Page 149 of Offside Devil

If Owen was anyone else, he’d be on the floor. I’d crack his nose and pin him to the ground with a knee to his chest. I’d demand answers.

But he isn’t anyone else.

He’s been the one to pin me to the ground when I need it, and I’m not used to the roles being reversed.

“Owen, man…” I shake my head. “What the fuck is going on here? What are you talking about?”

He charges forward, a meaty finger jabbing into my chest. “Don’t lie to me. I dinnae ken what I’ll do if you lie to me one more time.”

“I’m not lying about anything. I don’t know what you’re?—”

He tries to grab me by the front of my shirt before he realizes I’m not wearing one and shoves me instead. “I’m nae stupid. I have eyes, ye fookin’ walloper!”

I knock his hands off of me. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying.”

“I’m talking about these!” He grabs a roll of papers out of his back pocket and slaps them against my chest.

They’re… pictures.

My first thought is that Owen needs a new printer. Most people would keep pictures on their phones, but his phone is from the Dark Ages where people only used them for text and calls. It doesn’t even have a camera. So he regularly prints out emails he wants to show me or sports columns that mention me that the secret old softie wants to keep.

Then I get a good look at the pictures, and my heart stops.

For a few miserable seconds, I doubt myself. My own mind. Where have I been? What have I been doing?

“Ye fell off the fookin’ trolley,” Owen growls.

I shake my head. “I didn’t.”

He swats the pictures out of my hands and they go flying across the floor. “Dinnae lie to me!”

“I’m not lying!” I snarl, bending to sweep up the pictures again. “Give me a fucking second to think.”

I didn’t do this. This can’t be me.

“To come up with a lie, ya mean? Look at the pictures, Zane! It’s you!”

“I know it’s me!” It is me. I’m hunched over a glass coffee table, enough lines of powder in front of me to take down an elephant. The faces around me are scratched out and blurred, but mine is clear. Almost like someone sharpened my face intentionally.

Owen leans in, his voice dangerously low. “When was this?”

“I… I don’t know.” So much of the picture is blurry that I can’t tell where it was taken. Even if it wasn’t blurred, I might not know. So many nights like this one are blotted out of my mind. The drugs left wide, gaping holes in my memory that I didn’t think I wanted back until this second. “I don’t recognize it. But it wasn’t recently. This is an old picture.”

Owen laughs, but it’s bitter and biting. His knees crack as he bends to grab another picture. He hangs it in front of my face. “Look at your ear, ye fookin’ eejit.”

It’s another picture of me in front of the same table, but my head is cocked to the side. I’m talking to somebody who is blurred out, but the tattoo behind my ear is crystal clear. Aiden written in cursive, following the curve of my hairline.

I went to a tattoo parlor in Austin between games. I’d only been away from Aiden for a few days, but I missed him. I wanted to keep a little bit of him with me always.

I lean in, squinting. “It’s too big. The tattoo is too big.”

“You fookin’—”

“It’s not mine,” I argue, shoving the picture back to him. “This is an old picture that someone photoshopped. It’s fake.”

His top lip curls. “Then you won’t mind if I take a look around.” He brushes past me, continuing his rampage through the house.

“By all means.” I let him go, my hands in fists at my side, and walk back to the bedroom. To Mira.

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