He flicks a look toward the RV. “Em would’ve loved her.”
The corners of my mouth quirk. “No doubt.”
“I miss her.” He takes one of the pebbles lined up next to his feet and rolls it between his fingers. “I think about her a lot.”
“Me too.”
“She was a good woman.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it,” he says with more force. “They didn’t have to take me in—”
“They didn’t have to take me in either. Social services was more than willing to stick me somewhere.”
“You were family. I was a little punk.”
“True story.”
He side-eyes me. “They treated me like family.”
“You are family.” I stare up at the trees. “You’re the only family I have left.”
“We have the club.”
“True.”
He glances over his shoulder again. “You have Shelby now.”
It’s hard to tell if he’ll be annoyed or reassured, but I figure he needs to hear this. “You’ll always be my brother.”
He flicks the pebble into the water. “My parents—”
“Were fucking evil.” I don’t need a crystal ball to figure out what’s gotten into Jiggy this morning. We’ve never had one of these conversations stone-cold sober. Certainly not at Satan’s-bedtime o’clock in the morning.
“You all right, bro?” I climb up onto the table next to him and pat his leg.
“I’m fine.” He waves his hand toward the RV. “I don’t like to bring it up. But since I assume it’s already on your mind today...” He shrugs. “I wanted to tell you that I think about them a lot.”
Fucking Ashley. No matter how much it sucked for me to deal with her yesterday, having her pop up like the ghost of haunted childhoods probably brought up a lot of pain for Jiggy. Stuff he’d rather not dwell on.
“You tell her about your mom…before?” he asks.
“Some highlights, yeah.”
He stares at his fists, opening and closing them. “I loved your mom. She always treated me good. I always felt loved around her.”
A lump settles in my throat. “She did love you. She always thought we’d be road-tripping together.”
He nods even though I know I’ve told him that before. “You ever think about all the good people who aren’t here anymore, when there’s so much fucking evil still walking around?”
I’m not sure I think of it specifically in those terms but I get what he’s saying. “Sometimes.”
“Do you think we’re evil?”
Haven’t cared to ask myself that question in a long time. “We’ve done evil things.” There’s no point denying that. “Shelby seems to think any crimes I’ve committed probably made the world a better place.” And hadn’t that sentiment floored me.
His body jerks to the side so he’s facing me. “What’d you tell her?”
“Nothing specific. I’m not fucking stupid.” I squint at him. “You’re the one who told her we tortured Suggs.”
“She was in the hospital. I wanted her to know we had her back and she was safe.” A quick hint of a smirk flashes over his face. “You know what bothers me more?”
“Something bothers you?” I widen my eyes in dickish surprise.
“Shocking, right?” He smacks my shoulder and turns serious. “Cuttin’ a finger off Suggs didn’t bother me one bit. He touched your girl, we shoulda taken his whole hand. Carved out his insides.”
“Can’t disagree with you there.”
“What bothers me more are the ones we didn’t disembowel for touching something they shouldn’t have.”
“I hear you.”
“You think that’s fucked up?”
“After the shit we’ve seen? No.”
“You ever think about Shadow?” he asks.
“Not if I can help it.” Our last VP was a piece of shit and not worth wasting the mental energy. We haven’t had a reason to talk about him. “He’s rotting in the ground where he belongs.”
“Wish we’d done it sooner. The shit his wife told me…” he shakes his head.
“You saw the way he treated Serena. The way he challenged Z. What he tried to do to Lilly that night. Nothing about that shitstain surprises me.”
“He really came unglued at the end,” Jiggy agrees. “But from what Myra said, he was always a monster. How come none of us saw it sooner?”
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t asked myself the same question many times since the night I walked up on Shadow attacking Z’s wife. “I don’t know, brother.”
“I wish I’d gotten more info from Serena before she disappeared.” He glances over at me. “No one’s heard from her in months.”
“Better to leave it alone.” I stare out at the lake. “He won’t be hurting anyone again.”
“What makes someone turn out that way?”
Isn’t that a million-dollar question? “I don’t know, brother. You plannin’ to go back to college and study psychology or something?”
He snorts and flicks another pebble in the water. “Couldn’t if I wanted to. Jezzie just hit me up for tuition money.”
“She all right?”
The first hint of a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, she’s good.” He peers over at me, all serious again. “I miss Boone too, you know. He should be out on the road with us.”
“Hell yeah. He woulda gotten a kick out of Shelby’s shows.”
Jiggy slaps my leg and cackles like a demon. “You think he woulda been proud of us patching-in or scared shitless?”
“Probably a little of both.” I can’t believe I’m going to ask this but, my curiosity won’t go away. “You talk to Ashley after we left yesterday?”
Yup, that wiped the smile off his face. His hands curl into fists again. “Talk really isn’t the right word.”
“Jesus,” I grumble.
He shoots a glare at me like a bullet. “I didn’t fuck her, asshole. I meant, she yelled and I responded with snarls and threats. I wouldn’t call it talking.”
“Sorry I left you there to deal with that.”
He shrugs. “Shelby needed to hear the truth from you. Not a half-assed story from that stupid cunt.”
“Why’d she show up anyway?”
“Why do you think?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”
“She’s a jealous twat living the exact monotonous existence I always predicted.”
I stare at him. “That’s it?”
“Maybe back then you were too enamored of her pussy to notice, but she always thought she was better than you.”
“So?”
“You need a connect the dots diagram, brother? Here, let me help you out.” He pokes his finger in the air and slows his speech like he’s talking to a five-year-old who was kicked in the head by a mule. “She married some boring, trust fund loser who fucks her twice a year and only with the lights out.” He stabs his other finger in the air between us. “You’re on the cover of a magazine, dating a celebrity.”