“What your father did—it wasn’t weak, and he sure as hell didn’t accept it, but that’s his story to tell, not mine. Here’s the thing, kid. You are the product of your parents, a product of this club, and you’ve been denying us for months, and the man I’m standing next to now, the one wrestling with God—you’re beginning to understand what it means to make a sacrifice for the one you love. Question is, can you forgive us for loving you the same way you love her.”
There’s a shifting of wood and Pigpen and I both snap our heads to catch my father near the screen door. How long he was there and what he heard, I don’t know. But I think of how he sat with me after I took the bullet, the night I came home and he stood proud next to me, the way he looks at me now like a broken man waiting for his son to return home.
Right and wrong begin to get muddled. Black and white merge into shades of gray. My father loved me enough to do something so huge in regards to my mother that the Terror respects him and it brought a fragile peace to two warring clubs. He also did what he could to maintain that peace throughout the years—including lie to me...because he loved me.
I gesture with my chin and he’s hesitant as he strides toward us. Like he’s ready for me to pull back and swing instead of joining him in conversation. “What do you need?”
The muscles in my neck tense as I throw everything I have with Breanna away, but I’m giving her up to make sure she’s safe because, sometimes, that’s what love requires.
Just like my mom did. Just like Dad did, too. And maybe someday, Breanna will understand, like I’m starting to now. “Kyle Hewitt and four other guys from school are blackmailing Breanna with a picture of me and her, and if we don’t stop them, they’re going to torture her and then eventually try to ruin her life. I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t. This...” Is killing my pride. “It’s too big for me and I need your help.”
Dad takes a relieved breath, a lot like the moment I opened my eyes after the bullet. He even rubs his hands over his face like I was raised from the dead. Pigpen claps my arm and smiles at me like he did the night I was patched in. “Welcome back, brother. Now let’s get to work.”
Breanna
I’M SITTING ON the front porch again, my head between my knees. Nausea and dizziness are often caused by the lack of proper blood to the brain. Doing this places the brain at the same level as the heart so the blood doesn’t have to fight gravity to reach the brain. That’s the theory. Personally, it also keeps me from having to bend over too far if I do vomit.
I’m cold and clammy and hot at the same time, yet I’m free.
I lift my head and the autumn breeze feels good against my skin.
Free. I’m officially outside the box. I’m free.
Free is terrifying and open and it’s similar to being a bit lost—but it still feels...free.
My cells vibrates and pings over and over again. Reagan has called twice. Addison three times. My cell sings again with her ringtone. The count is now up to four.
Elsie wanders from the house and plops down beside me. Her black hair is in a ponytail and half of the strands are falling out. She’s in her school clothes and there are Band-Aids over her scraped knees. I put those bandages there last night. I wonder who will do it when I’m gone.
“You look sick,” she says.
“It’s been a rough afternoon. How was your day?”
“Rough.” Elsie straightens, then her eyes wash over me. In a few seconds, she leans forward and rests her combined hands on her legs. A complete mirror image of me.
“What made it rough?” Typically this conversation would happen in the kitchen with me pouring a glass of milk while she and Zac swipe cookies off the plate I have waiting for them.
“Lauren,” she says as if a word could be a scowl.
Lauren. I sigh for her. We all have a Lauren who’s the bane of our existence. While I had two older sisters and two older brothers, Elsie is the product of being a girl with three boys ahead of her. She’s a proud tomboy and Lauren isn’t.
“You shouldn’t let what other people say bother you.” My advice feels hollow.
Elsie flashes me a brief smile. “At least I have you.”
My heart sinks. How many times have I told her that and all this time I had planned on leaving. “You do, but you also have Zac, Paul and Joshua. And you heard Liam last night, he might be moving back in to help.”
“Not the same. Clara and Liam are fighting because you went someplace you weren’t supposed to go again.”
I could lie to Elsie, but she’s smart enough to know the difference. Where I’m built for facts, her little brain reads people very well. “Mom and Dad tell me I should be like you. That I should listen. You aren’t listening anymore and now they’re sending you away. If I don’t listen, will they send me away?”
I shake my head. “I wanted to go away. It took me not listening for them to listen to me. Sometimes people don’t listen until bad things happen. They realize then they should have listened instead of talked. Sometimes people are too busy hearing what they want to hear, seeing what they want to see, and they don’t care what’s real, only what they think is real.”