I cross the kitchen, and when I pick up my cell, it feels epically heavy. My heart picks up pace and dizziness causes me to lean against the counter. I can do this. I can end this nightmare and Razor won’t have to choose between me and keeping my secret.
With a swipe of my finger, my phone powers on. I never knew that being fearless could be so terrifying.
RAZOR
I WISH I HAD Breanna’s mind. If I did, maybe I could sort through the possible solutions faster. Find the way to protect her without risking that picture going live on the internet. Find a way to convince her parents to let her stay. But I don’t have her mind. I have mine and I can’t think of an answer that will work.
The board is here. All but Pigpen inside the house. He’s sitting on the railing on the opposite end of the porch from me, staring. Just staring.
It’s an eerie sensation that my mother’s cramped house is filled with so many men and there’s hardly a sound. It’s like everyone has their guns loaded, are lying in a ditch, watching a hill, and they’re waiting for someone to yell “charge.”
Messed-up part? They’re waiting on me.
I’m in the same place as when Rebecca left with Breanna—my left shoulder leaning against the corner post on the front porch. I’m putting off the inevitable. As though if I remain in the same spot I was in the last time I saw her, I won’t cause myself pain.
“There’s a Bible story.” Pigpen breaks the silence. “About this guy named Jacob and how he wrestled with God. Have you heard it before?”
I blink a no.
“The two of them went at it all night,” he says. “Think about it—you’re Jacob and he’s God and you’re evenly matched enough that you fight for hours. Jacob had to believe he was kicking ass. Thinking he was big and bad enough to do it on his own, but do you know what happened?”
It’s a biblical story, so nothing good. “A plague? Pillars of salt? Brimstone and fire?”
“God touched him.” Pigpen points one finger in the air. “And with that one touch, he dislocates Jacob’s hip. One touch and it was over.”
God smashed him like a bug. I crushed fireflies. Mom’s dead. Breanna’s floundering. And Pigpen wants to spin a story about how shit happens. “Working on a seminary degree?”
A smile stretches across his face. “Naw, but we had a chaplain over in Afghanistan. Cool son of a bitch. And he’d do this. Out of nowhere tell a story that would put it in perspective.”
“Got a point?”
The grin slips off his face. I hate it when he goes dead serious. It usually means bad shit is about to go down. “God could have flattened Jacob, but he didn’t. God knew that Jacob was stubborn, was prideful, so he let the poor bastard wear himself out before God does what he does—prove to Jacob he’s nothing compared to God.”
“Still waiting on that point.”
He shrugs. “I was thinking you look like I expected Jacob would have after he realized he was fighting something bigger than he was, and I wonder, like Jacob, how long it’s going to take you to figure it out that you don’t have to be fighting alone.”
Sometimes, I hate this guy. Especially when he makes sense. “I’m in love with her.”
“Figured,” he says. “Is she making you choose between us and her?”
“She’s making me choose between keeping her safe or keeping her.”
“That fucking sucks.”
It does. Sucks enough I don’t need to respond.
Wind blows across the field and the cold air causes the hair on my arms to stand on end. Breanna still has my jacket. I’m glad she does. Maybe she’ll take it with her. Maybe it will help her remember me.
“How’s that wrestling match with God going?” Pigpen asks. “From here you look mighty tired.”
I’m fucking exhausted. “Breanna doesn’t want me to go to the club with her problem, and when I tried talking her into it, she drew the line.”
“Where you at on this line?” he asks.
I shove my hands into my jeans pockets and toe a piece of faded wood splintering off the deck floor. “If I cross it, I lose her. I might be losing her anyhow, because her parents are sending her away, but she’ll walk if I go to the club for help.”
“Hate to say this, but the way you sent her away, you already made the decision.”
That’s what is killing my soul. I know the choice has been made and so does Breanna. The agony of letting her go strikes deep. “I love her. Enough that I’ll do anything to keep her safe.”
The graying wood of the porch creaks under Pigpen’s weight as he crosses it to join me. “Sounds like the decision your mom made when she drove away from the clubhouse—sacrificing herself to protect you.”
My heart stalls out, but Pigpen’s not done torturing me yet. “Also sounds like the decision the board and your dad made by keeping how she died a secret from you. And before you say shit, you and I both know how ugly that demon is inside you when it comes to her. I know it when I see it because that warped monster lives inside me. If you grew up knowing the truth, you would have gone into Louisville guns blazing by the time you were sixteen, starting a war that this club can’t win, costing lives we couldn’t save.”
My head swims like I was involved in a head-on collision. “So he let her die and moved on? He just accepted it? The Riot wins because the Terror was weak?”