Page 133 of Bad Cowboy, Tennessee

I got up from the rock and crossed over to him, grabbing his hand in mine. “Everything is taken care of, Max,” I said, insistence coming out in my voice. “You’ve seen your sister since then. She isfine. Brody was…”

“Fuck,” Max whispered, collapsing down onto the rock again.

I followed him, sitting beside him, draping my arm around him and holding him close.

“Brody was unconscious. He… he was barely alive. Out cold in the dirt. I felt like a monster, but I didn’t regretanyof it. And I left him there. I watched him, for a moment, struggling to hold onto life, and then I took off to my father’s property to find Lily. The worst part of it, Max,fuck, the worst part of it was that when I finally walked in that room, where Dom and Lily were together? I didn’t see relief in their eyes. I saw fear.”

“It’s so fucked up, Draven.”

“My best friend, Dominic, scared of me, even when his Glock was resting on a table beside him,” I said. “Lily, a woman I thought I could love,scaredof me. Even when I’d nearly killed someone for trying to hurt her.”

I turned to Max and saw a tear rolling down his cheek. I wiped it away, my heart hardening inside me.

This is what I do.

I bring nothing but pain to anyone around me.

Whether it's from me directly or not.

“All of this,” Max said, his voice rough. “All of this was happening to her, and I was infuckingBestens,” he spat.

“You didn’t know.”

“I was in Tennessee, because it’s always where I’ve been,” he continued, his tone more ragged than I’d ever heard. “Afraid to leave. Afraid to fly. A fucking failure to launch.”

“No,” I told him, like it was a command. “You couldn’t have known, Max.”

“I really was naive,” he said, shaking his head, his blue eyes in a deadened stare out toward the land. “As naive as people used to say I was. I didn’t think things like this happened in the world. Not to people I know. People I love.”

“I immediately told Dom and Lily that it was okay,” I said. “I told them I wanted them to be happy. Reassured them, over and over. And then I told Dom that I’d done something very bad to Brody.”

“Your fuckingpolice chieffriend, in the dirt,” Max said.

“It wasn’t a good situation,” I agreed. “I knew Brody did have power over me, but I also knew I had so much onhim, over the years and years of our friendship. It was like a stalemate. After he woke up in a hospital, I was certain he’d say something to someone. But he didn’t share a fucking peep. Each day passed without me knowing if I’d be arrested at any moment’s notice. When Lily got the invite to a wedding back down in Tennessee… I knew it was the right move to leave.”

Max pulled in a long breath. “You came to Tennessee on a fucking whim, because Lily got invited to a wedding?”

“It was all we could do,” I said. “Lily still had to keep up the act with me, for Dad’s payments. Dad never found out about her and Dom, although I lived in fear every day that Brody would show them to him. Tennessee was the best option. What neither of us realized was that Dad would cut off her payments and terminate her contract as soon as we left.”

“Does that mean Brody showed him the photos?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. I think Dad has other reasons. Maybe he just doesn’t see it as a worthy investment, anymore. Dad cares less and less for me each passing day.”

Max let out a groan that turned into a frustrated, rageful noise. “How is it possible?” he asked. “What is wrong with your father?”

“He doesn’t have a heart? Fuck if I know.”

“How could Brody do those things to you? How could your father notdosomething, if he found out?”

I was silent for a moment. The wind was picking up now, blowing over the smell of ozone in the air, like a storm was truly on the way.

“It’s always been that way, Max,” I told him. “I always liked rose bushes. We had them on the property I grew up on, too. When I was twelve, I told my dad one day after school that I’d kissed a boy by the rose bush. Dad hit me. He shoved me into the rose bushes, into a cluster of thorns. I bled through my shirt, my arms were fucked up, my back was even worse. The scar on my face was from a fat thorn near the top, where he took my face and shoved it deeper.”

“I can’t. Why, Draven?Whyis it all like this?”

“It wasn’t even his worst moment,” I said. “But it stuck out to me, because I learned:Dad only wants me to be with girls.My body was lacerated with slashes from the thorns for weeks. Dad had every single rose bush ripped out of the property. Naturally, I planted dozens, when I got my own land. I tattooed them on my skin. I always wanted to be my own person. I was always defiant. But it always ended with me being hurt. Sometimes, hurting others.”

“I’m so fucking sorry, Draven,” Max breathed.

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