Page 49 of When Wrecked Meets Ruined
“What about your dad? Do you know who he is?”
Evie shook her head. “My mom had a one-night stand in high school. She only knew his first name.” She shrugged like it didn’t matter one way or the other. “How about you? Do you know your dad?”
I almost passed on the question, but in the spirit of honesty, I decided to answer. “Unfortunately, yeah. He used to come around when I was a kid. Every time he left, my mom would have a black eye or a split lip.” I flexed my hands into fists. “Sometimes, he even broke a few ribs to show her what a big man he was.”
“Asshole,” Evie said.
Couldn’t deny the facts. I was the son of an asshole and a junkie.
“Did he ever hurt you?” she asked quietly.
“Only when I got in the way.”
“How often did that happen?”
I glanced at her, then up at the sky, remembering all the bruises I’d sustained trying to protect my mother. Black eyes, split lips, bruised ribs. He stopped coming around when I got old enough and big enough to return the favor. “Every time.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Where is he now? Prison, I hope.”
“No such luck. He’s probably with his other family. Hisrealfamily.” I didn’t even try to hide the bitterness in my voice.
“What a bastard.” She sounded so angry on my behalf that it made me smile. “Guys like that deserve to have their dicks cut off and fed to them.”
“Or their balls skewered and thrown on the barbecue.”
We both laughed. “Totally,” she said. “You’re better off without him.”
“I know.”
“Someday, he’ll see you on TV playing for an NFL team, and he’ll knock on your door, begging for your forgiveness. And you can slam the door in his face.Afteryou beat the shit out of him.”
“You have a violent streak.”
“Payback is a bitch.”
“You think I’ll be playing for the NFL?”
“It’s your dream, right?”
“I never told you that.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said quietly.
The opening notes of “The Ghost of You” played from her phone. I don’t know if she’d chosen this playlist especially for tonight or if she knew the singer was my brother’s girlfriend, but this was my favorite Acadian Storm song. I used to listen to it on repeat long before I’d ever met Shiloh Leroux.
I tapped Evie’s phone with my index finger. “You like this one?”
“Yeah, I do. It’s my favorite.” She side-eyed me and hesitated a moment before asking, “Is your brother really dating her?”
It had been the talk of the school, so she would have had to be living under a rock not to hear the rumors. “Yeah, he really is. They’re living together now.”
She smiled like it made her genuinely happy even though she didn’t even know them. After all the shit Brody and Shiloh had gone through to be together, I was happy for them too.
I listened to Shiloh singing the lyrics of a song that took me back to another time and place. Holding my best friend’s hand while the life drained out of him on a cracked sidewalk in a broken-down neighborhood.
Elijah Reid had big dreams of playing in the NFL. When he threw the ball, it was like a fucking torpedo. It practically knocked you on your ass. That was how I learned to catch what some players would consider uncatchable passes.
We met at the local youth center for at-risk kids when we were eight.
