I’ve yet to meet someone who isn’t.
“Listen to me.” I snatch his hand into mine. “You’re insane if you think this could ever, in a hundred lifetimes, make me look at you differently. Are we clear?”
He stares blankly ahead of him, drawing small circles on the inside of my hand with his finger.
“Are we clear?” I press.
He doesn’t give me words.
But he gives me a nod.
Small victories.
“Can I ask who that guy was?” I change the topic.
He exhales deeply. “That was Steve, the dirtbag that got us off the street. Also the guy who got my mom into hard-core drugs when I was nine.”
My heart cracks.
How is he so casual about it?
“We moved in with him a year later. Long story short, he’s the typical abusive, piece-of-shit stepdad. Slapped my mom around for years, but he kept the dope coming, so she stayed. Then I started fighting.”
This piece of information alone fills a hundred gaps.
He learned to fight to protect her.
Not himself.
Her.
“He kept his hands to himself for a while. He knew I could take him. Until I moved out. The second I left, he started again. Gave her a black eye two months ago. So, Kendrick came over, and we returned the favor.”
There’s a whole part of him I don’t know. Hell, I don’t even know my own brother.
“I got my mom into the car, moved her somewhere I knew he wouldn’t find her. She promised she wouldn’t tell him where she was. That she was done, and she’d get her shit in order, and well… you know how that turned out.”
I’m angry for him.
She went running back the second the withdrawal hit.
“And I know I shouldn’t give her money. I’m only enabling the problem, but I don’t know what else to fucking do. I… I can’t just sit back and watch her screw any willing dealer.”
I’m at a loss for words.
This is awful.
Downright awful.
“Anyway, there you go. My sob story summed up in a few sentences. Anything else you want to know?” He heaves a resentful laugh. I know he said it as a joke, and this may be the worst moment to bring this up, but…
I have to ask.
“Actually, there is.”
He waits for me to elaborate.
“Yesterday, when you were drunk, you… you said something about a girl. That asshole Dixon mentioned her at Zoey’s birthday, too. Lyla… I think?”
As if you don’t know what her name is.
That’s what knocks his façade down.
Her name.
He swallows hard, his eyes turning red as his jaw flexes. He sounded so detached telling me the truth today. Really had me thinking he was okay with all of this. But he’s not. He’s been flirting with the line since this morning, flirting with the edge. His heart isn’t as solid as he’d like me to think. And sooner or later, all that is fragile…
Breaks.
“She was Dixon’s stepsister.” He clears his throat. “And my girlfriend.”
I despise the sting of jealousy. Loathe it to my core. But it hurts all the same. A part of me always knew she had to be important to him, but I somehow deluded myself into thinking that she was a fling. That I was the first to gain the girlfriend title.
“What do you mean was Dixon’s stepsister?”
“She died. In the Blue River fire three years ago.”
Tragic newspaper articles flash in front of my eyes, memories of the devastating fire at a local high school compressing my lungs. I can still see the headline: Eight students perish during a Saturday detention. It was all everybody could talk about for months after it happened. Rumors and false information spread through town like wildfires. They’d say it was a cigarette that did it one day, and a faulty gas line the next. No one could figure out what started the fire.
Eventually, it was filed an accident.
Crushed by lawsuit from the victims’ parents, Blue River High closed its doors, earning Riverside High, its competitor and the only high school I’ve ever known, a dramatic number of transfers. Then people moved on with their lives. Forgot all about it.
Even I’d forgotten about it.
“I’m so sorry” is all I can think to say.
“Don’t be. It was a long time ago. I’m past it.”
Sure didn’t look like he was past it last night.
“Are you sure? Because yesterday, it sounded like you were blaming yourself. You said it was your fault.”
“It was. Kind of. Took me years to forgive myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m the one who landed her in detention. She would’ve never been in the school if it weren’t for me.”
“Oh.” I nod, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more.
I remember the guilt on his face.
The agony in his voice.
There has to be more.
“You should go.”
His request stops my racing thoughts cold.
“What?” I blink at him.
He can’t be doing this again.
He scoffs. “You heard me. Go. I just told you my mom is a crack addict who prostitutes herself and my ex-girlfriend was burned alive. Why the hell are you still here? Run. Save yourself before my fucked-up life swallows you whole.” He gestures to the door. “I won’t hold it against you.”
I’m struck dumb.
“Is that what you think I want?”
He pauses.
“I think it’s what you need.”
If it weren’t for the fact that he can’t even look at me, as though he can’t bear the possibility of me coming to my senses and taking his advice, I might actually fall for it. I might actually buy that he wants me out of his life.
But acting was never his strong suit.
And giving up isn’t mine.
“No.”
His eyes cut to my face, full of question marks.
“No?”
“That’s right. No. You don’t get to decide what I need.”
A painful pit crawling up my throat, I unbuckle his seat belt, climbing onto his lap before he can protest. I straddle him, caging his body with mine, threatening to tear his walls down with a weapon he thought harmless.
Proximity.
If he’s going to lie to me, he’d better look me straight in the eyes while he does it. And if he truly
