Page 28 of Daring You

It’s better on the field, when I can barrel into other bodies and send them sprawling. That gets a lot of damn frustration out, believe you me. In this instance, I’m left with my pants down, dick dangling, unable to do anything about what makes the news. I can’t punch anyone, either.

And I shoulda known this would become a major headline. It’s a twenty-two-year-old murder case, but the brutality alone is enough for juicy clickbait in this flailing journalistic world.

What’s killer, though, what’s really making me chomp and chip teeth, is that Mike Douchebag Ascott will be part of the team representing my parents’ murderers.

In what fucking realm do I deserve this kind of comeuppance?

I stare at the small slice of sky I can see through the buildings, dark and gray as my fate.

Only thing worse would be if Astor were their attorney. Except, it is worse because it might as well be her. She’s Mike’s second hand—first, actually, if anyone with eyeballs takes a look. He’s nothing but a pussy in fancy suits. Which makes her privy to all the information, every moment of my mom’s suffering and my dad’s pleading. She’ll see the crime scene photos, she’ll be looking at me, and she won’t even know it.

Nobody can know it.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I rasp into my hands, then give my face a long, hard rub.

Walk. I have to keep moving, not become a frozen buffoon in the middle of Who Knows Where, Brooklyn, where someone might see and take a picture.

Goddamnit. Pictures. I got drafted into the NFL and became a public face because I figured my parents’ case would be forever cold. There was no way to connect the tiny, skinny, four-year-old boy to me, and yet there’s the very real chance I’ll be exposed. It’s not only reporters that know how to dig these days.

Bloggers.

Trolls.

Teenagers.

Everyone’s a fuckin’ internet Jimmy Neutron.

The fact they have the killers in custody means nothing. Those guys have a network, and if they find me…if they figure out who I am…discover there’s a surviving witness…

I’m dead.

Just like that.

Doesn’t matter I’m a witness to a crime now two decades old and can’t remember details. I escaped when I was meant to be buried along with my parents.

Crime rings don’t forget shit like that.

Dodge Hennessy’s face rushes at me as I lift one foot forward and gain enough strength to eat up some sidewalk. The way I felt back then—I laugh. I bray out loud and slap my thighs at the memory of believing he would be my downfall. Dodge was nothing, the pecker’s basic knowledge meant zero, now that my parents have been unearthed and Astor’s firm has taken the case.

The worst part is, if this goes the way I think it will, I fucked Astor over to keep a secret that was always meant to come to light. I thought I was breaking her heart to preserve her life.

All for nothing.

I can’t take it anymore. “God. Fucking. Dammit!”

I punch the nearest wall, hear the crunch of my knuckles against the brick, the slice of pain moving from my hand to my elbow, and I don’t give a damn that it’s my throwing arm.

My breath mists out in frigid puffs. I’m gasping like I’m going to cry. But I don’t bust out tears. I don’t think back.

Don’t look back.

I heave off the wall with a roar and continue my trek down the avenue.

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