Page 29 of All Along The Watchtower

She slumped, blowing out a long breath as she stared at the scuffed toes of her Chucks.

“Is it the big catch up you’re worried about or being the new kid?”

“Both.” Her fingers restlessly picked at a loose thread on her sweater. Mom and Mimi had taken her to pick up a few things, and her foster mom in Oregon was supposed to be making arrangements to send her stuff, but I made a mental note that we needed to order her some new clothes. The climate here was a lot warmer than where she was from.

“Everybody’s gonna be talking about me.”

I dragged my focus back to the current issue. No reason to blow smoke up her ass. “Yeah, probably so. That’s the nature of small towns, and you’re big news, here. But that doesn’t mean it will all suck.”

Peyton shot me a glare. “How would you know? You were never the new kid. You grew up here.”

“That’s fair. You’re right. I wasn’t the new kid. Not until college. I was the guy who made friends with the new kid and intervened when she got bullied.”

That earned me a look of speculation. “Are you talking about Bree?”

I hadn’t actually brought her up over the past several days, though that had been a challenge. I didn’t know how much Bree wanted to do with us, now that she’d discharged her duties by uniting us in the first place. But this was relevant.

“Yeah. She had a rough start in life. Came here when she was a good bit younger than you. That would’ve been third grade for us. Some people weren’t kind.” I could still remember thefirst time I’d seen her, all knobby knees and defiance covering up so much hurt, as Zack Pickering made up some nonsensical, bullshit rhyme about her being unwanted by anyone.

“Did you beat them up?”

I blinked. “What?”

“Your hands curled into fists.”

Shit, they had. I forced my fingers to relax and bought myself a little time by sipping the coffee. God, I’d missed Mimi’s chicory blend. “It’s probably bad parenting for me to admit it, but yeah, I did. Violence shouldn’t be the first response. I wish I could say it was never the right response, but some people don’t respond to anything else.” And I’d never been one to stand by when someone needed protecting.

“Did you get in trouble?”

“Oh yeah. I was suspended for a week. So was he. Our schools have a zero-tolerance policy for fighting.”

“Did you regret it?”

“Not for a moment. I got an incredible friend out of it.” And I’d gone and lost her.

I hadn’t seen Bree again in the week I’d been back on-island, juggling all the details of changing my life. From long experience, I suspected she was hiding. But it would only be a matter of time before our paths crossed again. Hatterwick just wasn’t that big. I wanted to believe that her breaking the silence to help with Peyton was the potential start of a thaw between us, one that would allow me to begin to repair what I’d damaged all those years ago. But that was wishful thinking. She’d been there for Peyton because she identified with her. It didn’t take a shrink to figure that out. It wasn’t about me.

But I couldn’t forget how she’d looked at me with something other than loathing or chill fury for the first time in forever when she’d said,We’ll figure this out.

A slip of the tongue? Or did it mean something?

Peyton huffed. “I guess if I’ve gotta.”

For a moment, I forgot what we’d been talking about. Oh, right. School.

“Unfortunately, you gotta. But there’s one more thing we’ve got to sort out before we go enroll you.”

“What’s that?”

“Our home address.”

“We aren’t staying here?”

I couldn’t gauge how she felt about the idea of that, but I’d been giving this some thought the past several days. “That’s an option. But I was thinking we could get our own place. See, I’ve been gone from home for a long time, and as you’ve seen, Mom and Mimi have kinda expanded to take up all the space. They’d clean out to make room for us and be happy to do it, but it might be kinda cramped. I thought you should have a say in where we live.” And it would hopefully keep me from leaning too hard on them. They’d disagree with that, but Peyton was my responsibility. I had a lot of missed years to make up for.

She blinked in obvious surprise. “I get an opinion?”

“Of course you do. I mean, we’ve got a budget to stick to, but I thought we could spend the rest of the day checking out options for places to rent.” Being the off season, we ought to have a decent selection. I’d already put a call in to Rene Johnson to set up some showings.

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