Page 65 of Past the Broken Bridges

“Which time?” he presses, an unimpressed look flattening his hard, wrinkled features. When did he start looking so…old? “The first time you bailed on me for something you thought was more important or the second time?”

Fuck.“Something came up,” I murmur, eyes staying solely on the glass my fingers are tightly wrapped around.

“I raised you not to mumble under your breath and to look me in the eye when I’m talking to you, boy.” Instantly, my gaze shifts to him. I know that tone. I’ve been afraid of it for half my life. Mom was too at one point, which is why she was smart enough to leave.

Why the hell did I choose to stay?

The answer is right in front of me.

The empty fridge.

All the scattered beer bottles.

The garbage full of takeout.

I’m using his last clean cup because all the others are piled in the sink.

Without me, this man wouldn’t have survived on his own.

I knew it at ten when the judge asked me who I wanted to stay with, and I know it at twenty-two.

Too bad the man finishing his beer doesn’t see it that way. “You want to explain to me why I had people on campus asking me what happened to my son? That you were showing up to classes looking like you’d gotten into a fight?”

I shouldn’t be surprised he found out. LSU isn’t that big, especially when your father is a professor there. “It wasn’t a fight.”

“You trying to tell me that it had nothing to do with why Dawson had his hand bandaged?” he doubts with raised brows. “I’m not stupid. I know boys fight, but you need to be smarter than that.”

“I never said you were stupid,” I grind out. At least Dawson is showing up to class again. I’ll take that as a win even if it means dealing with this conversation. “We had a miscommunication about…something. Things got out of hand. It’s over now.”

Dad leans back, his dark eyes so cold it sends shivers down my spine. “I have a reputation to protect at the school.”

That’s what this is about? I guess the day my father is worried about my well-being is the day hell freezes over. Screw the black eye or the possibility that something seriously bad happened. He couldn’t care less. “I’d hate for any of them to think you laid a hand on me,” I reply tartly, standing to leave. “Because you’dneverdo that. Right, Dad?”

“Sit. Down,” he growls.

I don’t.

No matter how much that voice scares me.

Tossing my arms out, I ask, “What are you going to do? Hit me?”

His nostrils flare, and his hand tightens so tightly around his beer bottle that I think it might break.

I get the hell out of there before he can do anything, slamming the front door behind me and walking right back into the downpour.

* * *

I’m not sure why I’m knocking on the door across the hall, but it’s the first place I go after leaving my father’s house. Not to the gardens. Not to Dawson’s downstairs. Here.

When the door opens, my eyes instantly take in the long hair flowing down Sawyer’s shoulders that hides her perky chest in the tight tee she’s wearing. My eyes drop to the shorts she’s in, internally groaning at her exposed legs. They’re the same pair she was wearing the first night I saw her, and “cute” doesn’t quite describe the way I feel about those stupid cartoon birds plastered across the fabric.

“Birdie,” I greet, forcing my gaze back to her face to see her cheeks stained pink. “Bad time?”

Sawyer shifts, one of her bare feet covering the other as she tugs on the hem of her shorts. “I was doing the assignment for Grey’s class.”

Her toes are painted pink, almost the same shade as her face when I called her that nickname. I like it. Never really liked nail polish before, but on her it’s different.

“Have you started it?” she asks.

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