Page 93 of Falling for Autumn Again

He leans down and I lift up on my toes, happily letting him kiss me. My nose is cold against his skin, but his kiss warms me head to toe.

“Well,” calls a loud, calloused voice. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

I drop down to my heels and blink ahead. Standing just feet in front of us on Main Street is Mav Bennett. He leans against one of the large metal trash bins on the sidewalk. If the thing weren’t bolted to the ground, I’m guessing he’d have tipped it over by now.

“Is that my boy?” he yells, though we’re a stones throw away from the man. The sidewalk is full of people leaving the festival, and every one of them hears him.

“Mav,” Ezra whispers beside me. His eyes are on his father and nothing else.

“Itis. That boy I fed and clothed and took care of all by myself. His mama had run off, you see. One look at him and she was a goner.” He laughs, loud and mean, tripping over his own feet as he takes three steps closer to us. “Yep,my boy. The one that left!” Mav throws out his arm as if to show Ezra off to the world. His nose wrinkles and he spits on the ground in front of himself. “He left home and never came back. What agoodboy.”

“Let’s go,” I say, tugging on Ezra’s jacket.

“You come back for her?” Mav says, his black eyes skirting to me. “She ain’t worth two cents.”

I tug again.

“You need to go home, Mav,” Ezra says, his arm out in front of me.

I peer around at the people watching us. But Ezra doesn’t seem to notice them.

He pulls his phone from his pocket, taking his eyes from a seething Mav to find the number he’s searching for. “Hey, Canelo. It’s Ezra.”

Canelo? As in our old high school friend. Ezra has Canelo’s number? How did that happen? Just like me, Canelo never left town.

“Mav’s down here, on Main. He could use a ride home.”

“Oh no you don’t! I don’t need no ride!” Mav lunges, fist swinging.

A yelp sounds from my mouth, but Ezra is bigger, stronger, and so much faster than his intoxicated father. He moves, but not to attack—no, he moves himself right in front of me. Mav’s fist collides with Ezra’s phone and hand at his cheek. He stumbles into me with the hit and I fumble backward.

Ezra’s arm swipes around my back and somehow I stay on my feet. I stumble, but I don’t fall. I lift my gaze and gasp.

Blood trickles from Ezra’s eye to his chin.

Mav’s hit him. He knocked Ezra’s phone into his cheek, hard enough to cut him open just below his eye.

Chapter Forty-Five

Ezra

It isn’tdifficult to shove Mav onto his butt. Once he’s down, he’s not getting up. The world is a carousel to him. He moans and groans and calls me every name in the book from his seat.

It’s jarring to see him just as he always was: loud and mean and undeservingly cruel. My cheek stings where it’s split open, where Mav hit my phone and my phone smashed into my face. But it’s Autumn I’m worried about. I’ve suffered worse at the hands of my father. And while it’s been a while, Dr. Appleby was right. I’ve worked past this. Seeing him does not turn me back into an unsure, scared kid. It doesn’t give me guilt for leaving him or not being able to change him. It makes me understand who he is and who I am not. I am not this man’s son. By choice. I am free of him.

But Autumn hasn’t had the same help as me. Silent tears pelt her cheeks and she’s completely shut down.

“I can meet you at the car,” I tell her, handing her my keys, but she doesn’t answer and she doesn’t reach for them. “Autumn—”

She stares ahead at Mav, on the ground, causing a scene.

Canelo gets there just in time to hear one more foul-mouthed complaint about me. My heart pounds with the words I’ve hearda hundred times before—words he’s thrown at me my whole life: worthless, good for nothing, useless, insignificant, and on and on. But they don’t penetrate. I don’t let them. I know my worth, and it does not come from this man.

“Come on, Mav,” Canelo says, yanking my dad to his feet.

Mav spits one more time in my direction and the mark lands one foot from Autumn’s brown boots.

“You ungrateful piece of—”

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