Page 63 of No More Secrets

“Oh!” Sophie grabs his arm before he faceplants. Lightheaded, he feels the room spin. Damn, he’s drunker than he thought. He shakes her off and leaves the bar.

She follows him out as he weaves toward his truck. “You’re harboring a runaway, Lucas. Have you checked if her parents are looking for her? If the authorities think you’re holding her against her will, they will arrest you.”

“Let them try,” he flings over his shoulder. He won’t let them take her home unless that’s what Shiloh wants. He promised to protect her.“Not that it’s any of your business, but she doesn’t have a father, and her mother is a drug addict whose live-in boyfriend sexually assaulted her.”

Sophie pales.

“Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

“I admit it hits home.” She visibly swallows. “At least call CPS. They’ll put her in foster care. She’ll be safe from him. You have to trust the system.”

He stops abruptly and goes utterly still. Given his experience, that was the wrong thing to say to him. He pivots, seeing red, and gets in her face. “Trust the system?” Her eyes widen, and she holds up her hands to warn him off, but he can’t see past his fury. “Trust thefuckingsystem? Are you out of your mind? The system is broken. Thesystemlet me take the fall while myfriends”—he spits the word with distaste and ire, alcohol loosening his tongue—“including the jackass who brought the gun with him, who loaded it, got off. You want a truth for a truth? Well, I got a doozy for you. The system put me in a hellhole that allowed a gang of kids to get away with rape. The system paid off my parents and buried it. I left that place wondering what the fuck I did to deserve any of it. I was left wondering what the fuck to do with my life because no one, not a single person—especially not my mother or my waste of a father—did anything to help me get over it. I was left feeling like a worthless pile of shit. ThatIwas to blame for what happened to me in there. Do you know how that feels? Do you?”

She shakes her head, her gaze cutting from his face to his hands, which flex at his sides. It occurs to him how menacing he must seem, and he backs off. He puts a foot of space between them, and after a beat, he admits, defeated, “To this day I wonder what I did wrong. The system doesn’t give a fuck, Sophie. So, neither do I.”

He’s breathing heavily when he finishes. He can’t believe he confessed, to a stranger, no less. He’s never shared that much. Even his sisters don’t know what happened to him in juvenile detention or why he was released to the hospital three days before the end of his sentence.He rolls his shoulders, feeling gross and dirty. Ill. Why does he still feel their hands on him?

Morris Stanton was one of his bunkmates, already a repeat offender at seventeen. And he’d made several attempts at sexual advances during Lucas’s sentence, but Lucas fended him off. Except once, three nights before his release.

The detention center was overcrowded, the guards overtaxed. A fight had broken out in the common room while Lucas was on kitchen-cleanup duty. Morris and his gang found him there. And while the guards were occupied breaking up the fight, they took advantage. By the time the fight was resolved and someone could respond to Lucas’s assault, he was unconscious on the floor. A guard found him curled in a fetal position, bloodied and broken.

Lucas wanted his father to file charges. But Dwight insisted he forget about what happened and worked with the detention center’s attorneys to bury the incident and seal the records else Lucas further tarnish the family’s reputation. He was ordered to never speak of it again. It would be his secret, his burden to bear. Be a man. Suck it up and handle it. Dwight said he probably had it coming, anyway. Lucas was prone to instigating fights.

Sophie stares at him in open-mouthed horror. “Jesus, Lucas. I—I didn’t know.”

“You wouldn’t. The records are sealed.” Ashamed, he averts his face. He can’t look at her. But he’s drunk. If he’s lucky he won’t remember this in the morning. “Arrest me if you want for keeping that girl safe. But she’s better off with me than where she came from.”

29

Lucas turns back to his truck, anxious to apologize to Shiloh for abandoning her, and pinches the key fob. The truck disarms with a beep and flash of its lights.

“You shouldn’t drive,” Sophie says, dogging him.

“Try and stop me.”

“If you insist.”

He reaches for the door, and a blur of movement appears in his peripheral vision. She grabs the wrist of the hand holding his keys and wrenches his arm behind his back, straining his shoulder. Her boot connects with the back of his knee. Pain shoots up his leg as his knee buckles and he drops to his shin. She plucks the keys from his hand.

A laugh, low and dark, builds in his chest. “Didn’t see that coming.” Then he moves without warning.

He swings his leg, catching her behind an ankle and throwing her off balance. She lands hard on her back, and he winces. “Ouch. That looks like it hurt.”

“You’re an asshole,” she wheezes, the wind knocked out of her.

“You wouldn’t be the first to call me that.” He gets to his feet, weaving slightly, and holds out a hand, feeling bad that he hurt her.

“I was only trying to save you from killing yourself or someone else.”

His mood sobers. “I know.”

Their eyes meet and hers soften. She takes his hand, her fingers warm and delicate in his. Lethal, too, he bets, so he doesn’t try anythingill-advised like dropping her. He hauls her up, reluctantly letting go, odd for him, and she dusts off her jeans.

“So, what do I call you?” he asks, looking at his palm where their skin touched, amazed he doesn’t feel repulsed.

“Since the cat’s out of the bag, Sophie.”

Good. That’s how he already thinks of her.

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