Taking the bag back, I said, “Maybe you shouldn’t have raised me to be so independent, then.”
The words left a hole that wanted to expand into my chest. He was right. I did do what I wanted. All the time. At the cost of the ones I loved.
I closed my eyes and tried to fight the image floating in my head from the night of the crash. The sound of glass breaking, the unnatural way the car had turned, the look on Paige’s face when she showed up—part fear, part disappointment.
Secrets brimmed and I was afraid they were going to start leaking out of me. Pain and rage radiated from my pores.
I gathered the rage and cradled in against my chest to help me get through the other feeling sitting right under it. Because anger I could do. Anger I could work with. It started when Mom left and connected all the way to the night of the accident. Always there, right at the top of the pyramid of emotions, the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. It was everything else, below the surface, I had a hard time with.
Dad and I worked in silence even though all I wanted was to come clean about the accident. But then I’d have to throw Paige under the bus, too. My mind kept going back to my guilt even though I tried to fight it with my anger, eating and digging deeper and deeper into my muscles. By the end of it, I would simply be bones and organs with the guilt keeping me standing.
It had to end at some point. Didn’t it? I had to move on.
When I was about halfway through cleaning the garage, the sound of tires skidding against pavement caught my ears. I looked down the driveway in time to catch a kid in a familiar dark sweatshirt come walking up to us.
“You have got to be kidding me.” Also, a sweatshirt. In June. The guy was asking for a heatstroke.
He approached where I stood. Dad was busy in the back of the garage and had yet to notice him. His steps were cautious and hesitant, hands in pockets, no swagger in his walk. He stopped his approach and our eyes connected. I held in a breath and forced myself to blink, hoping I imagined the whole scenario. But there he stood, and my heart skipped in an agitated beat. I hadn’t seen his face that night, but I recognized him anyway. From his walk, the length of his body, the curve of his shoulders.
He cleared his throat. “Mr. Hopper,” he said, trying to catch Dad’s attention. Jiminy barked a couple of times.
Dad had his arm raised, placing a bucket back on a high shelf. He turned his head and froze when he saw the guy standing in the sunlight while we remained in the shadowed garage.
My heart pounded, the feeling of unease settling between my ribs.
“Corey? What are you doing here?”
My whole body froze. “Wait. Dad, you know this guy?” I looked back and forth between the two of them.
Dad wiped his brow. “Yeah. Corey’s the kid I told you about. The one I prosecuted last summer?” Dad’s brows wrinkled. “Are you here to take me up on that offer?”
Last summer. Right. Last year Dad sent an eighteen-year-old kid to jail for drug possession. Nothing new—in fact the case was pretty cut-and-dried. Except Dad didn’t think the kid was guilty. He thought this guy, Corey, took the fall for someone else and tried to cut him a deal. Corey refused to budge. Claimed he was guilty. Dad, the human lie detector as I liked to call him, didn’t believe him. They were at an impasse.
I remembered how frustrated Dad was, how it ate away at him. And then the heart attack happened and I forgot about the case; it got buried beneath the memories of fear and pain. Apparently, Dad hadn’t forgotten.
Corey pocketed his hands. “No, sir. I’m here to turn myself in.”
Dad stared, the silence cutting the space between them. “What do you mean?”
“It was me. I was the one who vandalized your home.”
I took a moment to get a good look at Corey, anger filtering my vision. “What are you doing?” I asked. Why was he doing this? He could have easily gotten away with what he had done the other night. I never saw his face; there were no other leads.
Dad shook his head. “You did this?” He swept an arm across the open garage.
Corey nodded.
Dad’s hands were in fists by his side. I could sense the rage building inside of him. He flared his nostrils. “Why?” he said through clenched teeth, stepping toward Corey.
My heart started to kick harder, and I dropped my arms to my sides, preparing myself for his next move.
Corey shrugged. “Because I was angry. Because I felt like it.” There was no resolve behind his words.
Dad flew across the space between them and grabbed Corey by the collar, startling both of us. “Do you have any idea the kind of danger you put my daughter in?”
“Dad!” I tried to deter him from the direction he headed. Which was straight to Pissed-Off Town, one exit away from I’m-Going-to-Kill-You Ville.
“Tell me who else was involved.”
Corey’s face flushed red; his eyes contained a panic I’d seen a few times in my life. All from boys who’d come over to pick me up for a date. Fear. He looked so scared and young. He was simply a boy. A boy dumb enough to return to the scene of the crime.
I shook my head and tried to get rid of those thoughts. Corey should be scared after what he did. “Dad.” I lifted my hand and placed it on his shoulder. “Calm down.”
Beneath my fingers, the tension in Dad’s body flexed in his muscles. “No, he needs to answer the question first.” Everything he’d kept in the last forty-eight hours slowly came undone, all the frustration and anger and hurt.
“Dad, please,” I pleaded. But he wasn’t listening. “You have to. He’s never going to talk when you’re attempting to kill him. You’re going to give yourself another heart attack.” The panic in my voice shook through the grasp I had on it as I whispered in a harsh tone.
Dad turned to me, his face softening. His body relaxed, and I removed my hand from his shoulder.
“Is this how you pay me back for what I did for you?” Dad’s body sagged in defeat. “Destroy my home, my sense of security, put my daughter at risk? You better tell me about the others before I take you down.”
And there it was. Dad and his threats were as familiar as the freckles on my left forearm. The guy straightened, and his eyes roamed my face in a flash, then went back to Dad’s. What was he doing here? Why wasn’t he at home?
Whatever the reason, I knew one thing—it probably wasn’t going to end well for either of us.
COREY
My throat squeezed tight, and I breathed through my nose. Hopper removed his hands from the collar of my sweatshirt, and I swallowed the pain before taking a full breath. My chest heaved heavy while Hopper and I eyed each other. I rubbed the back of my neck.
The girl, Tessa, kept staring at me. Her lips set in a straight, grim line.
“They cut your tongue out in jail?” Hopper’s nostrils flared.
I shifted my gaze back to Hopper and fought the urge to turn around and run back home. I could go back and pretend like nothing happened. Continue following X’s orders, continue being leashed to Vance, continue to try to calm him when he came up with some crazy scheme and then pay for it when I did. But I didn’t want to spend what time I had being someone else’s pawn anymore. I wanted to make one decision for myself. Even if it cost me my freedom, at least I had a say in it.