Page 39 of Stupid Dirty

“Does that happen a lot?”

“What, my piece of shit dad showing up like a special guest from Skid Row and tearing into our lives for no reason?” Silas nods solemnly. “It used to happen more. He and Mom were on again, off again for a long time, before he moved to Arkansas. She’s been a lot better since he left. We all have. He’s only shown up a couple of times since then, always for the same reason. Some bullshit, hallucinated idea that we owe him money. But it’s been a while.”

I laugh, although it sounds hollow, even to me. Silas looks at me with a twisted, concerned expression.

“I guess I’d almost let myself believe he was done fucking things up for us. I thought I was too old to be naïve anymore, but I was wrong. That’s embarrassing.”

Silas doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. If anyone gets being constantly let down by someone and then hating yourself for letting it happen in the first place, it’s him.

We’re two peas in a very fucked-up pod.

Instead, he brings his hand to my back, rubbing it in slow circles that dial down the anxiety thrumming in my veins. We sit like that for a long time. The silence doesn’t even bother me the way it usually does.

In the end, it’s Silas that breaks it.

“Do you think he’ll come back?”

Chapter Sixteen

Cade shrugs, his gaze trained on the floor.

“Probably.”

I’ve known Cade for a while now, not including watching him from a distance when we were kids, and I think I’ve gotten to know him pretty well. I’ve seen him happy, sad, angry. I’ve seen the way he gets playful and soft around his sisters. I’ve seen him talk with conviction about how much he hates toxic masculinity, but how he’s still not immune to the instinct to straighten his shoulders and drop his voice around certain types of men. It’s hard not to, when you grew up with fathers like ours.

I saw him be more gentle and empathetic than I knew how to deal with the night at the quarry. And I’ve seen him heartbroken, because let’s face it, his life is not a picnic.

But I’ve never seen him look fragile.

Right now, he looks like bone china. Maybe it’s the way the dark bruising stands out against his hangover-pallid flesh, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s sitting completely still for the first time since I’ve met him. Either way, it’s really freaking me out.

The urge to fix it is all-consuming. I want to make him feel normal again more than I’ve ever wanted to win a stupid moto.

“And what happens if he comes back?”

Another shrug. “The same thing. It wasn’t the first time, it won’t be the last. He always tires himself out eventually and moves on.”

Anger and adrenaline dump wholesale into my veins at the thought, and I have to clench my fists to keep from shaking.

“What if he hurts the girls?”

Cade shakes his head; the first thing he’s done with any conviction. “I’d never let him. I’ll swap my shifts so I can be here when they’re not at school. Next weekend they can probably sleepover with my Aunt Jaz, as much as I hate to impose. Just until I’m sure he’s left town. I’ll be here to make sure they’re safe.”

“And when he hurts you again?”

Because it is awhen,not anif.I’ve picked up that much.

Cade refuses to look at me and my anger is threatening to boil over.

I don’t have it in me to keep quiet. “You can’t just let this keep happening!”

When Cade looks up at me, his expression is sharp. I can see the tension running through every part of him.

“Yeah, and you can’t keep living at your dad’s house forever, bankrolling his drinking habit and letting him treat you like his emotional meat puppet, but it’s a lot easier to say you’ll fix something than to actually fix it, isn’t it?”

There’s a bite to the words and a challenge in his eyes. He’s not wrong. Things with Dad have gotten worse and worse.

I used to think that all his strictness and his insane drive came from how much he cared about my success. If he was an asshole to me, it was because he wanted me to win more than he cared about being a decent father.

---