Page 44 of Wreckage of Me
“How long are you here for?” She brings us back to the topic at hand. “I don’t like surprises.”
I have another smartass remark on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t have the heart to tease her some more about any of this.
“I have no idea,” I finally say. “I came here on a whim,” I confess, and she rolls her eyes to the ceiling. “Puck kept on saying he wanted to come here. I had nowhere else to go,” I shrug.
“Ah,” her eyes go cold, and she tries to push herself away from me, but I refuse to loosen my hold on her. “It’s good to know, Dylan,” sarcasm drips from her lips, “that you came all the way here because you had nothing better to do.”
I finally give up on being a nice guy. It’s not doing me any favors. With an abrupt yank of her hair, I bring her face close to mine, making it impossible for her to look anywhere but at me.
“I came here for you,” I shake her a bit when I tell her that. “I haven’t been able to function at times because of this paralyzing fear that you’ll get hurt because of me.”
“Dylan,” she whispers in awe.
“No, let me finish,” I demand. She wanted to know why I came here. She’s gonna find out. “On that day when you came to see me, I sat chained to that motherfuckin’ table, unable to touch you. Unable to hold you and tell you that I’ll be okay. Having to watch every fuckin’ word I said just to make sure you’d make it back to your home, to your little brother, in one piece.”
“Dylan…”
“I wanted to be out of that club so badly,” I ignore her attempt to stop me. “I did things that would make your skin crawl. I hated my brother for having had the freedom to get out of there. I was jealous. I wanted out,” I bring her closer into me and growl into her face.
“You hurt me on that day,” she starts crying again, a gentle little hiccup shaking her body. “I just wanted to h-help you.”
“I hurt a lot of people then, babe,” I assure her. “I hurt even more people before you. And I’m sure I’ll hurt more after you, too.”
What I say seems to sober her up. Her face loses the spark she always seems to carry, making me feel guilty somehow. There are lots of things I could tell her to make her feel better, but I don’t want her to think they’re just empty words. It wouldn’t help her one bit.
I let go of her when she moves to get away from me. She stands up and starts pacing the room, looking everywhere but at me.
“You should probably leave now,” she finally says. I expected her to ask me to go, but I still feel a pang in the general area of where my heart is located. I hate myself for the things I feel all of a sudden.
Since I don’t want to make a scene, ormoreof a scene I should say, especially with her brother in the house, I stand up and zip my hoodie back up.
“I need to call Puck to come pick me up,” I finally say. “If you don’t mind me staying here until he arrives.”
“Of course not,” she waves me off tiredly.
I pull my cell phone out of the pocket of my jeans, surprised to see that I have missed calls and messages. I turned the ringer off at some point, then forgot to turn it back on.
Three of the calls are from my brother, plus a couple from my mother.
All of a sudden, I get this sick feeling in my belly. I unlock the screen, find Wyatt’s number and hit dial.
“Where the fuck are you, fucker?” my brother gets straight to the point in greeting.
“Are Ethan and Ma okay?” I ask, almost out of breath from the adrenaline rush surging through my body.
“Yeah, fucker, they’re fine,” Wyatt growls into the phone. “But I’ve been trying to locate your ass for months now, calling in favors that shouldn’t have been called. All just to find out that you’re not even in prison anymore. If you even were.”
I let out a huge sigh of relief and laugh. I thought somebody died, but it’s just my little brother playing detective.
“Good to hear from you, brother,” I chuckle into the speaker. Movement in the corner of my eye brings my attention to Becca. She’s staring at me with huge eyes in her face, looking unsure of what to do or say.
“Ma’s been crying nonstop,” Wyatt is talking in a low voice, almost like he’s worried someone could hear him. “I thought she was crying over Pops dying,” he sighs. “But she was crying over your sorry ass,” he starts laughing. “And now, some fancy thug dude showed up couple of days ago. They’re acting like they’ve known each other their entire lives. And he’s staring at me like he knows me every time he shows at my door.”
“What fuckin’ dude?” What the hell is happening there?
“His name is Jon Stewart,” Wyatt confirms the small seed of suspicion I already had. “I ran a background check on him, and he checks out. But I don’t like him,” he concludes. “Then she started saying something about needing to go visit Montana. What the fuck is in Montana?”
The more I try to make sense of what’s going on, the less sense it all makes. Every time I tried to get information out of Devereaux, he refused to tell me why exactly he wanted my father dead. All I needed to know was that he would end up dead, and I wouldn’t end up in prison. The rest was semantics.
