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

A ticking time bomb constructed from a mother’s rejection.

I felt Jonny’s hand cover mine.

A touch that didn’t defuse the pain but made the spark recede.

Still so weak.

“I was five when Doug came to live with us.” Jonny’s fingers pushed between mine and I squeezed, hoping he’d continue. A few beats later, I heard a long exhale. Then I waited and I waited even longer until Jonny squeezed back. “The story was, Doug’s mother had cancer and while she was going through treatments he needed a place to live.”

God, that was horrible. I’d heard bad things about Jonny’s brother, all of them unfortunately true, but my heart still hurt for the little boy who went to live with the Spencers.

Wait, Jonny had said story.

“Was that not true?” I asked.

“It was true. Carla, Doug’s mother, had cancer. The part that’s never talked about though is, my parents didn’t take in some random boy who needed help. They didn’t take Doug out of the goodness of their hearts. They—or should I say, my father—took him because Doug was his son. His biological son.”

At least five years before I was born.

“Were your parents together then?” I asked gently.

“My parents met in high school. My granddad used to say he got off lucky that his only girl married the first boy she dated so he only had to clean his shotgun once. No parade of boys through his living room. Just my father.” Jonny paused and the next part was snarled with extreme hate. “Fucking laughable. Lucky. The worst day of my mother’s life was when she met that piece of shit.”

I should’ve known to brace. The earlier call with his mother, the bitter outburst. I absolutely should’ve battened down the hatches. I should’ve known Jonny had the same ticking time bomb in his gut that I did.

I didn’t brace.

Then Jonny exploded.

And it was agony to witness. But I forced myself to take in every second.

“That piece of shit went to high school with Carla, too. She was younger than them by one grade. I’d like to hope dear old Dad wasn’t fucking Carla when she was in middle school but he was fucking her when he and my mom were seniors and Carla was a junior.”

Oh, no.

“How do you know that?”

“Heard them fighting. Dad admitted it, but he did it ugly. Told my mother since she’d wanted to wait until they got married, and she wasn’t seeing to his needs, Carla was.”

That was mean. Mean and gross.

But before I could say anything Jonny continued, “Another fight, he told my mother he loved them both. He struggled with what he was doing but he couldn’t choose.”

Then Jonny was on his feet and he shouted, “The motherfucker couldn’t choose!” Icy blue eyes sliced to me and I couldn’t contain my flinch. “Can you believe that shit?”

“No, Jonny, I can’t.”

“The asshole had a wife at home and a girlfriend.”

I knew how that felt. Only I didn’t because I wasn’t a son who looked up to his father. I was a daughter whose dad treated women like shit.

“My dad knew about Doug. Went to see him. For years my father drove his lying sack of shit ass to Pennsylvania once a month to see his son. You wanna know who didn’t know? My mother. Not until Carla got so sick she couldn’t take care of Doug did that jackass tell my mother that his love child existed. After that, my mother was gone. She was there but she was gone. A woman forced to raise her husband’s child by another woman. No, not by another woman, my father’s girlfriend. The girlfriend he’d been with for as long as he’d been with her. Then he expected her to keep it a secret.”

“Jonny.” I started to stand but froze when his eyes narrowed.

“Don’t come near me.”

Shit. I hated that but I understood.

“Okay. I’ll stay here as long as you know I want to come to you.”

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say.

Jonny leaned forward, tagged a bowl full of seashells off the table, and side-armed it. Glass shattered and shells scattered across the living room.

“God fucking dammit!” he roared.

Then with a face full of thunder that would’ve scared the pants off me if I hadn’t known down to my bones that Jonny would never hurt me, he heartbreakingly continued.

“I didn’t learn that shit because they sat me down and told me. I learned it because Doug was older and he’d heard the fights, too, fights he understood more than I did. He had ten years of seeing a man who he didn’t know as his father but as his mother’s friend. I don’t know how long Doug knew before he decided to spread his joyful news with the family but he was sixteen and in an argument with our dad about using the car. Then it all came out. How my dad went to see him, how he knew he was really Carla and Calvin’s son. Of course, this was news to me, but not to my mother. The whole time I watched her, and she fucking knew. That’s why she was drinking. That’s why my mother checked out when Doug came to live with us. And after that, they fought more and I snuck out of my room to listen to every argument I could. One would think since the secret was out we’d talk about it, but no, not them. I was told that family business was never to be discussed and Doug used the information to blackmail his way out of trouble. From then on, he got every fucking thing he wanted as long as he didn’t tell anyone he was Calvin Spencer’s son.”

The thunder left his face but pure disgust slid in.

“You wanna know what I got?”

No, I did not. I didn’t want Jonny talking about his father or his brother. I didn’t want to hear more about his mother’s drinking. Or how he’d lost her. I didn’t want to hear the devastation in his