He’s staring at me like he’s debating coming with me when his mom says, “She ain’t even that fuckin’ pretty.”
“Mom,” Joel warns, but Darlene isn’t done.
She locks eyes with me and snarls, “I used to be prettier ’n you.”
“And look at you now,” I counter, and a molten red flush erupts across her cheeks. She begins trying to stand, and if she were sober, I don’t doubt she’d be in the midst of yanking my hair out. Instead, the couch cushion gives under her palm and she struggles to find her footing.
“YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME?” she hollers while teetering dangerously to the side. “YOU AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT A DUMB FUCKIN—”
“SIT THE FUCK DOWN!” Joel bellows, and his mom literally falls back into her seat. She gapes at him for a second before resuming that ugly mask of anger again. Shawn and Mike, who were moving closer to the couch to intervene on my behalf, just stand there frozen in time like they’re not sure what to do with themselves. Adam puts his hand on Joel’s shoulder, but Joel barely seems to notice.
“You’re going to take that slut’s side over mine?” Joel’s mom asks him.
“She’s not a slut,” he snaps back.
“She doesn’t care about you!”
Joel laughs, quietly at first and then louder. “There’s some money in my room,” he says. “Keep it. Pretend I’m still here for a while. We both know that’s the only fucking reason you’ve ever wanted me around.”
“How dare you talk to me like that in my own goddamn house!” his mom shouts.
“I PAID FOR THIS FUCKING HOUSE,” he thunders, “so yeah, I’m going to do whatever the fuck I damn well please!”
Joel and his mom stare each other down, and then she starts to cry and he rolls his eyes.
“I’m out of here,” he says, snatching a set of keys off the counter and practically steamrolling me out the door. The rest of the guys follow. I hear Joel’s mom yelling behind them, apologizing and begging him to stay, but he ignores her. With his hand on my back, he ushers me down the porch stairs, and then he pulls away like I’m carrying something contagious. He walks to his car, opens the door—
He hesitates.
When he turns around, the world stops turning and I’m caught in one of those moments—the kind that have the power to change everything or nothing. A crossroad. A turn in the tide. A moment you can never come back from. “Why did you come here?”
I give him the simplest answer there is, the one that says just enough and not too much. “Because I wanted to make sure you went home with Adam.”
“Why?”
If there’s a right answer, I know the one I’m about to give isn’t it, and yet I give it anyway, because it feels like the safest. “You would’ve done the same for me. I owed you.”
“You owed me?”
When my response is to say nothing, his gaze lowers to the ground beneath his bare feet and he turns away from me. He climbs into his car, waits for Mike to climb into the passenger seat, and then they’re gone.
On shaking legs—still rushing with adrenaline from my near fight with Joel’s mom, and weakened from watching him drive away—I manage to get myself into Adam’s backseat, and he takes his sweet time lighting a cigarette before starting his black Camaro and heading toward home.
“Well,” he says with the cigarette between his lips, “that went well.”
“I told you we shouldn’t have brought her,” Shawn says, frowning at me in the rearview mirror. “No offense, Dee.”
“She,” Adam says, pointing a thumb in my direction, “is the only reason he’s coming home.”
I flip my shades back down and pretend to stare at the trees to avoid meeting their eyes. “No. He’s coming back for you guys.”
I’m the reason he left.
Chapter Twenty-Two
WHEN ROWAN ENTERS our apartment a few minutes after I get home, I’m sitting on our couch with my head in my hands. I look up at her through tear-filled eyes, and she frowns at me.
I didn’t break down during the ride home from Joel’s mom’s house. I didn’t break down when I saw his beat-up car sitting empty in Adam’s parking lot. I didn’t break down during the drive back to my own place. And even at home, in the privacy of my own living room, I haven’t broken down.
I don’t deserve to cry. Even though I do it—almost every day—I don’t have any right to.
“They told me what happened,” Rowan says, taking a seat on the coffee table across from me. “Dee, this has got to stop.”
My expression hardens, and I blink away unshed tears before they have a chance to fall. “What are you talking about?”
“Joel looks miserable. He is miserable. And you’re sitting here crying . . .” She puts her hand on my knee, her voice soft but insistent. “You need to tell him how you feel.”
“And how do I feel, Rowan?”
“You love him.”
A tear escapes the corner of my eye, and I shake my head.