Page 15 of Porter (Dirty Misfits MC 2)
While I held Mom’s hair back at two in the morning when I was only fourteen years old because she couldn’t stop vomiting up her guts.
“I have nothing here,” I murmured.
Might as well clean it up and sell it, then.
It wasn’t as if Brooks didn’t want to sell the place. I’d had to convince the overgrown man-child not to sell this place off at least twice while he was in prison. And maybe this was his plan. Maybe his plan was to treat me like absolute and utter shit until I didn’t do anything but give into his plan of selling this place.
If that was his plan, it worked.
“All right, let’s do this,” I sighed.
I started with my parent’s old bedroom and went room by room, dusting and vacuuming and sweeping. I swatted at the cobwebs and sucked up the spiders that crawled out of the corners. I wrinkled my nose at the carpet and made a mental note to get someone in here to give me a quote on what it might take to replace it. If I sank enough money into this place, I could update it and really turn a profit. A home like this in the kind of quiet neighborhood it was in would sell for at least three times what Mom and Dad originally paid for it.
It just needed a little bit of love and tender care.
Like me.
After getting the master bedroom and bathroom up to par, I finally moved to my old bedroom. And when I opened the door, I found that it wasn’t as dirty as I figured it might have been. Things didn’t seem as dusty, and the musted old odor I smelled around the house didn’t creep up from the carpet. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the boys cleaned up this room before they ever tackled getting my shit out of the car.
“Huh,” I said softly.
I put down the broom and the duster and walked into the middle of my room. Hell, even my damn posters and pictures were still on the wall! It felt like I had walked right into my high school dreams. I ran my fingers along the band posters of musical men I had huge crushes on as a fifteen-year-old girl, smiling as the memories wafted through my mind. Memories of the few days Mom sobered up enough to come to my soccer games. Memories of when I was younger, back when Dad was still around. I turned toward the bed and watched the memories unfold before my very eyes.
As if I were watching a reel of my life.
“But Daaaaad.”
He placed his finger against my lips. “No ‘buts’. It’s time for bed.”
I wiped at my eyes. “But I’m scared, Daddy. The thunder is loud.”
He cupped my cheek. “I know it is, Princess. But no one ever conquered their fears by cowering away.”
“I wanna sleep with you and Mom, pleeeeease?”
He kissed my forehead. “How about I lay down with you until you fall asleep? How does that sound?”
I sniffled. “Promise?”
He booped my nose with his finger. “Promise, promise.”
The memory faded away as quickly as it had popped up and something wet streamed down my cheeks. I cursed to myself softly as I wiped it away, determined to stomach my emotions. None of them deserved anymore of my tears. I had cried half of my life away when I first moved to L.A., and I wouldn’t give them another second of my time. Mom and Dad—and Brooks, for that matter—made their choices. Dad chose to leave, and Mom chose to turn to alcohol to remedy her broken heart. My brother chose to seek out family elsewhere instead of culling together what was left of his family here.
It wasn’t my fault they all forgot about me in the process.
Still, the guilt hung hard in my heart. The fact that I couldn’t pull my mother out of her drunken stupors never sat right with me. I mean if I was a daughter to be proud of, she would have sobered up. Right? I was her damn child, for crying out loud! Surely I was worth sobering up for if I had been worth something or if she hadn’t been so ashamed of me, right?
I should’ve seen how much she was struggling earlier.
Then, a picture on my old bedside table caught my eye. It was the only picture I had of Brooks, and it was from years ago. He didn’t even have his official leather cut back then. Just a plain leather jacket and a dorky smile on his face. I giggled softly as I walked over to the picture. I picked it up and smoothed the small specks of dust away from the glass just so I could take in those kind and happy eyes of his.
Before my eyes gravitated toward Porter.
