Page 81 of Stupid Dirty

“I promised I would protect you, remember? I’ll take you far away again, where she can’t get to you,” he says. His words are a slur, and his fingers are clumsy as he brings them up to jab at the side of my head. As if Mom is somehow pulling the strings in my fucked-up brain from beyond the grave. “It’ll be just like before. I only need a little more time. I know you don’t always like me, but I’ve kept you safe. I won’t let her ruin your life like she ruined mine.”

Like she ruined mine.

The words echo through me like a pulse. I know he’s cracked when he talks about how being here is making me more like her. That’s drunken hyperbole, and I ignore it, as usual.

But he’s not wrong about the fact that I’m like her. Probably in more ways than I know. I have no idea what he sees when he looks at me, and the thought makes me shudder.

What’s worse is the image of Cade in twenty years, lying on this couch in my dad’s place, mourning a life wasted spent trying to love someone who’s too fucked-up to be loved. Poisoning yourself in the process, until both of you wither on the vine and die.

At least Dad’s disaster of a life isn’t my fault. I did my best to live up to what he wanted for me, and to pay him back for everything he sacrificed to keep me alive. I may have let him down a lot, but I’ve tried.

It’s not too late for Cade to dodge that bullet.

“I know, Dad.” I let myself lay my head on his hand where he still clutches at me. I wait for the usual numbness to take me over, but this time the numbness is outpaced by despair. My stomach twists and my skin feels cold and clammy, like a corpse. Every cell in my body throbs in pain at the thought of losingCade, but I can’t deny what’s right in front of my eyes. I can’t let Cade suffer through all of this.

I’m able to blink back most of the tears, but one escapes and rolls down Dad’s weathered skin where it presses against my face. “Thank you,” I say. I really mean it.

“You were so small,” he whispers, his voice trailing off as sleep tugs at him. “You weren’t even crying. Like a little corpse. You never cried after, either. Silas, my little ghost.”

He finally drifts off. I want to cry properly, to prove him wrong. I want to scream and wail and let out the pulsing knot of emotion that’s lodged in my throat, until I can figure out what I did to deserve this. But apart from that one tear, nothing else comes out.

His words have eaten through my insides, leaving a husk behind. I sit there for a long time, listening to him breathe.

Of all the memories that have been clambering through my consciousness the past few days, there are some I’ve kept locked up. The edges of those memories are scratching at my brain now. They’re begging to be let in.

Maybe I should let them in. I tried to move on from the past, and the past continued to chase me, making me feel crazy and causing chaos in Cade’s life. Maybe if I give into it, whatever is going to happen will finally happen. Losing Cade might kill me, even if it’s for the best.

At least it’ll be over with.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Everything that happened yesterday has fucking haunted me. I couldn’t sleep, thinking about how Silas looked as he helped us haul his dad’s limp body into the living room.

Which makes me wonder how many times his dad has said the nasty, surreal shit he said to us earlier to Silas’ face. I wonder if that’s what taught him how to shut down.

He’s always had ups and downs, but he’s never felt so completely out of my reach before. Not even before we were so close. I could always get through to him with a touch or the right word, but last night it was like talking to a brick wall, and that’s fucking terrifying.

And it’s not like this was the only time. He was already shut down the day of the race, when his dad didn’t show. I’ve been too caught up in the CPS Family Assessment and keeping a closer eye on the girls. Silas has been around, but I’m suddenly realizing I haven’t really paid attention to him. It’s possible a fuck ton of warning signs have been slipping through the cracks.

Tristan was right. There’s more wrong than I realized, and as much as it fucking kills me to admit, maybe my loving Silas isn’t enough to make all his pain go away.

Oh yeah, because that’s the other thing I realized.

Somewhere around the fifth hour of lying in bed, obsessing about how to help Silas and playing out all these different hypothetical situations, I realized something. I kept thinking of everything in terms ofour lives.

Together. Like the fact that we would deal with these things together was a given.

I was looking up how much therapy costs and thinking about how to convince him to go. I was planning contingencies for if he got worse and worse and needed legitimate medical help. I was trying to figure out how health insurance actually works and if we could get it. All of it was turning over and over in my mind, the same as if it were Maddi or Sky with the problem.

He’s my family. I love him and I’m not going anywhere.

So his shit is my shit, and that means it’s time to deal with it.

Together.

This revelation gave me a new burst of energy. Combine that with way too much caffeine, and I am now cracked out but ready to tackle the day. More importantly, I have a plan.

First, get Silas as far away from his toxic sperm donor as possible.

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