Page 65 of Bullet
I smiled. What a cute name. “Wow. This sucks.”
Cameron furrowed his brow. “Sucks? Why?”
My head dropped into my hands. “Everything with Celia was a lie, Dad. Her godfather is Darrien Pescoe.”
Cameron’s eyes widened. “What?”
“She lied to me, about everything. Apparently, it was all part of a plan to get revenge. Her dad was the passenger that died.”
Cameron deflated. “I can’t believe that. She really seemed like she was crazy about you.”
“She tried to tell me that she fell in love throughout the process, but I struggle to believe her because yesterday, before we came over, we swung by the bar. She fucked with the numbers in the books to frame me for stealing. They wrote a check based on the bad numbers and now they’re short fifty grand. Guess who has to repay it?”
“Not you, right? You didn’t know she was going to do that. Make her pay for it.”
I shook my head. “She doesn’t have any money. Besides, I’m the one who brought her back there. She only had the opportunity to do it because I was blind and didn’t pay attention to what she was doing when she was there.”
“Fifty grand is like, all you have left,” Cameron said. “This is going to be an expensive process. We’ll have to pay a lawyer, pay for traveling costs, and I remember when I wanted to foster you, I had to shell out like fifteen-thousand dollars just to make sure my house was up to code, and you’ll probably have to do the same thing. You need that money for Ruby.”
It was so much more painful knowing her name. When she was just a concept, it was much easier to think about. Now, she was a real person out there who needed me, and I wasn’t able to help her. It was killing me.
“I don’t have any other choice. I’ll find a way to make more money, or maybe I can take out a loan, I don’t know. For now, I need you to come with me to get the money so I can bring it to the club. I don’t want things to get any worse.”
“If there’s really nothing else we can do…” Cameron said.
“There isn’t,” I assured him.
“Okay. Let’s do it then, I guess.”
“Can you drive?” I asked, heartbroken about Celia and heartbroken about Ruby. “I probably shouldn’t be driving anything right now.”
“Yeah,” Cameron said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Celia
The wind blew through my hair as I got out of my car in front of Hoppa’s main cemetery. It’d been a long time since I had been there, probably because I was avoiding it until I was able to get the revenge that Darrien convinced me my dad deserved. All this time I’d been chasing the ghost of something and I didn’t even know the real story.
My dad must be so disappointed in me.
Instead of the typical flowers I used to bring, I instead chose to bring some birdseed to scatter around my dad’s grave. He was always a huge fan of birds, and I figured having some hanging around would be a good way to ensure he’d forgive me for what I had done. I grabbed a blanket from my car, the birdseed I’d purchased, and made my way into the cemetery. The afternoon sun was just cresting over the mountains in the distance, and I remembered the times my dad used to bring me out for picnics on days that weren’t too hot.
It was time for another picnic with my dad.
There were a few people dotted around the cemetery, but none of them looked up; people typically didn’t. I made my way back to where my dad was buried and unfolded my blanket in front of his headstone. My heart ached to look at it as I remembered his warm smile and big, bear hugs.
“Hi, Daddy,” I said. “I’m gonna invite some birds, okay?” I sprinkled some squirrel-friendly birdseed behind the headstone where they could get to them without bothering me too much, and almost as soon as the seed hit the ground, some nearby birds scurried down from the trees and helped themselves. I returned to the blanket I’d spread out and sat down. “How are you? I miss you. I’m sure you’ve been watching the trainwreck I’ve been becoming over the past few months, so I’m sorry about that.”
One bird hopped closer to me. It got closer and closer until it finally hopped up onto my leg. I didn’t move, hardly breathed, but it didn’t seem super skittish. I tilted my head to the side and looked at it and it tilted its head to the side and looked back at me.
“Am I silly for thinking that’s you in there?” It hopped a bit around my leg, and I smiled. “Okay. I’ll take that as a yes. What doyouthink of Harry, huh? Probably should have listened to my heart instead of my gut on this one. Darrien convinced me that you would want vengeance, but I can’t blame it all on him. At the end of the day, I think I was hoping if I did it, I would feel better about losing you, but I don’t. If anything, I feel worse. You’re probably not proud of what I’ve been up to these past few months.”
The bird on my leg bounded a little further up until it was close to standing on my thigh. It probably could have been the fact that people often fed the birds at the cemetery, but when I reached out and tried to pet it and it let me, I chose to believe that was because it was my dad in there. I stroked the feathers on its head, feeling how soft they were under my fingertips and smiled.
“I’m gonna fix it though. I wanted to come and apologize to you in person, or in bird, for hurting someone in your name. Harry didn’t deserve that and neither did you. I only have about forty grand of your inheritance left, and I’m going to give it to Harry’s boss to help pay his debt so that Harry can use his money for his sibling. I was gonna move it for rent, but Laura said that she’ll cover rent for a couple months if I want to move in, so I’m going to move in with her. I hope Harry will forgive me one day. Do you think he will?” The bird hopped around a few times on my leg and then fluttered off and I nodded. “Yeah, I don’t think so either.”
I spent a little more time enjoying the fresh air and just sitting with my dad, and then when the sun started to crest over toward the horizon and begin its descent, I stood up, taking my blanket with me, and made my way back to my car. The thought of going to Hoppa’s made me nervous, but it had to be done. I swung by the bank to pull out everything that was left of my inheritance money from my dad, packed it into an envelope and then set a course for the Taphouse.
