Page 9 of Avenged

“This is bullshit.” Dawson threw the paper at me.

I didn’t flinch. “You have to do something, Daw.”

“A fucking maintenance job? Really?”

“What else are you qualified to do?”

“I’ll get a job working on boats. I’m good at that.”

He was. We both were. He’d been working on boats almost since he could walk. His dad had three boats. All expensive. All with different uses from fishing to sailing to skiing. Dawson had been driving and fixing the boats for as long as I could remember. Especially after he’d started driving the boats himself. Especially after he’d nearly gotten killed doing it and had to fix the blown motor.

“Fine. I don’t give a shit what it is, but you have to do something.” I knew I was crossing the fine line I always walked with him between brother, dad, and friend, so I tried to lighten the air. “I can’t afford your donut-and-expensive-coffee habit on my measly Coastie budget.”

It didn’t make him laugh. Instead, he griped, “I didn’t ask you to take me in.”

He hadn’t. He probably would have gone to jail just to spite his dad. Just to rub it in his father’s face, one more time, how much of a failure and a screwup he was. The cry for attention had turned desperate the colder and more withdrawn Mr. Dick had gotten. It was Mom who had begged me to take Dawson with me. It wasn’t because she was upset at what he’d done. No, instead she’d been upset Mr. Dick might turn Dawson into a person he wasn’t supposed to be. She could barely stay in the responsible lane herself most days, let alone drag Dawson back from the edge he was ready to jump off of.

Dawson grabbed his wallet and phone, shoving them both into opposite pockets in his jeans, and headed toward the door.

“Where are you going?” I asked with a glance at the clock. It was nine o’clock on a Wednesday night. Not really anywhere he could go, and he hadn’t asked to borrow the pickup, which meant he couldn’t get far.

“Out.”

I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t ask where. He was twenty-two years old, and I wasn’t his father. He didn’t owe me an explanation. No matter that, when we’d been younger, he’d always told me where he was going. We’d grown up parenting ourselves, looking after ourselves. Mom didn’t see the need for rules, because she felt like rules had been her downfall—first her parents’ and then her husband’s.

For a moment, my head flew back to Violet in the bookstore that morning. Was Dawson going to see her? The friendship they seemed to have formed was the only bond I knew he had in this town. But even at Leena and Mandy’s, he’d gone out a lot of nights and come home smelling like beer. I was pretty sure that was where he’d end up: drinking at Rusty’s bar.

“Just say it,” Dawson growled, looking back at me from the door.

“Say what?”

“Whatever the hell is going on in your head.”

“Honestly, Daw, there’s nothing there but concern for you.”

His growl disappeared, and a momentary flash of sadness crossed his face. “I know,” he said. He opened the door, hesitating one more time. “I’m okay, Trav. At least, I will be.”

Then he left. He left without saying any of the words we used to say when we left each other. It had been so long since we’d said the words I was almost sure he’d forgotten them. Forgotten that we may have said, “Wish me luck,” but what we really meant was, “I love you.”

I rubbed my hands over my face. Worrying about Dawson was not something new to me. If I hadn’t worried about him, I wasn’t sure anyone would have. With our grandparents in Oregon, Dawson’s dad always focused on his image as county sheriff, and Mom focused on letting us define ourselves, I was the only one who’d ever cared when something good or bad had happened to him.

Guilt hit me again, because I was sure that, for a while, when I’d been lost in a world of A&M, bitter disappointment, and a need to prove my worth in my military career, Dawson had felt like there was no one who cared. I knew that feeling, too. With an absentee teen father and the same non-parenting mother, I’d thought Dawson was the only person who cared for a long time. At least, until I met Eli and Mac.

My past was hanging on to me tonight a little tighter for some reason. Maybe because I was suddenly faced with worrying about more than myself again. Maybe because I was worried Dawson would never be happy again. All I knew was that it was going to be harder than I’d thought to get him back on track.

? ? ?

My cell phone was singing out the Star Wars anthem. I didn’t even open my eyes. I just grabbed it, hitting the “on” button. “Dawson?”

He was the only person who’d be calling me at two in the morning, unless it was the base, and that was a completely different ringtone.

“Um. No. It’s Violet.” Her voice wavered, uncertainty floating through the phone. I opened my eyes and sat up.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Jersey.”

“I’m on my way,” I said, reaching for my jeans on the floor beside me.

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