Page 58 of Bullet
“If it hadn’t been for the way Harry handles his bike, he would have died,” Cameron said. “He at least had the frame of mind to get sideways so that he didn’t flip and go flying. At that speed, his trajectory…” Cameron started to get emotional and then he reached out and put a hand on Harry’s face. “I thank God every day that he survived.”
“What about the car?” I asked, even though I already knew the outcome to the story.”
“It flipped,” Harry said. “A bunch of times. I lost consciousness and it was still flipping. I never knew his passenger’s name, but I know he died. I only ever knew Darrien’s name because it was in all the settlement paperwork.”
Nothing made sense. If the accident was Darrien’s fault, what money was I living off of? I’d always wondered why Darrien didn’t have settlement money, too, if my dad did, but he always claimed he used it to cover my college tuition, although it didn’t cover all of it because I still ended up taking loans and having payments.
“So Harry’s using that money to find his sibling,” Cameron added. “He’s already said he’s prepared to become a dad if he can hunt them down.”
“I learned from the best,” Harry said, then he looked at me. “Sorry, I guess I probably left that out for now so that it didn’t apply too much pressure to us.”
It had to be wrong. I had to just be hearing their slant on the story. Even if Harry’s control of his bike always left me wondering how something like that could happen. Even if certain things happened with Darrien that made me question his story, I always wrote it off.
It can’t have been a lie. There’s no way.
“Did someone find you, Harry?” I asked. “You said you passed out.”
“There were dozens of witnesses,” Harry replied. “That’s why we were able to settle out of court, because there was no way in hell that he was going to be successful in defending a case. All he asked was that it stay out of the papers, and I was fine with that because I didn’t want the club getting any bad attention.”
The only newspaper clipping Darrien ever showed me was my father’s obituary.
“I remember just sitting next to his hospital bed, wondering why so much bad kept finding my son. He deserves a happy life.”
“He’s been careful not to tell me too much, Harry,” Marisha said, “because your father respects your privacy, but do you mind telling me the story of what happened with your mom? It’d be nice to understand it better so that I know what lines not to cross and stuff. Of course, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s okay. I haven’t talked about it with Celia either, so there’s no time like the present,” he replied.
“Thank you,” Marisha said sincerely.
I watched Harry as he took a deep breath and started to tell his story. “My mom was always abusive to my dad when I was a kid. My dad was always very respectful of women and just took my mom’s abuse in his stride, but she was vicious with him. She’d hit him, abuse him verbally, talk down to him, all of it. My dad had always said, as long as it wasn’t me, he was fine to take it, but then one time at my birthday party, I spilled ketchup on my shirt and she lost it. All the other kids’ moms started talking about it, and my mom got embarrassed.”
“That’s awful,” Marisha said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “That’s stuff kids do.”
“Yeah, well, she took it personally for whatever reason, and that’s when the abuse against me started.” Cameron shifted uncomfortably as Harry talked, and it was clear he struggled to listen to the story of someone hurting the boy he’d come to love as his son. “My dad wouldn’t go for that though. He was always willing to take it, but the second it was me, he had to step in. One night, he tried to take me and run from her, but she caught us trying to leave. She…”
Harry hesitated and I could tell that even all this time later, it was hard for him to tell the story. I put my hand on his back, knowing that I’d made a huge mistake and my time to comfort him was running short. “It’s okay.”
He smiled at me and continued. “She shot him in his back, while he was trying to load me into the car to leave her for good. He didn’t take any of the furniture or anything, even left his entire life savings for her to live off of, but she didn’t care. She killed him and then called the police and said she did it in self-defense because he was trying to kidnap me.”
“The cop that arrived on the scene was a woman, and one of those ‘protect all women’ types. It’s not a bad thing, but it blinded her when she met Harry and his mom,” Cameron explained. “She fudged some of the story to make sure that Harry’s mom didn’t go to prison for the murder, made it seem like it was self-defense. The judge, another female, took Harry’s mom’s side even after Harry testified that she’d murdered him. Then as Harry got older and ran away a lot, that judge kept getting his case and kept forcing him to go back to his mom.”
“No wonder you don’t trust women,” Marisha said. “Harry, I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
“Between that and the accident, I just wanted my kid to catch a break,” Cameron told us.
At that exact moment, Harry looked up at me and smiled. “I did.”
My heart shattered into a million pieces. I forced a smile back, tears gathering in my eyes, and all I could do was wrap my arms around him and hug him. He’d go back to hating women for sure when he realized what I’d done. Hell, he’d probably just start to hate everyone. Emotions burned in my nose as I realized I’d made a grave mistake, and worse than that was the fact that I had absolutely no clue how to fix it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Bullet
I was surprised when Celia suddenly decided to go back home after dinner with Cameron and Marisha. At first, I was terrified that I’d scared her with my story about my parents and mentioning that I was searching for my younger sibling, but she swore that wasn’t it and said she just needed to take care of something. Because I was really and truly falling in love with Celia, I didn’t want to push her to stay, but while I was waking up in bed alone, I was kind of wishing I’d tried at least a little harder. I’d have to work today, and she probably would, too, but it would have been nice to have her in my arms for at least a few minutes.
She promised to call me and that we’d see each other in the week, so as much as I nearly wanted to roll back over and go to sleep, the cats were scratching at my door, so I got up. I took my time traveling through my morning, giving the boys their food and eating breakfast myself, then I grabbed my phone and went into my living room to relax for a little bit before getting ready.
