. She’d stood by and watched as the puppet master yanked their silvery strings, manipulating, humiliating, and punishing them without mercy. And all she’d done afterward was offer them cookies and lemonade.
Scrubbing his face with his fist, he glanced at the illuminated blue numbers in the car—midnight.Darkness without a glow.Closing his eyes, he tried to remember when there was a life without misery, but he couldn’t. Blackness crept in when he hadn’t been looking, and it never left.
His father had been a cruel and controlling man. There’d never been any physical signs of abuse on his wife and children—his dad was too clever for that. All the scars he’d given them were internal, and they never healed.
“You’re a loser. You’ll never amount to anything, you stupid, worthless brat. The day you were born was the worst day of my life.” His father’s words resonated through him, making him wince and shudder even all these years later.
All the commercialism in the world couldn’t ruin Christmas the way his father had—he’d been an expert at it. From the age of four, he remembered the puppet master taking away their gifts to give to needy children. In the beginning, his mother had sneaked a gift to them, but somehow their father had always found out; the gift was taken away from them, and then he’d berate their mother for days. Then one year, she stopped trying: no secret gifts, no Christmas tree, no lights in the window, no cheer of any kind. The fight had seeped out of her, and she let the puppet master reinvent the holiday for their household.
After that, he’d outdone himself: forcing them to go to parties and give their toys away, taking them shopping for ornaments, lights, and a tree, then making them give it away, playing Santa Claus at all the parties, banning anything that hinted of holiday cheer in their home.But the fucking bastard didn’t give uphispresents, the roast beef dinner he insisted Mom make, or his goddamn lectures on the spirit of giving.
The brown-eyed man breathed heavily as the snippets from his fucked-up childhood ran through his head like a B-rated movie.How could you have given him any presents, Mom? He treated you like shit. He treated all of us like we didn’t matter.
“I fucking hate you!” The pain from slamming the steering wheel shot up his arm as the car windows threw back the echoes of his voice. Resting his forehead on the steering wheel, he tried to sift through the decay of his life to find something salvageable. Nothing. His whole world was black.
“You fucking took in foster kids and lavished them with love and kindness, and you turned your back on your own flesh and blood, you bastard,” he said aloud. An image he tried to keep hidden burst through: his sister dangling at the end of a rope she’d tied to the ceiling fan in her room.
His nose ran and saliva trickled from his mouth. “She was only fourteen years old. You made her believe she was ugly, fat, and unlovable. You bastard!”
