Fall Guy (38 page)

But I keep going back to the way
Gramma
talked about her heart.

How sure she was.

How much they lost.

How much it hurt.

The thing is, my grandparents were strong enough and in love enough that their life together trumped their losses.

And there's the crux of my problem with Winch.

He loves his family. I tried to accept the way they are. I secretly hoped I'd fit in. I wondered if he might walk away. But nothing worke
d; nothing was going to work. His family and I
couldn't accept each other, and I'd never ask him to choose.

I kept coming back, over and over again to the reality of our situation: part of me would always love him, but we would never work.

"That's it?" Brenna's voice crumples with defeat. I unbutton the hideous yellow uniform blouse and toss it and my plaid skirt into the hamper. I slide on pajamas and gather my knees to my chest and the phone to my ear.

"I've thought about it all week, Brenna. It's done. There never really was a way for it to work, but I couldn't accept that." I press my forehead to my knees and clamp my eyelids tight against the tears. "Now I can."

"You're an idiot," she cries. "You have to try to make this work!"

"You told me it wouldn't have worked. I should have listened from the beginning and saved myself all of this pain now."

I burrow under my covers and peek out at the creamy flowers, wilted and drooping. I'll have to throw them out soon, but my heart clutches at the thought of getting rid of his last gift to me.

"I was an idiot," she protests. I can hear her clicking hangers up in her closet, thumping things from place to place, moving things around. She's frustration-cleaning. All sounds suddenly stop, and her voice brightens like she's had a revelation. "Tomorrow is Saturday. You still have community service."

The knot that's been tying itself tighter and tighter in my stomach since the last time I saw him pulls again. "He might be there.
Maybe not.
I never replied to his note."

"He didn't text or call?" Brenna asks, but she knows the answer. As much as I've tried not to obsess about this, Brenna is the one person I've unloaded ever Winch-related-detail of my life to. "You guys are so weird. It's almost like you're torturing yourselves. Just call him."

"No.
Can't.
It would just be more stupid promises he can't keep and me getting my expectations up. I have to face reality, Bren, even if it hurts. And trust me, it hurts like crazy. Like a thousand
papercuts
in a lemon juice bath."

I run my hand over the cool, empty expanse of my bed, then up and down the warm, empty curves of my own body.

"You
do
want to see him, though, right? You're not that insane, right?" She's begging because she believes in true love and beating all obstacles and love conquering everything.

It's not that I don't believe. I can see the beautiful kind of love my grandparents fought for and perfected right in front of my face. But that's a love between two people. Not two people and
one crazy, controlling family.

"I do. I want to call him. I want to be with him. But you don't understand, Bren. Every single time I think his family is as c
razy as they can get, they up their insanity level
.
Withou
t a break.
And I had to stand there and watch while Winch go
t the crap beat out of him--"

My breath hitches for a second, and I have to grit my teeth together and push back the images of all that blood and Winch's battered body, and everyone sitting around that goddamn table not caring about what happened to him.

"He takes the fall for Remy over and over. And when his little sister got a boyfriend, it wasn't just like they'd give him the cold shoulder and try to keep them fr
om getting t
o
o close. There was a freaking
payoff scheme, Brenna! And he told me so calm, you know? Like he wasn't remotely shocked and didn't think it was weird. Which is weird right? Tell me I'm not just gunning for best drama in a
dysfunctional
relationship?"

"It's weird." She blows out a long breath. "You know I had to deal with it with Jake. When his family came around with all their money? And it's still kind of a thing, because his inheritance gets handed over the end of this year. And it's not
just
, like, enough to buy a car. It's like a trust fund. Like a serious trust fund. But it's not just money that's scary. It's that power I guess?"

I brace the bottom of my feet on the footboard of my bed and rub my thumb and forefinger against my temples.

"Yep.
The control?
The millions of strings that are so attached. And it was that way with my parents, you know? Money turned into something that basically screwed up our life, and they let it. But it's worse with Winch, because, with Jake, he can just take the money and give his family the finger. With Winch, it's all about his family. It's all about loyalty and doing anything for them. It's just worse because they have enough money that they have a lot of power. And ask him to do
crazy, crazy things. Bren, if he gets in legal trouble again, he is going to jail, no questions.
The judge at our hearing?
She wasn't playing around. And his brother is
a total
loose cannon. He's not just going to calm down."

I try to regulate my deep, shaky breaths, pulling them in and out as evenly as I can.

"You're so worried about him. You care so much." Brenna is just stating facts, but they core me. I press my fist to my mouth and almost lose the very tenuous hold on my self-control when she asks, "Why don't you just talk to him? Isn't there anything you can do? Isn't there anything...you can say? I can hear how much you love him."

"I love him so much," I rasp out. "And that's why the one thing I refuse to do is watch him ruin his life and lose himself. If he's going to throw away his future
and get sucked under
, that's his decision. I refuse to watch him
do
it."

"Oh, sweetie."
Brenna's voice is warm and soft as a hug.

Only because she's my best friend and she's seen me through everything and back again, I cry
without caring that she can hear
. First muffled little sniffles, then full-blown belly sobs.

I cry in front of her because I sure as hell won't do it in front of the boy I love and have to let go of. She stays on the line until I'm wrung out, damp, and calm. Her sweet words are the last thing I h
ear before I disconnect
and sink into a long, black, dreamless sleep.

Andre didn't take the money.

I moved the amount up a few times, especially once I saw the falling-down trailer he was going back to. I knew my dad would be happy to have the money paid and the situation swept under the rug.

Ithaca? It would take a while, and I predicted a lot of threats of 'never forgiving' us, but what had to be done had to be done, and, eventually, she'd realize it was for her own good and life would move on. It wasn't always romantic and easy.

That was the thing that Evan didn't get.

The day of the fight, the day
after the perfect night I spent
in Evan’s arms,
Andre
had
stared at his hands in th
e backseat of my
car for a few minutes after turning down more money than I know the kid's entire family put together had seen in a year.

I was pissed because I'd dropped Evan at her grandparents' house after breaking every promise I tried t
o make, probably right along with
her heart. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I just wanted this punk out of my car
,
and
I wanted
to stop fucking up every single time I tr
ied to make things work with Evan
.

Not so much to ask for, right?

"I love her." Andre completely interrupted my run of self-loathing. He lifted his eyes, dark and totally belligerent, and glared at me from the backseat.

"
You're,
what?
Seventeen?"

I flicked my eyes, focused and controlled from years of experience, to the reflection of his seething ones in the rearview mirror.

"Eighteen in three days."

He crossed his arms over his chest.

"Alright.
She's
gonna
be seventeen in four months. You two are babies still, okay? You'll meet other people. You'll get o
ver this."

I tossed the words at
him, and they came out harsher around the edges than I meant them to. What did this kid know about love and loss and screwing it all up?

"You have no idea." His mouth twisted in a sneer that was half rage, half pity. "The way you dropped your girl off like that? I never would have left Ithaca that way."

"You have no idea what goes on between me and Evan." My voice cut out,
cold with warning.

"I know she was upset and you let her go. I know she had things to say to you, and you didn't listen. Ithaca and I aren't like that. I care about what she thinks and how she feels. I'm going to be t
here for her, no matter what."

The look on his face
was
more ballsy
than I wo
uld have expected in response to
my stare-down, and it irritated the shit out of me.

"You think you know a single fucking thing about how life works? I have more people to look out for than you could imagine. I have more responsibility than you could know, and I've had it since I was younger than you are now. I can't just drop everything because of the way I
feel
. I have people depending on me."

My blood pressure was definitely on the rise, and the look of total disrespect in the little
douchebag's
eyes wasn't helping me keep my cool.

He popped the door open and gave me a last look, one full of bravado.

"Tell your family I wouldn't take a damn cent from any one of them. And I know you got a lot people to worry about, but you can subtract Ithaca from your little list.
Because
I'll
be the one
taking care of that girl for the rest of my life."

He slid out of the backseat and slammed the car door, strutting into his rickety house without a backward glance in my direction.

I drove home with a bad taste in my mouth and thought about what that little shit said for hours.
Days.
The entire long week.

I thought about it when I drove past Evan's house, trying to catch a glimpse through her bedroom window like some sad stalker.

I thought about it when I picked up the phone to call her a dozen times but never did.

I’m still thinking about it when I go
to pick up Remy, drunk, fresh from a brawl
, shirtless, and shoe-less, passed out in front of
some dive bar.

I watch
my brother chatter to himself, curl into the fetal position, and weep in
to the seat of my car. He needs help. He needs
some kind
of rehab or something, but I know my parents will
never say yes to
letting
anyone outside of the family in, not even a counselor o
r therapist. Every priest we know i
s too caught up in my family's glory and too swayed by the crazy amounts of money and stained glass and new rob
es the Youngblood family donates
to ever interfere, even if my brother's life
i
s at stake.

When I get home, my father shoos
Colt, all wide-eyed and s
haky, back to the den and helps
me heft Remy
into his room. My father looks
at Remy, a slobbering, sobbing, shaking, skel
etal version of
himself
and says
, "Tell your mother to make a pot of strong coffee and let's get out of here so he can sleep it off."

No one says anything else about it, not
even
when Remy pukes so long and hard, it finally comes up blood. My parents have a hushed argument in the kitchen that ends with my father's firm 'no' and my mother's tearful acceptance.

My dad comes to my room, his eyes bloodshot and the lines in his face deep. "Call about getting the carpeting in Remington's room replaced tomorrow.
Top priority."

"Yes, sir."
I watch his back as he leaves me in my room.

Carpet.

Top priority.

Days go by and I argue with myself, Evan and Andre's words screaming in my head, and I wake up with a pretty clear realization.