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  2. Severed Heart (Ravenhood Legacy Book 2)

  3. Severed Heart: Chapter 20
Severed Heart (Ravenhood Legacy Book 2)

Severed Heart: Chapter 20

“I MUST MASTER IT as I must master my life. My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.”
Terror grips me as I will my feet forward, and he comes into view. Sitting on his weight bench, a plastic card table sits in front of him as he continues his chant.
“. . . I must master it as I must master my life. My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.”
Eyes glazed, his hands blur in motion on the table in front of him as he loads and unloads his rifle. Fear is etched on his features as he stares blankly in front of him—through me.
“Dad?” I croak, terror and dread overwhelming every inch of me. Nausea threatens as my stomach roils as he continues his chant, dismantling his rifle before assembling it again in a blur of well-rehearsed motion.
I jump back when he lifts it and aims straight in front of him at the closed garage door before dismantling it again, the chant pouring from his lips. “. . . IS. My. Life. I m-m-must master it as I must m-master my life. My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.”
Paralyzed, I watch him doing this in rapid succession, softly calling his name as tears start to pour out of his eyes, his voice barely a whisper.
“. . . without my rifle, I am useless.”
“Mom,” I croak, the fear of leaving him to get her help crippling me in place. I don’t move. I don’t so much as blink as I watch him repeat his lightning-fast movements again and again, slight spittle dripping from his lips as his whispers grow more urgent.
Hitting my knees, fear rips from my throat as I close my eyes.
The crack of the garage door sounds before a swish of air brushes against me as Mom passes. I feel it the second she sees him.
“Carter? . . . Baby?”
Keeping my eyes closed, even as my fear for her sets in, I can’t open them because the man sitting feet away looks every bit like my father while at the same time holding no resemblance to Carter Jennings.
Dread grips me tightly, muffling the world around me before Mom’s pleas break through.
“. . . Son, please, Son, call your Uncle Grayson right now. Tyler? Please go. Carter,” Mom orders calmly before turning back to him. “Carter, baby, look at me, put the gun down. Carter, please put the gun down.”
Time blurs as do faces before I come to, the neighbors crowding our yard as Dad is strapped into a gurney, his eyes glossy, mouth moving almost imperceptibly, no sound coming out—though I can still hear the chant as clear as day.
“My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.”
My father is living that chant right now—believing it. Believing he’s nothing without the uniform. Institutionalized in his thinking.
I feel that truth in the depths of my soul. Lost would not be the word I would use to describe what I saw. It’s the utter fear and devastation in his expression that guts me again and again. A blunt knife to the stomach continually stabbing into me as the gurney bangs loudly against the edge of the ambulance bed before they secure him inside.
I’d been balls deep in Kayley and arguing with my mother about his worth while my dad was . . . unraveling. He’s been at war, in his mind, inside himself this whole time. But I pathetically had to see it to finally understand just what that hell looked like, let alone imagine what it felt like.
“I still can’t find the front door.”
But I’ve seen that hell in another face—the same haunted expression, the same unmistakable pain, in a woman who fights it daily to help me, to shape me.
“Such a shame,” our neighbor Carrie whispers to another, just feet away. “He just hasn’t been the same since he came back . . . Regina!” She pitches her voice. “Honey, let us know if there’s anything we can do.”
I turn on her then, fury lighting up my veins as I stalk toward her, and her eyes widen. “How about stop talking about him like he’s useless cattle being sent out to fucking pasture!”
“Tyler!” Uncle Gray snaps, striding toward me with the cops on his heels as the medics slam the back of the ambulance closed. And with it, I feel my own snap.
“He’s a human fucking being!” I shout as rage swallows me—blinds me. “A human being who put his life on the line for two decades so no one can dictate what comes off your waggling fucking tongue!”
Mom calls my name, the sound of it distant as Uncle Gray clamps his arms around me, whispering fast in my ear, but it’s too late.
BLINK. BLACK.
“Seventy-two hours under observation.” Uncle Gray’s muffled voice brings me to where I sit in Dad’s recliner. Shifting slightly, I can feel my T-shirt stuck to my sweat-dried back as his voice filters in, clarity in his words. “. . . and then we’re going to transfer him into rehab.”
“They can’t afford it,” Aunt Rhonda whispers back to him from where she scrubs Mom’s counters in the kitchen.
“They’re paying,” Uncle Gray states.
“They fucking better,” Rhonda counters with unmistakable animosity. I don’t have to hear more to know she’s relieved Uncle Gray got out of the Corps when he did.
Thoughts heavy, nausea threatening at the ingrained sight of Dad at that table, I stand and excuse myself.
Uncle Grayson eyes me as I give him a nod, a lying gesture that tells him I’m good before stalking out of the house and making the call.
Twenty minutes later, I’m standing in the woods, staring at the full moon between two trees in the night sky, when I feel him approach. Not long ago, we gathered in this exact spot to map our plan. A blueprint Tobias had no idea that Sean, Dom, and I desperately needed, grappling with our current, directionless lives. Plans I cling to now with an alteration in mind—my own purpose.
“I have a stake in this,” I tell him, chest still pumping from the long run to get here.
“I’m listening,” Tobias says. “But first, tell me what’s happened, brother.”
Ignoring the shake that he can clearly see in my posture as hot tears line my jaw, I muster the words. “It’s my dad, I . . . I think I caught him in the nick of time tonight. I’m not sure, but he was . . . I barely even recognized him. He’s under observation now and going to rehab after.”
“Jesus Christ, Tyler, I’m—”
“Don’t,” I say, finding the resolve I’ve been searching for as the very last tear I’ll shed evaporates on my skin. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry, T.”
I turn to see him looking well put together in one of his suits. A look he’s adopted in recent years, and I can’t help but admire him, knowing that whatever he’s doing, he too is taking steps to alter his mindset to become whatever version he’s created of himself for the future. Even though he’s often present, he’s still become something of an enigma to us. Dom has hinted here and there that he’s involved in something overseas, but I’ve never pressed him for what. He’s too used to being big brother to all of us. That has to change between us tonight in order for my own plan to work.
“I don’t want your sympathy. I want you to tell me you’ll back me up on this. I want you to tell me you’ll do whatever it is within your power to help me see this through—to the very fucking end. But before we start, this secret, until I decide otherwise, stays solely between us.”
“I swear it.”
“Then you need to come clean with me. I need to know every facet of what’s going on, of the totality of your plans, not just what you pick and choose to let us in on, and that, too, will be our secret.”
He crosses his arms, his eyes trailing down me curiously. “Why the need to know?”
“If I’m to build our army and oversee its integrity, then I need the full picture, and that’s half of what my stake is in this. With what I have in mind, I’m going to be the one you rely on most. You and I, we can’t keep any secrets between us if it’s going to work. If you want my allegiance, my fealty, my loyalty, then give me this, and you’ll have it.”
“And what is your plan?”
“To take on the US military.”
An hour later, I’m in the know, more so than Dom and Sean, and make peace with it while standing across the street from my best friend’s house, peering into the living room. My throat burns as I gaze upon Delphine in her recliner. The ache and need to go to her intensifying as I recall the details of the last few letters I read.
He blames me for the baby and tells me God knew I would be a horrible mother . . .
He’s raping me now, Celine . . .
Last night, he forced me to sleep on the porch in the snow . . .
I am poison to the men I love . . .
As she fills her glass, like my father, I know that she’s mentally in a place I can’t get to. Everything inside me wants to be who she reaches for now as my heart fills with the truth.
I’m falling for her, and chances are I’ll never openly be able to express it. It’s likely I’ll never get the fucking chance to try to become the man she reaches for. Or be able to battle the poison that numbs the wounds inside her that continue to fester. Wounds that keep her in the vicious cycle of slow self-implosion, right along with my dad. Love can’t heal those deep-etched scars away.
Or can it?
Thanks to my idiotic fucking heart and its fixation, I may never get the luxury of finding out. But I can be there for her. Even if it leads to some personal detriment.
But it’s the broken areas where we share our most common ground, and it’s there that maybe we’ll find a place—together. It’s then my mom’s earlier words about timing resonate the most, and I make peace with it.
“Mindset and stamina,” I mumble before turning on my heels and pressing off against the concrete. I run a mile, then two, reaching ten and pushing forward. The ache not abating a single second as I envision a man capable of taking on that battle, setting my sights on a man with an iron will and unbreakable resolve. Who backs his promises and camouflages his own pain. A man that will break the cycle, break the fucking mold.
A man to reach for.
To entrust.
A man that will be me.
And the only fucking man for her.
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