But the reprise didn’t last long. A clatter of breaking dishes sent Jase hopping to his feet, a butter knife clutched in his white-knuckled grip.
Horrific memories flashed through his mind. Memories that had been seared in his brain, a disease without a cure. Darkness he couldn’t shake. Inmates surrounding him, forming a wall so the guards couldn’t see what was happening. A cold shiv pressing into the back of his neck. His clothes...ripping...
He was already panting, gaze darting around the restaurant, searching for the threat.
“Everything’s fine.” West unfolded an inch at a time in an effort not to spook him and gently rubbed his nape. “You’re safe, man. You’re safe.”
Safe? Was he? The prickling at the back of his neck had returned.
When he realized people were staring at him with strange looks on their faces, he squared his shoulders and reclaimed his seat, setting down the knife. He pushed his food away, no longer in the mood to eat, and though his friends tried to return to their previous conversation, the laid-back solidarity of before was gone, the tension and guilt back.
West finally released a bitter laugh. “There’s no good time to bring this up, so I’m just going to do it now. As you probably know, the anniversary of Tessa getting her GED is coming up.”
And her death.
Beck tensed. “We’ve still got a few months to go.”
“Yes, but what I want to do takes time and planning.” West caught a bead of condensation trickling down his water glass. “I plan to throw her a party. The one she always wanted. The one I promised her but never gave her. I would have done it already, but...”
But Jase hadn’t been around, and Tessa would have insisted on having him at any celebration in her honor. Another rock of guilt his friends still carried.
The lines of tension bracketing Beck’s eyes softened. He gently asked, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Tessa’s death wasn’t your fault,” Jase said. “You don’t have to sentence yourself to life without the possibility of happiness, clinging to her memory.”
“Her death is my fault,” West said. “A life sentence is far less than I deserve.”
“Her death has never been your fault.” Tessa had always been an up-and-down kind of girl, but her ordeal with Pax Gillis had shredded her. Months passed, but she’d never recovered emotionally. She’d cried every night, but she’d cried especially hard the night she’d died, and Jase often wondered if she’d lost control of the car, as the police report had claimed, or if she’d intentionally crashed.
The Gillis family had been hounding her, blaming her for Jase’s actions. If she hadn’t lied about the assault, they’d said, Jase wouldn’t have come after their son.
“You weren’t there,” West snapped. “You don’t know.”
“No,” he replied quietly. “I wasn’t there.” I was rotting behind bars.
The Gillis family had protested every time he’d come up for parole, which was another reason he’d remained behind bars as long as he had. But then, last year, Pax’s dad had died of a heart attack, leaving only the mother and the little brother. Jase remembered them from the trial. A small, slender woman who’d never stopped sobbing and a punk kid with a Mohawk, who’d had more piercings and tattoos than Jase.
West closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way.”
“Forget about it.” But Jase knew he wouldn’t. He never did. “I have.”
“I feel like I’m living Moore’s Law,” West muttered.
“Uh, you’re smarter than the rest of the class, bro,” Beck said. “You’ll have to explain that one.”
West shrugged. “Over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. In other words, my brain is the hardware and my memories grow stronger as time passes.”
That made two of them. “Why don’t I ask Brook Lynn to help us with the planning?” Jase said, getting them back on track.