Trace

16 - My son is dead...

Red

“I’m sorry,” Fallon mumbles as my wife puts her to bed. The silly girl went and took drugs to try and forget what happened earlier today.

My beautiful boy is finally at peace. But it kills me to know he’s been so close all this time, and I had no clue. Scott had been in that place for the past couple of years, and all the while, I’d been led to believe he’d taken off for a life somewhere else.

I never believed it. No way would I believe it. My boy wanted to join me and my club. He wanted out of his own and to be with his family. He wanted to bring his sister here; he wanted her to be a part of it all. Christ knows they’d had no sort of life with that mother of theirs.

She always was a waste of space and a selfish bitc.h. She went and took too many damn drugs and ended up dead because of it. Looking at Fallon right now, I have to wonder if she’ll end up the same way.

No. I won’t let that happen. She’s better than all of this.

Gotta wonder what the hell is going on between her and Trace. I’ve never seen him like that with any woman before. He was worried and angry, and he had that look in his eye that said she was his woman.

Stupid fucke.r. No one’s ever gonna believe that prick will fall for anyone, let alone this little girl.

“It’s okay, Fallon. Just go to sleep, sweetheart.” My beautiful Tammy is so sweet, so like a mother who wants to comfort a child. And Fallon is a child in my eyes.

I met Tammy through Scott’s mother. Jade was dating Tammy’s father. George was getting on in years, and I know psycho bitc.h believed he’d leave all his damn money to her when he died. Let’s face it, old George was loaded. He used to run a car dealership. But he was never gonna leave anything to Jade. Everything he owned went to Tammy when he died.

Jade was a fool.

Why wouldn’t a man of George’s advanced years want a trophy on his arm?

Why wouldn’t he fall for the charms of a beautiful woman who made him feel young again?

But George was no idio.t. He knew what he was getting into with Jade. He knew she only wanted his money. He played her as much as she played him. He was good to her; there is no denying that. But no woman ever came before his daughter. Tammy was everything to George. He was always going to leave his fortune to the only love of his life.

The very first time I set eyes on Tammy, I wanted her. I won’t lie; staying away from her took me a lot. She was seventeen, and I was almost twenty-seven. I knew I couldn’t touch her until she was eighteen. But trust me when I tell you that she didn’t make it easy for me. Tammy knew what she wanted, and what she wanted was me.

Whenever I picked Scotty up, there she’d be, smiling as she watched me lift my boy in my arms. My fuckin’ whole world was my son. I couldn’t stand his mother. I only fucke.d her a couple times when I was drunk, but I got Scott out of it. She gave him my name. At least I could thank her for that.

Tammy would be waiting to greet me when I'd drop my boy off. I don’t know what it was about me that attracted her, but she wouldn’t give up until the day she told me, ‘It’s my birthday, Red. You don’t have to pretend you don’t want me anymore.’ Fuckin’ couldn't stop myself from making her mine in that moment.

She’s been mine ever since. Twenty years she’s been mine, and she’ll be mine until the day I die. I don’t even know who I am without her. She gave me three sons, sons that have never taken Scott’s place, sons that have just added to the bubble in my heart that surrounds them. My kids are my world, and that includes Scott.

Scott loved his little brothers, and they loved him. The day I brought him home to meet my wife and kids, they instantly pulled him right on in, and it was like he’d always been with them. Scott told them about Fallon and how she’d be coming by to see them very soon. He asked me not to tell her that I wasn’t her father, and I agreed to pretend that I was because I saw how much it meant to him. Scott didn’t want Fallon to forever wonder who her dad was and always feel like an outsider with us.

It was wrong, I know that. But no one has a damn clue who Fallon’s father is. I know Roman went and opened his big mouth and told her that she and Scott didn’t have the same father. I could have killed him. It wasn’t his place to say anything! He apologized and said he thought the girl had a right to know. But now, the poor girl feels abandoned all over again.

If Scott was still here, Fallon wouldn’t be in this mess. But my son is gone, and nothing anyone says or does will ever change that. Ain’t gonna lie, and I’m man enough to admit it; my fuckin’ heart is broken right now. Yeah, I’ve cried like a damn baby over losing my son. We didn’t have enough time to get to know each other.

Jesus, there are so many things we didn’t get to do. So many times, I have wished I’d have done things differently. If only I’d listened to my young son’s pleas when he begged me not to leave him with his mother. Scott was a small child, and he literally sobbed and begged me not to go. It was as if he knew it would be the last time we saw each other for many years to come.

I died inside the day I realized Jade had taken my boy. There was nowhere I looked that I found even a trace of them. Shepard knew exactly how I felt; he even sat with me a few nights through the years so we could talk about our lost kids.

His daughter came back to him, and my son came back not too long after. It was like fate. Everything was right in the world because they were home. But where Nova stayed, Scott did not, and I was broken all over again.

Nothing I do or say now will change the fact Scotty is gone. My boy. I will never hear his voice, see his smile, or tell him that I love him so he can hear me ever again, and it kills me. I don’t know what I would do right now if I didn’t have Tammy.

Probably be out there fighting and killing some fuc.k just for looking at me.

But I’m worried about her. I’m not saying my wife is weak; she’s not. But she was raped a couple years back along with Wrench’s wife. Where Elie got on with her life, my wife cracked and had a breakdown. It took me months to bring her back to me. She was going through so much due to the fact she’d tried to hide it all from me, and she crumbled.

Tammy was in therapy for months, trying to find a way to put behind her what happened. I don’t think a woman ever gets over something like that. And I don’t think she would have told me about it if Stryker hadn’t found out about Elie’s rape by the same man. A fuckin.g man who was supposed to be a Brother of ours!

I shot that cunt right between the eyes in front of half the MC and my wife. Which I think contributed to her breakdown. Not everyone is cut out to witness something like that, trust me. But she’s been doing so well lately, and she even had another kid not too long after the fact. And yes, the boy is mine; she got pregnant months after that fucke.r hurt her.

God, it took so long for Tammy to even let me kiss her lips. She was so ashamed of herself, and I hated that. She’d done nothing wrong but keep it to herself. She tried to fight that motherfucke.r off, but he was too strong.

If anyone was to blame, it would be me. I should have realized something was wrong with my wife. I felt awful because I had let business come before the woman I loved. She’d been flinching now and then when I touched her, and that hadn’t happened before. I let her fob me off with not feeling well when all along she was suffering.

I should have realized something wasn’t right about Kyle. Hell, we all should. We prided ourselves on knowing a bastard from a good man. We should have known he’d been hurting women long before he joined the Snakes. But we didn’t, and it’s done with now. But it doesn’t mean I’ll ever let my guard down where Tammy is concerned. No fucke.r will get close enough to her to smell her perfume before I’ve ripped his damn throat out!

Cullan, our youngest, he’s what pulled Tammy through the darkness. Her love for that little boy is what brought her back to me. Yes, she acted like her old self, smiled and laughed with friends, let me hold her, and make love to her. But I always felt something was missing.

The day she held that boy in her arms right after she used her body to bring him into the world, that was the day my Tammy truly came back to me. But seeing how hard she tried to be strong for me after switching Scott’s machine off turned my stomach. Because I know she’s not coping with this. She loved my boy like her own; she’d known him since he was a baby. This has hurt her as much as it has me, or near enough.

I need to be strong for her. I can break down when I’m not around her.