Page 116 of Driftwood Daffodil 3

Ugh, I didn’t like the idea of handing shit over to my brother, but if we did have a rat, he would find out. My brother was an asshole, but he got shit done. Besides, I didn’t really have a choice. I couldn’t miss theomtreáand I sure as hell wasn’t letting Nova deal with this.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I’ll talk to him in the morning. What are you doing here so late anyway?”

It was past midnight. Unless it was a party or some girl he decided to fuck with, Darry was usually in bed by now.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

The time wasn’t what I found strange. Darry knew that nightmares kept me up most nights. It was the I want to talk part. Darry wasn’t a conversation starter. He preferred to not have a conversation at all. Whatever he came for must be important.

“Is everything okay?”

“Gio,” he sighed. “I know.”

“You know what?”

“I know about you and my mom.”

It felt like I just got slapped in the face. I couldn’t breathe, I just sat there staring at him while a ball of guilt welled up in my gut. He knew. And I wasn’t the one who told him. All the shit we’d been through, the times he had my back and pulled me out of the hole Atlas’s death sucked me in, and how did I repay him? I fucked his mom.

“Who told you?” Was it Atlee?

“I figured it out about a year ago.”

A year? And he didn’t say anything? I didn’t know how to respond to that.

After a few seconds of silence Darry shifted his eyes over to the gin. “Can I have some of that?”

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat and poured him a glass.

The clock ticked on the wall as I watched Darry sit back and sip his drink. I kept waiting for him to yell, or hit me, or shoot me. He didn’t do any of that. He didn’t even look mad. Darry just sat there looking normal. My guilt ate away at me with each tick ringing through the room. Until I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Darry, I should’ve told you…”

He held up his hand, cutting me off. “I’m not mad at you Gio.”

That somehow made it worse.

“I’m mad at her.” His fingers tightened around the glass in his hand. “I fucking hate her. Tell Nova good job on kicking her ass. She really fucked her up.”

Well, at least he wasn’t mad about that.

“You’re not the first person she’s done this to.”

Was he talking about Romeo? Did he know about that too?

“There was a time when I thought Ezra was mine…”

I stopped cold. “What?”

If he thought his brother was his then… “Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“Wait a minute… Ezra is eight.” Darry’s birthday was in two months. He was only seventeen. “You were nine?”

“The first time,” his eyes locked on mine. “I was the same age as Ezra.”

I suddenly understood why Darry was always with his brother. He was protecting him from their mother. Nova was right. Carissa was a sick bitch. I wanted to throw up knowing that I touched her.

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