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

before I pulled into a spot. I didn’t even have my seat belt off and Jonny was yanking open my door. Face like thunder, cold, stormy blue eyes.

It seemed Jonny Spencer had come to the wrong conclusion. Another thing we’d be discussing when we had the ‘shove your dickhead comments up your ass’ conversation.

Jonny reached across me, unbuckled my belt, tagged my fob out of the cupholder, and hauled me out of the car. Throughout his unbelievably annoying manhandling he didn’t cause an ounce of discomfort. Vaguely I wondered if he learned that being a cop—how to remove a suspect from the car without causing injury. I would’ve asked if I wasn’t so bloody mad he’d pulled me from my car.

Then just as fast as he’d yanked me out, he slammed the door and I found my back pressed against metal.

“Fucked up,” he ground out.

“You did,” I confirmed.

Some of my anger had started to wane but I was still holding on to annoyance. There was forgiveness, then there was pushover—and the last thing I was, was a pushover.

“I do not want you to see this.”

I had nothing to say to that because I already knew he didn’t, and since I wasn’t going to argue with him I didn’t say anything. If he wanted to be an asshole, he could be one, but I was still going inside and standing by him.

“Fuck.” He stepped back and his hands dove into his hair giving it a vicious yank. “I never wanted you to see this. I never wanted you to know. I never wanted this shit to touch you.”

Again, I knew all of that; hell, I understood it. I had a metric shit ton of baggage from my childhood I didn’t want him to know about. Things that I’d never tell him. Things that were so much left back in Kentucky. Things I was so ashamed I’d done that I’d do anything to keep them from Jonny.

A tingle of guilt wound its way around my heart. Maybe I should’ve gone home and not pushed him. He was kind of right, we’d only been a couple for a few days. He was a jerk for calling it fucking, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a tiny bit of validity to his statement.

“I was a total dick. I’m sorry. This is absolutely your business, you deserve to know what you’ve gotten yourself into. I was being a prick not wanting you to see the…” Jonny paused and the cold, detached mask fell into place. “I didn’t want you to see,” he finished calmly.

I hated that he could easily slip back into the controlled, collected Jonny. The man he presented to everyone around him, the police officer always in command of his emotions. The son who would lie to keep his father’s secrets. The brother who would cover up indiscretions. The friend who helped but never allowed the favor to be returned. I much preferred the pissed-off version where he let the curtain fall and he actually felt.

I sensed he needed his façade of indifference so I didn’t call him on it. But I added it to the ever-growing list of things we would be discussing later.

“Is this the first time she’s been brought in?” I asked.

“Yeah. I can’t say it’s the first time she’s driven drunk. I caught her coming home from the store once when I was at her house fixing the back gate. She wasn’t smashed but she shouldn’t have been driving. I talked to her and after that as far as I know she’d call me to go to the store for her if she’d been drinking. And since she called a lot I figured she wasn’t drinking and driving. But today being his birthday I should’ve known she’d drive.”

I didn’t miss the sneer in his voice when he said “his.” I also didn’t miss the part where he took the blame.

“The first time I remember going to pick up my daddy out of the tank I was maybe ten. He’d left me and EJ home and gone fishin’. Daddy’s friend Lou came over and picked us up, said he had to go get Elmer but he couldn’t go into the station, he needed EJ to do it. So off we went to pick up my daddy from the tank. He was sober by then and madder than a boiled owl that me and EJ were with Lou. He wanted to go tie one on but he couldn’t because his kids were there. Daddy yelled at Lou the whole way back about bringing us. Then when we got home he whooped EJ’s ass for leaving the wood stove on. Which was BS because it was winter and it was always burning. Daddy just wanted a reason to wail on EJ.

“He still hadn’t burned out his ire so he belted my ass until I couldn’t sit.” I stopped to take a breath and savagely banished the memory before it took me under. “So, Jonny, whatever you think I’m gonna see in that station is nothing I haven’t seen before. It’s gonna hurt like hell for you to see your ma like that. But I swear to you I won’t bat an eye. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean that as in, I’ve seen worse. However she looks, whatever she says, my heart will break for you, Jonny. Not for me. Not for her. For you. But even if I’d never been down this road I would still be walking into that station by your side.”

Jonny was staring down at me and once again I wondered why I opened my mouth. It was too easy with him. I didn’t want him to be alone, not even in his miserable thoughts about his family. I wanted him to understand he wasn’t the only one who had been forced to do things he didn’t want to do—even if it was only to keep a secret.

“Jesus, Bobby.”

“I didn’t tell you that