Page 90 of Hate Game

“Have you seen the guy?”

“When we signed papers.”

“The release of liability and next of kin contact papers?” she asks.

“How do you know?”

“I hung around the fights for the past three years. This is the first year Isaac’s banned me. Do you know the reason?”

“I’m guessing you already do, so why ask?”

“I want you to say their name.” She crosses her arms. “To understand how dangerous this year’s fights are becausetheywill be there.”

“The McCabes.”

“Mobsters from the Bay Area.”

“A rumor.” I reposition her so that she is sitting sideways on my lap.

Rue stretches her legs on the bench seat. “We all better hope so.”

She wraps her arms around my neck and locks her eyes on mine.

“Thank you for apologizing. And for telling me why you came here. I had a place I went to also after I… afterwelost the baby.”

Tears well in her eyes. She sets her forehead on mine.

“I spent time at Isaac’s. My father left before I was born. I didn’t know where my mother was. My uncle wouldn’t have understood, and we weren’t close. And Riley had her own issues to deal with.”

She smooths her hand over the collar of my shirt. It’s hot in the truck, even with the windows cracked open. I roll up my sleeves before I cocoon her in my arms.

“Isaac didn’t know what was wrong, other than I cried a lot. He didn’t judge. I didn’t say a word. I just cried. He accepted my silence and didn’t try to get an explanation.”

Me.I’m the one who fucking hurt her so badly that all she did was cry and kept her sadness to herself by not saying a word.

“I was out of it for two weeks. That’s what he said after I came back to reality again. It was like waking from a deep sleep. I was disoriented, tired, and couldn’t think straight. He let the school know I had whooping cough and some unknown contagious virus and needed to be kept in quarantine.”

She smiles, and her face softens. Rue loves him, and that thought doesn’t bother me. I’m grateful Isaac was there when I was the one who abandoned Rue during a time when she needed a friend the most.

“He held me and never said everything would be fine. He understood that things wouldn’t be fine for a long time. Afterward, I went back to living with my uncle and his girlfriend. He didn’t ask about my absence. She held it over my head. I don’t know what he sees in her. She’s not a good person.”

What does she mean? I ask. I cannot stay silent any longer and assume. Not when it comes to Rue. I love her and have never stopped loving her. Fuck me. I love Rue Lee.

“She played mind games and accused me of stealing when I hadn’t. She locked the cupboards and the fridge unless I paid her. She would hit me where the marks wouldn’t show when I didn’t bring in more money from the odd jobs I did around town.”

“Where was your fucking uncle?” I grind out. No wonder where Rue stayed was unsafe. She was going through mental and physical abuse.

“He didn’t know, and if he did, he didn’t care. He loved her, and I was an inconvenience. The last straw was when she invited a man over while my uncle went to Dumas to see my grandfather.”

“She was cheating on him?”

Rue shakes her head, and her face darkens as though remembering or reliving something god-awful. Fuck. Fuck.Please don’t say you were sexually assaulted. Otherwise, I will be serving a life sentence for murder.

“He was there for me. She sold me to him for five hundred dollars.”

She laughs, and it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“I told her to shove the money where the sun didn’t shine because, one, she had no right, and, two, because I was worth more than five hundred measly dollars. I grabbed the small television in the dingy kitchen and slammed it over his head before smacking it across his face, and then I called 9-1-1. He denied everything, pressed charges, and I was sent to juvie because no one believed me.”

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