LANCASTER AND MAXWELL ( ✔ )

chapter fourteen.

Chapter Fourteen.

SULLIVAN pays his own bail. Before he can even step twenty feet out of the precinct, however, there's Jude and his mother standing outside the doors. There's a mixture of disappointment and anger lingering in the air, but for very different reasons.

"The fuck's the matter with you?" Jude questions bitterly, not even waiting for the policemen to go back inside to give the teen a piece of his mind. "You have one job, Sullivan-Jaymes. One. Fucking. Job, and that's to not get in trouble. Are you aware that you put both your family and my career at risk? I just don't see why you'd be so fucking careless..." Instead of the usual annoyance Sully would feel at Jude lecturing him like his father, annoyance is replaced with guilt and embarrassment — he's not like kids his age. He knows that he cannot escape reality with with a drunken daze and a hangover that he'd regret in the morning. For as long as he's been alive, he knew that; yet, he did it anyways. All because of blind jealousy. 

Feelings suck.

He sighs, exasperated. It's four in the morning, and he looks like shit. The young man can smell the liquor on his clothes and there's blood still on his knuckles (most of it isn't his) and clotting around his nose. Sully thinks he would have had just as much fun these past few hours if he sent his body through a fucking shredder. Now, all he wants to do is go home and be by himself because the universe has fucked him over so many times within the past two days that Sullivan believes that he's now truly lost his virginity. 

Reluctantly, he looks down at his mother, who's giving him The Look. He recognizes it too well — it's the same look that he received in his youth whenever he had a run in with the law. She's not disappointed or angry that he's been in trouble, Kitty is upset because he got caught. It's been so long since she last looked at him like that, he's forgotten how painful the sting of the look pierces his heart.

"Sugar, what the hell got into you?" She questions, her silk voice making him feel even worse. "I would've expected this from Sadie. She's as reckless as they come, but you're supposed to be the smart one, my token winner. Ain't I taught you better than that?" 

"Yes, Ma ..." 

"Then why the hell ain't you actin' like it?" As her accent gets prominently sloppy, the same way his does when he becomes frustrated, Sullivan knows that he's messed up. The problem is, he can't admit to it. How does he confess to his mother that he let himself become reckless with rage all because he was jealous of his best friend with another girl? 

'Hey Mama. I'm sorry that I got charged with three different things tonight and could possibly be heading off to prison within the next year. Artie has a lady he never told me about, and I dream of kissing him so hard his lips bruise up, so I got jealous. Forgive me?' 

Sullivan is good at many things — talking about his feelings is not one of them.

He bows his head, ashamed, and gives a clumsy shrug. "I got impulsive, rash and careless, and I really am sorry about it. I truly am, to the both of you." He gives his voice the most sincere tone that he's ever given, and this time he really means it. Sullivan has always been quite good with his words. "And I know that I shouldn't have done anythin' that I did today. I promise you both that I'll never do it again." To the both of them, his apology means two different things.

To Jude, it means that he'll never do anything to get in trouble again.

To Kitty, it means that he'll never get caught again.