Page 72 of Faking It With the Small-Town Bad Boy

“I’m an extrovert. That doesn’t mean I like being social with people. I

just like singing and playing the guitar. Makes me feel like I’m good

at something. Besides, when I play the guitar, I feel like I’m with my

father again.”

I set down my mug on the ground, inching to the edge of my chair so

the fire can kiss my cold face. Across the flames, Percy does the same,

holding my gaze like it’s his job.

“Wait a minute now,” I reply. “You said you hated your parents.”

“I don’t miss them. There is a difference.”

I kick my feet up on the rock edge of the fire and hold my hands out

like I’m carrying a serving tray of cups to a table. “Alright, elaborate.”

Chuckling through his words at first, he says, “I don’t hate them,

Leah. I hate their choices. And I know if they revived my dad out

here in Dingy Hills, and if they did the same to my mother a few

weeks later and they both miraculously lived. You know what they

would do first?”

“Come kiss their son and try to be better people?”

“Ha, yeah right. They would never.”

He shakes his head, the fire casting new shadows that make his face

look deeply carved in more pain, in deeper agony, and it breaks my

heart into a shatter of pieces to see it. He’s laughing through a pain

that no man, no son, should have to endure, and he treats it like it’s

normal. It’s not normal. It’s painful, but he doesn’t want to address

that pain, which is fine by me.

He copes by ignoring the issue. I cope by letting the guilt of every

issue pressure me further and further down until I self-combust.

Who am I to tell him how to feel?

“They would go right back to using,” he says at last, his voice lower

than before. “And you know what? I get it. There’s not a day that goes

by where I don’t want to test my swimming skills in the bottom of a

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