Page 36 of Bullet
“I’m not.”
He rolled his eyes. “Please don’t treat me like an idiot. You know I hate that.”
“I’m not!” I repeated. “I don’t have feelings for him.”
“Celia, you walked around here glowing like the star on top of a Christmas tree, then all of a sudden, there was nothing.” He shrugged. “I suppose it’s better anyway. You clearly weren’t up to the task of doing what had to be done, so I’ll have to come up with something else.”
“I’m not weak just because I don’t want to be heartless with someone. I get that Harry ruined our lives, but…” I stopped myself shy of saying that he didn’t seem like a bad guy. He didn’t, but I doubted Darrien wanted to hear that. “I don’t want to do this anymore. That doesn’t make me crazy.”
“You’re right, I was wrong to assume you’d do anything to honor your father’s memory,” he replied. Rage was burning in my blood. I was a daddy’s girl from the bottom of my heart. He’d raised me alone and losing him destroyed me. “Do I need to tell you the story again?”
“I don’t want to hear the story,” I said.
“Your father and I were out running errands, picking up things foryourbirthday. He was so excited to celebrate his princess turning sixteen in a few weeks and was planning a huge celebration for you,” Darrien started.
“I said I don’t want to hear the story.”
Darrien continued regardless. “We were just minding our own business when Harry came blazing onto the road. He hadrecklessdisregard for other drivers. He was swerving in and out of traffic. Cutting people off, tailgating, driving between cars in nonexistent lanes. You name it. If it was illegal, he was doing it.”
I imagined the times I’d ridden on Harry’s bike, and what I’d seen during the race. What I’d experienced was so vastly different from Darrien’s story. “He’s always safe when I’ve seen him on his bike.”
“Well, I’d like to think so with someone else on it. At least he has a little bit of regard for someone else’s life. Then again, maybe that was just because you were sleeping with him.”
My ears burned, half from embarrassment and half from anger. “No…”
“He just picked us out randomly,” Darrien said. “We weren’t doing anything to him, didn’t even know who he was. He just looked over at me, actually he locked eyes with your dad first. He told me this psycho biker was trying to challenge us, so I slowed down, just trying to get away from him. He wouldn’t leave us alone though. He matched our speed and then when he had a window, he swerved toward us. I had to veer to the left just to keep from crashing with him. He laughed at us! He thought it was funny! He was trying to kill us!”
In my mind, I was seeing a cartoonishly evil version of Harry with a thin, evil guy mustache. Darrien and my dad were sitting in a toy car, and Harry was driving at them like a bullet from a gun, trying to flip it.
It just didn’t seem real to me. “I don’t want to hear the rest,” I said. “I get it.”
“You don’t want to hear the next part?” he replied darkly. “About how he finally got the hit that he wanted? He smacked the side of my car with his back tire, right against your dad’s door. I lost control of the car and it flew to the left and hit the guard rail, flipping up over it. He lost control, too, at least, but I didn’t see what happened to him as my car started to flip and flip—”
“Okay!”
“And flip and flip and flip. It slammed down on your dad’s side every single time it hit the ground again.”
“Okay! Stop!” I screeched. Tears were sliding down my face as I imagined my dad dying and hitting the ground over and over. “Stop. I get it.”
“I don’t mean to upset you, Celia, but this is important. I don’t know how to make you understand. You are the only one who can change things. The only one who can break him so much that he never hurts anyone like this ever again. It’s not just for your father or for me, it’s for every person he’s ever put at risk. Don’t you want to stop him?”
That was the first time Darrien had ever framed it like that. Like we were doing it for the greater good. Was I capable of breaking Harry that much, that he’dneverget on a bike again? The women in his past, whoever they were, drove him to hate women just from what they had done. Didn’t that mean I could also exercise that level of influence over him?
“I do want to stop him,” I said. “I want to make him pay for what he did to us.”
“I don’t think you do,” Darrien said. “You’ve told me that before.”
“I swear.” I used the back of my hand to wipe my tears away. “I want to. I won’t give up again. I’m going to do it.”
“This is our last chance, Celia. You can’t mess this up again. If we screw up this opportunity, we won’t be able to get close enough to him again to do what we need to do, and he could get worse.”
That thought terrified me more than anything. Darrien was right. If I continued to upset Harry, he could have another dark night that could cost someone else their lives.
I didn’t say anything else to Darrien and he didn’t stop me as I stood up from the table, leaving my half-eaten breakfast behind, grabbed my purse and left the house. Without even thinking, I picked up my phone and tried to call Harry, but it rang once and then went to voicemail. I couldn’t blame him for ignoring me. It was going to take a personal visit in order to get him to let me back into his life, and some good coffee never hurt anyone.
There was a coffee shop halfway between my godfather’s house and Harry’s house, so I stopped for a couple of lattés. Coffee made everything better and I was hopeful I could warm Harry’s soul enough to hear me out as I gave him more lame excuses.
“Celia?” I looked over my shoulder, and Laura was sitting at one of the tables with her laptop. “Hey.”
