Page 14 of Seven Lost Summers
The door bursts open.
I don’t move. I can’t.
That’s when I see him.
Wes. Nate’s dad.
And I’m torn between crying and crawling toward him.
He barrels in like a fucking storm. Wild and unstoppable, too big for these rotting walls to hold. The second he steps inside, the air shifts, like the entire room knows who’s in charge now.
My chest loosens like I’ve been drowning for years and finally broke the surface.
“Where the fuck is he?” Wes roars, voice burning with a rage that doesn’t whisper or simmer. The fury devours. The fire wraps around everything, swallowing the fear, the silence, the stench of control.
And for the first time in a long fucking time, I’m not the one who’s scared. He is.
Wes is a force of nature—a wall of muscle and ink, his tattoos screaming stories no one dares to ask about. Violence. Survival. Shit, you don’t come back from clean. You feel it before he speaks. He doesn’t need to raise his voice to own a room. The ink, the scars, the weight of everything he’s survived — it speaks louder than any words ever could.
I’ve never told him what goes on behind these walls. Never let a word slip. But I think he knows. Maybe he’s seen the truth—in the way I flinch when someone moves too fast, in the bruises I try to laugh off like they don’t mean shit. Maybe he hears the cracks in the way I go quiet when I should speak. How my voice never carries the way it’s supposed to.
Or perhaps this place is to blame. This whole fucking neighborhood full of cowards who know exactly what happens here and do nothing. They turn away. Whisper behind locked doors. Pretend the screams are TV static; the bruises nothing more than bad luck. They’re too scared to cross the man who’s kept me caged my whole life.
But not Wes.
Wes doesn’t flinch.
He walks straight into the fire like he’s been waiting for this moment his whole goddamn life.
My eyes snap from Wes’s fury to the doorway where Nate stands. His face is tight, shoulders tense, worry carved into every line. His eyes find mine, and in that split second, I know.
He told him.
Nate told Wes everything. Laid it all bare, every sick, fucked-up thing my father’s done, and the reasons as to why he probably dragged me back here.
For once, I’m not ashamed. I’m not small. Not some broken fucking secret.
I just feel… relief. Like I can finally breathe, and now I don’t have to carry this weight alone anymore.
My father steps into Wes’s path, puffed up and pretending he can stop him. As if he’s some immovable force instead of the pathetic, worthless piece of shit he’s always been. But he doesn’t stand a chance.
Not against Wes who doesn’t even blink. His arm swings out, shoving my father so hard his knees buckle, and he crumples to the floor in a graceless heap of shit. No fight. No power. Just a man who was never as strong as he pretended to be.
“Come on, son.” Wes’s voice is steady. Solid. Iron in a place built on splinters. His hand wraps around my arm, firm but careful, and pulls me to my feet like I’m something worth holding onto instead of some broken thing meant to be thrown away.
For the first time, there’s something solid beneath my feet. Something that isn’t cruel. It’s safe.
Wes has never treated me as if I’m nothing. Not once has he ever made me feel like I was only the fallout of someone else’s fuck-up, the scraps left behind in a life I didn’t choose. With Wes, there’s no flinching, no pretending. Only this solid presence that makes it harder to keep pretending I don’t need it. Around him, I’m not merely the bruises or the silence I carry. I’m something more than I ever thought I could be.
“He’s not your fucking son!” My father’s words slur, thick with rage and the stink of cheap booze, his breath curling in the air like poison. His eyes are wild, burning with a fury that’s all show-because deep down, he knows the truth. He’s a coward. He has always been. All bark, no fucking bite.
He staggers forward, still pretending he has a shot at stopping this, but Wes tightens his hand around my arm, a silent promise, solid as steel, and then he moves. Pushes right past my father like he’s not even there. As if the pathetic, washed-out bastard blocking the doorway is nothing more but a shadow.
“That’s my fucking son. Get your goddamn hands off him!” he snarls, spitting the words like they still carry weight.
Wes lets go of my arm, and I bolt. Feet moving before my brain catches up, tearing across the room toward the only safe thing I’ve ever known. Nate’s standing in the doorway, wide-eyed, frozen—and all I want is to reach him. To fall into something that doesn’t hurt.
Behind me, I hear Wes’s voice tear through the room, each word soaked in venom.
