Page 69 of Give Me Redemption

I’m kicking myself for being so careless with him. Letting him walk in and finding that.

Therapy has been doubled up. Davy has insisted on that, and I haven’t argued. I know I need help. I’m fucked in the head.

Obsessive.

Destructive and I push people away, because the one person I loved more than anything was stolen from me.

And it’s my fault.

I should have been there.

I shouldn’t have left that night. I should have stayed, but my stupid friends wouldn’t accept no for an answer. My friends who I completely stopped talking to.

I look back at the phone in my hand. I have to do this. I have to get Jace to trust me, to care about me enough to share his brother’s secret.

Maybe I’m the bad guy. Maybe he’ll hate me after this is all over, but that’s a chance I’ve got to take.

I slide my finger over the screen.

“Hello?”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Jace

I stand outside the truck, waiting for her to pull up. I offered to come by her apartment, but she insisted she’d meet me here.

I’m nervous. That night I got to see a different side of Dalton—I still don’t understand what the files were about, but it’s obviously a touchy subject for her. I was so sure I could walk out of there and never look back, but she’s been on my mind constantly. No woman compares. I won’t ask her about the shit I saw, not yet. But one day she will have to explain it all to me.

I pull my smokes from my pocket and light one, staring out as the sun falls, graffitiing the sky with swirls of gold and fire red. Lanterns are lit, spread out over the farm. Pumpkins hold twinkling candles, throwing shadows into the twilight.

I hit my smoke, blowing it into the evening air, as cars pull up and park. Families walk in groups, kids giggle, and teenagers flirt.

My mind chases old memories.

“You better run,” Bryce says to me. He’s got a Jason mask on and makes a chainsaw noise with his mouth.

“You don’t scare me,” I say.

He starts to chase me, and adrenaline makes my legs move.

I run all over the yard, as Lee… I mean, Pops stands on the porch. I yank off my Ninja Turtle mask so I can see better, darting around a flowerbed.

Bryce grabs me, though, and lifts me into the air.

I laugh so hard it hurts. We’ve been here for a year now. It’s getting easier for me. I don’t miss being back in that scary apartment. I still miss Dad, though. Not as much as I did, but still a little.

Bryce seems to miss him a lot, and he keeps getting into it with Pops. I’m scared they might change their mind about keeping us. I mean, Mom left us, Dad died, and my brother stays in his room a lot or sneaks out of the house to go play with his stupid friends, so why wouldn’t Pops and Emily want us to go?

Bryce drops me, and Pops walks down the porch steps. “Let’s go trick-or-treating, boys,” he says.

“Can I go with my friends?” Bryce asks.

My heart drops. I want him to go with me.

Pops looks at me, and I wish for once he could read my mind.

“You don’t want to go with your brother?” Emily asks, walking out of the screen door.

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