“You tried to kill me once, if I recall correctly, Coker,” I said. “You did a shit job of it.”
He grinned, his front teeth stained with blood, giving him a crazed look. “Next time I’ll do better.”
“Good luck,” I said. Trigg pushed me through the small crowd that had gathered around us, guiding me to the back room.
“Watch yourself, Saint,” Trigg said. “That guy, he has a lot of reach. We both know that.”
“Coker is a piece of shit.” I spit at the ground. “Trigg, do me a favor. Find out why that girl was with him.”
Trigg shook his head and smiled. “Only you’d be thinking about * right now.”
“I’m not,” I said. That was only partly true. “I just want to know what the hell Coker is up to.”
"All right," Trigg said. "I'll ask around. One of the guys will know. If I leave you alone, will you calm your shit down in here? Don't break anything."
"Fuck you," I said. "Look at this shithole room. There's nothing in here to break." I sat down in a chair.
Trigg was right. I needed to calm the hell down. I sat down, breathing and willing my heart rate back to normal. But when I closed my eyes, all I could see was Tempest.
Tempest tucked her hair behind her ear, and looked up at me, her eyes wide. She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and curled up in a little ball, sitting on the flat rock that bordered the clearing in the woods.
I thought my heart was going to explode, looking at her. She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
"There are supposed to be scouts at the tournament tomorrow," I said.
"You're going to do amazing," she said. "I know you will."
"Shit." Beside her, I picked at a piece of the rock. "I have to get a scholarship, Tempest. I need to get out of here. We need to get out of here. We can make something of ourselves outside of here…”
She nodded, biting the middle of her lower lip. "You're going to, Silas. I know you will. You're that good."
I turned toward her, pulled her onto my lap, her long legs straddling me, and she wrapped them around my waist. Her hair spilled down over me, the honey blonde strands falling around my face as she pressed her forehead against mine, closing her eyes. "Wherever I go, you're coming with me," I said. "You could stay in one place, for once."
She looked at me, her eyes bright. "When I turn eighteen," she said. "I'll be able to finally stop moving."
Tempest leaned in close and kissed me, her lips soft. A small moan escaped her lips, and her tongue found mine. I pulled her tight against me.
For the next three days, at the state championship tournament, she was right there, cheering me on from the side. My parents weren't present, and neither were hers, but she and Elias were there, and that's what mattered to me. I was seventeen, and Tempest and Elias were the closest people in my world.
When I won, Tempest ran for me, jumping into my arms and clinging to my neck as she wrapped her legs around my waist. She buried her head in the side of my neck and kissed me. "I knew you would win."
"It's because of you," I told her. "You're my lucky charm. Now you have to come to all of my matches."
"I'll be at every one of them," she promised.
Two weeks later, Tempest was gone. It was only after she left that I found out what her parents had done. They were con artists who'd run a Ponzi scheme on a couple of the wealthy families in town. It was all rumor, of course - none of the families were admitting to having been conned. I guess it didn't look that great when you were a business person who was involved in some kind of dubious get-rich-quick scheme and lost your money.
But people talked. I didn't know what the hell the term Ponzi scheme even meant at the time. It wasn't until a few years ago, when I heard mention of that kind of thing in the news, that I realized the magnitude of what happened in West Bend. That Tempest's parents were actual, real life con artists. And Tempest was a part of it.
Tempest had gone without leaving so much as a note. Her grandmother, supposedly the reason for Tempest and her parents' visit to West Bend, had a black mark on her reputation, the kind my family had on ours when I was growing up. From what I’d heard, she moved outside of town, and I wasn't sure what happened to her, or if she even lived there anymore.
Hell, I wasn't even sure that she was Tempest's grandmother to begin with. She could have been part of the scam. But she just faded away.
The same way Tempest had done.