Jonny's Redemption (Gemini Group Book 7) by Riley Edwards (audio ebook reader TXT) 📕

feeling that betrayal might’ve edged out the hurt his mother’s drinking caused. I knew this from experience as well. Elmer Layne wasn’t known for his faithfulness to his wife and family. Daddy didn’t hide his women, not even from his woman. As a child, I’d blamed his inability to be a good husband as the reason Kathy drank. I also blamed my daddy for her finally getting fed up and leaving. Growing up, I’d blamed a lot of what happened to my family on how we lived, where we lived, going back generations and neither of my parents knowing any better.

Then I grew up and learned that no matter where I was, Nashville, Tennessee, or Beverly Hills, California, men cheated, they drank, they lied. Women did the same. It wasn’t limited to the holler. It wasn’t about wealth, ethnicity, religion, or poverty. What it was, was wrong. Just wrong. Didn’t matter where you came from or your social status—people lied and cheated.

That was when I had to admit Kathy and Elmer Layne weren’t products of their environments. They were assholes. Both of them. The good news for me was, that meant there was a chance for me. I was born and raised in Shady Hollow. My kin were who they were but I wasn’t them. Knowing my parents were simple-minded, selfish jackholes and they were that because they wanted to be, set me free.

I wasn’t them.

I wasn’t my brother.

I was me.

I was proud of what I’d accomplished.

Yet, I was still embarrassed of my past.

Something to think of later when Jonny wasn’t vibrating with pent-up anger. When he didn’t look like the weight of the world sat on his chest.

I needed to be the woman Jonny needed me to be so he, too, could be free.

“Your dad cheated,” I blurted the moment Jonny’s rear end landed on the couch cushion next to me.

It wasn’t a question, it was a starting point.

“Yep.”

That was it, all he gave me. I decided to give him a few seconds to gather his thoughts. But when seconds ticked into a full minute and he offered no more, I questioned bringing it up.

“My daddy’s name is Elmer,” I told him. “My brother’s name is Elmer Junior. Everyone calls him EJ.”

Jonny said nothing and I was wondering why I’d imparted that stupid tidbit of knowledge.

“My dad’s name was Calvin Douglas,” Jonny returned. “My brother’s name was Doug. His mother named him after her father.”

Something funny tingled the back of my neck. Doug was adopted. I didn’t know much about how that worked but Jonny knowing how Doug got his name seemed weird. But more—the way Jonny said it gave me a chill.

“Everyone back home knew my daddy kept women on the side,” I told him. “I was too little to understand but he used to say he was going fishin’. Sometimes he’d only be gone a short while, sometimes a few days. I never got it, because Daddy fished a lot. And I’d see him down at the creek with EJ, both of them with poles, when he hadn’t announced to my mom he was goin’. It wasn’t ‘til I was older when I learned there was a difference between fishin’ and fishin’. By the time I understood, my mom was long gone, and Daddy’s fishin’ trips never dried up.”

I heard Jonny suck in a breath and I hoped like hell he didn’t offer words of sympathy. I could get through this one way and one way only—exchanging information. I could commiserate but I couldn’t handle him feeling sorry for me.

Jonny leaned back and stretched his long legs out in front of him and let his head rest on the back of the couch.

He was staring at the ceiling when he told me, “I don’t know when it started. At least five years before I was born. My mom won’t talk about it. When my dad was alive, he sure as fuck didn’t talk about it.” That tingle started to grow. “I don’t think it ever stopped. I’ve thought on it a lot. My dad was an insurance broker; he didn’t travel for work, but he sure as hell had a lot of conferences he had to attend. Weekends away, sometimes a full week, others quick overnights. When I was growing up, it seemed he had something going on at least once a month. I reckon my ma knew. They fought about him being gone so much.”

I watched Jonny’s throat constrict as he swallowed, the sight so heartbreaking I decided he had the right idea. I slid my booty to the edge of the couch, mimicking his pose, and found a spot on the tongue-and-groove ceiling to focus on.

That was much easier than witnessing Jonny’s pain and I didn’t want him to see mine.

It sucked, but it would seem he and I were the same.

Not the products of our environments. But two people who’d been forced to survive a situation neither of us created.

We were survivors, but I didn’t think Jonny would see it that way.

“I was five when my mom took off. She never came back.”

The familiar taste of acid in my esophagus threatened to choke me. Of all the things I’d learned to get over, the abandonment wasn’t one of them. All these years later it was still raw, fresh; the ache still burned. The grief, the questions, the anger. I couldn’t for the life of me fathom how a mother could leave her babies. How she could turn her back and walk away. Never return. Never write, call, something. Before she left, my mom had neglected her children, she wasn’t a good mom, she hadn’t showered us with affection and love. But she was there. Then she wasn’t and the rejection didn’t sting. It didn’t burn. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t an open festering wound.

It killed.

Month after month, it built. Year after year, it gained strength. Until the feeling sitting inside of me was so big and powerful it felt like dynamite just waiting to