Page 15 of Seven Lost Summers
“You’re not a fucking father. He’s thirteen, you sick fuck. Not some fucking debt you get to hand over.”
The words drop heavy, and for once, my father has nothing to say.
No comeback. No threat. Just silence.
“You touch him again,” Wes growls, voice feral, shaking with restraint he’s barely holding onto, “and I swear on every grave I’ve ever dug, I’ll fucking rip you apart with my bare hands. I’ll break every bone in your body, while you choke on your own teeth.”
He steps in, chest to chest with my father, eyes black with rage.
“You think I haven’t dealt with worse pieces of shit than you? You ever lay a finger on Theo again and I’ll end you so violently they won’t find enough of you to scrape into a fucking box.” He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t back down. “Theo’s not yours. He’s mine to protect now even if it means ending you right here. Come near him again. I fucking dare you.”
He turns away as if my father isn’t worth another second of his time.
My father stands frozen, mouth twitching like he wants to throw out some drunken threat, but nothing comes. No slurred curses or snarling comeback. Only silence. Because he fucking knows. Wes isn’t bluffing. This isn’t a warning. It’s a death sentence waiting to be cashed in. And if he so much as breathes wrong, the next time won’t come.
Wes turns and starts toward us, no hesitation in his stride, only that same quiet fury simmering beneath the surface.
Nate and I move without thinking, instinct pulling us apart to let him pass. He doesn’t have to say a word. We follow.
Our footsteps echo behind him as he hits the front steps like a man on a mission.
My legs move but everything else in me is hollow. The adrenaline’s still buzzing under my skin, but it’s thinning out, leaving behind nothing but the crash. That deep, bone-heavy exhaustion that wraps around my ribs and pulls me down.
All I want is a quiet corner, somewhere to sit and let this whole fucked-up mess settle, to untangle the knots twisting in my head. And yet, through the chaos, one thought refuses to let go. It presses in, over and over.
Nate’s family has always been there. I never understood why. I still don’t. I’m the fucked-up kid with too many bruises and not enough reasons to be loved. The waste of space my father made sure I believed I was.
But Wes.
The man who steps between you and hell without needing a reason. He didn’t ask. Didn’t wait. He was the shield I never earned, but he gave it all to me the same.
Rose with the gentle hands, tired eyes, arms that wrapped around me the first time like I wasn’t broken glass. She didn’t flinch or pull away. She held me soft and steady, and for a second, I wasn’t rotting from the inside out.
Even Scarlet, Nate’s annoying little sister, always in my face, pushing my buttons, showing up when I never wanted her to, but somehow she knew exactly when I needed someone there. She never let me disappear, even when I wanted to.
Just being in their house, breathing that air is enough to know I’ve been claimed. And it terrifies me. Because for the first time in my life, I’m not invisible. I’m seen and I don’t know how to live with that.
They’re not blood but they’re something stronger. A constant in all my chaos. A lifeline I never expected, never let myself hope for, but somehow, against every fucked-up odd, they’re mine.
I can’t say where I’d be if I hadn’t met Nate that day when I was sitting on the curb, hollowed out, barely breathing, feeling like the world had chewed me up, spat me out, and forgot all about me. I remember them—Nate and Scarlet riding their bikes, laughter spilling out of them. No weight in their voices or bruises behind their eyes. Pure freedom.
Then Nate stopped.
He slammed his brakes on, tires skidding to a halt right in front of me like the universe paused for one fucking second and said, here. Somehow, that pause gave me him.
He didn’t look at me the way the assholes at school did —with disgust, or the way their eyes darted away like I was contagious. He knelt down, stared right at me and asked why I was crying. The moment hit so hard I nearly broke.
I wanted to tell him everything.
All the suffocating secrets, the pain, the shit that had been eating me alive for as long as I could remember. The things no kid should ever have to carry.
But I didn’t, not that day. I couldn’t. Not at that point. Not for a long time.
Those secrets… they were mine to bear.
My burden. My fucking curse. I locked them so deep inside that they felt like part of me, like if I buried them far enough, maybe-just maybe I could pretend they weren’t real. That they hadn’t shaped me into this broken, fucked-up version of myself.
But Nate, even back in those days, didn’t push. He didn’t pry. He sat down next to me, like sitting shoulder to shoulder with a stranger unraveling on a sidewalk could somehow make the world a little less cruel. For a second, the world softened.
