Page 13 of Severed Heart (The Ravenhood Legacy #2)

Chapter Ten

T YLER

“S O, WHAT’S THIS I hear about you and Amy Miller? Because apparently, she can’t stop talking about our boy ,” Sean chirps, poking his head between Dom and me, where I sit in the driver’s seat of my mom’s van.

A van that’s on its last leg and which Mom refuses to part with. A van we’re also in desperate need to keep running, thanks to Mom’s constant consent to let me chauffer the three of us around since I aged out, being the first of us to get my license.

The situation being temporary until we can finish restoring the classics Sean’s uncle gave us by way of a massive heart attack. The process to get them street-ready has been and will be slow and agonizing due to the expense, but one we deem will eventually be worth the wait.

Sean’s uncle’s widow opted to hand them over with no strings as long as we got them hauled off within her allotted time frame.

We jumped on it, and the minute she opened the yard, I spotted and stalked straight to the ’66 C20.

Sean and Dom had done the same with their own cars.

It was a fated feeling that day, as if all three vehicles were waiting, predestined for each of us.

All three vehicles are now stripped and waiting at King’s—a garage Dom bought with his parents’ death settlement money, paid for, and titled the day after he turned sixteen.

To help with restoration, I called upon Russell, who’s worked on tractor equipment at Jennings & Sons during the last three harvests.

All three of us took up with Russell fast before letting him in on the secret per Tobias’s order—an order he’d given us on a night that now remains at the forefront of all our minds.

Months ago, Tobias summoned us to his spot the same way he had before leaving for France.

As we all crowded around the bonfire, half a decade after the first, the tension rolling off T had clued us all in that the meeting was going to be far different in nature.

And it was, especially when Tobias unveiled his game plan for Roman.

“We’re going to go basic with our strategy,” Tobias declares, staring into the flames, a faraway look in his eyes. His timbre was laced with ire because of his unintentional run-in with Roman earlier that day while picking Dom up from the library.

“Meaning?” I ask, ears perked due to his grave, imparting tone.

“We’ve got to play this just right. The only way to defeat a man like Roman is to play sleeping giant,” he relays as an inkling charges through the air between the four of us.

“Think Helen of Troy,” Dom clarifies, already receptive to his brother.

There was an edge to the words spoken that night that I felt to my bones—an indescribable stillness before, one by one, we spoke our parts to play aloud, me being the first.

“I’m going to be a third-generation Marine. It’s a given, and if there’s one thing I know how to do—it’s build an army.”

From there, the conversation flowed, though the words seemed redundant as if it had been decided before any of us uttered a single one.

It was only after, when I watched Dom approach Tobias just outside our circle, asking about the source of the war, and the mythological Helen behind it, that I tuned in, catching the ass end of their hushed exchange.

“What about Helen?” Dom had asked, his back to me where they stood feet away, as Tobias scanned the construction site of Roman’s nearby fortress.

My ears had perked further due to the long pause just after.

“We’re leaving Helen out of it,” T answers definitively.

Both a declaration and rule I silently but wholeheartedly agreed with before dismissing myself and stalking through the woods toward the ongoing war ensuing in my own home.

They’d all given me shit that night, assuming I was strung out on a she .

I was too irritated to even explain how complex the truth was—that my worry was divided between two women.

One of them being Regina Jennings and what my father might be subjecting her to that night.

The other was a woman I’d recently gathered from her kitchen floor before tucking her safely into bed. A woman who’s slowly starting to invade my thoughts since our run-in in her living room a little over a month ago.

“Come on, what’s up with you and Amy?” Sean prods, roping me back into the van, away from the silver-gray return stare I haven’t been able to shake.

“Jesus, man, we’re just talking, that’s all,” I sigh as Dom glances over to me, not bothering to hide his grin. “Is that all you think about?” I ask Sean’s rearview reflection, the question rhetorical.

“What’s with keeping it a secret?” Sean counters.

“Maybe because I didn’t want to get interrogated,” I retort dryly. Ever since Sean got his first taste, he’s become a little obsessed with the fairer sex. Though I can’t exactly say I’m any less guilty. Though it’s more the act of sex that I use to escape when granted the chance.

“Don’t play the gentleman, Tyler. Word is you are far from a gentleman.”

Dom raises a brow at me, and I crack my neck in annoyance.

“Miller is fucking hot,” Sean carries on, “but what I want to know is how in the hell you managed it. She’s had a stick up her ass since middle school, and she’s older. ”

I remain silent, ready to rid myself of the fly buzzing between my and Dom’s seats.

“I have a theory,” Sean continues, “future high and tight likes ’em experienced and mean .”

“You’re an idiot,” I sigh.

“I heard no denial, did you, Dom?”

Dom smirks but remains quiet, sensing my mood.

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being a gentleman,” Sean tosses in, “I treat my girls very well. You’ll hear no complaints.”

“From all one of them?” Dom jests.

“Don’t hate,” Sean says as I turn off Main and stiffen, fingers tightening on the wheel when I spot my dad’s F-150.

Sean remains oblivious as Dom reads my posture and follows my line of sight to where Dad’s truck is parked.

Sean can be just as attuned when he wants to be.

That thought is only confirmed when silent seconds pass before he finally reads the room.

“What just happened?” he asks, and Dom jerks his chin in response to shut him up.

“No, man,” Sean protests, “shit just got tense in here. Talk to me.”

“He doesn’t want to share the details of his hookups, asshole, let it go,” Dom covers for me.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I can get very little past Dom these days.

The good part about it is that he won’t force me to address anything I don’t want to, whereas Sean believes group sharing is an entitlement.

Typically, I would come clean to both, along with Tobias, but this is different.

Lately, I’ve been sharing a lot less, not telling them about catching Dad cheating or the strange headspace that had me chanting breath count in Dom’s living room afterward.

For some reason, I’ve kept it all to my chest.

Probably because it’s too close to a very raw fucking nerve. One I decide I can no longer ignore as I silently pull up to Sean’s house to drop him off first.

“Fine,” Sean spouts resentfully, grabbing the duffle packed with his football gear, “but you guys are dicks for not telling me.” Sliding open the van door, he thinks better of his parting words and stares between us, all animation gone. “You good, Tyler?”

“Yeah, man, I’m good. I’ll hit you up later.”

“All right,” he says, palming my shoulder before he and Dom exchange a look I don’t bother to gauge or decipher.

Both know it’s been hell on earth for Mom and me at home, and neither has pressed me too much for details, but the heaviness is there.

Once out of Sean’s driveway, I pull to a stop sign and click the signal, though no one is behind me. Dom doesn’t say a word as I sit for a full minute, maybe two, while he patiently waits for me. “Can I ask a favor?”

He nods without hesitation or asking what the nature of the favor is. One I don’t give him before turning in the opposite direction of my signal.

Minutes later, I’m pulling up just outside the hole-in-the-wall at the end of the shopping center. Putting the van in park, I scan the building and mostly vacant parking lot before glancing back over to him. “Only step in if you have to.”

Dom nods, needing little else in the way of information, as I slam my way out of the van and stalk toward the entrance.

Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Gimme Three Steps” blasts through the frigid air, filling my ears as I step through the tinted glass door.

Once inside, I scan the bar, which is littered with dollar store Halloween decorations.

Cheap, cardboard cutout jack-o’-lanterns collectively grin at me from where they’re taped to every post supporting the drooping tiled ceiling of the hole-in-the-wall my dad’s claimed as a second home.

It takes seconds for me to spot him on his resident stool.

The difference between now and when I get the call to come and retrieve him is that the woman he’s seeing is currently hanging all over him.

It’s as if there’s any decency in making sure she’s absent when I scrape him from his barstool.

Fury lights a fire in me as I watch the man I once revered publicly cheat on my mother.

It’s his smitten expression that has me crawling out of my skin as she practically grinds on his lap.

Rounding the bar, I bide my time in a dark corner concealed behind some draped glittering black-and-orange tinsel, bristling in wait.

My patience is rewarded when, not long after, she peels herself off him, heading toward the hall that leads to the restroom.

Circling the bar, I watch him down the last of his pint and signal for another.

Seething, I stalk toward him, gaining momentum and advantage I utilize when his head snaps only an instant before impact.

Slamming my palms into his chest, I shove him with every bit of the fury rolling through me, a sickening satisfaction flooding my veins when he lands flat on his back, the pleather stool rolling away from him.