The detective who snowballed this entire saga with the club observes us from his car to our right. He notices me staring. “What’s he doing here?”
“I called him,” Dad says.
Wasn’t expecting to hear that. “Why?”
Dad rubs his hands together as he leans forward. “When your mom died...” He sucks in a breath like it hurts for him to talk. “I left town.”
This part, I remember. Nothing like burying your mother, then spending night after night looking out a window wondering if your father was going to be next.
“I came here, to Louisville. Eli and Oz’s dad were with me. At times Cyrus rode along. I was determined to find who ran your mom off the road...to hunt down who was responsible.”
Nerves cause me to shift. I thought I wanted this answer, but there’s an unsettling in my soul. After pushing and pulling Kyle off that bridge, the thought of being the man pursuing justice by taking a life tastes sour in my mouth. “And?”
“And I found him. Sat outside his house. Waited to make him pay, and when the moment presented itself, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t put a bullet in his head.”
I close my eyes. Half relieved. Half feeling like I’m losing Mom again.
“He had a son,” Dad continues. “Your age, and when I saw that kid running out to greet that damn bastard...I couldn’t do it. So I improvised.”
My eyebrows rise and Dad bitterly chuckles. “More like I bluffed. I didn’t have hard proof of what they had done, but I told the Riot I did. The deal was made that the Riot would back off us and I would make sure that the evidence I said I had would disappear.”
Growing up, I’m not sure I could have accepted that, but now I can.
“What’s this have to do with the guy you talked to?” In case Dad had no idea it was Pigpen’s brother, because that’s info he should drop, not me. “With the detective?”
Dad circles the wedding ring that he still wears on his left hand. “Thought about how you felt about us lying to you. In fact, the entire board has. What do you think about nailing the bastard that killed your mom? Finding the evidence that can put him away?”
I collapse back against the bench. “What about the peace between our clubs?”
“It’s something we’ll have to consider, but for the first time since she died, the possibility of hard-core evidence exists.”
The pieces click in place. Pigpen’s brother might be volunteering to rat. “I don’t know.”
“Neither do I, but it’s worth at least thinking about.”
We both regard the traffic again and it’s like doors I thought were closed open, but I’m not sure if they should be walked through. “Do I have time to think about this?”
“You have some.”
I nod and Dad twirls his wedding band again. “I’m in love with Jill.”
He is. I’ve had dinner with them twice. Dad looks at her like he used to with Mom. Jill makes him laugh, makes him think. Challenges him, I guess. A lot like Breanna challenged me. It’s acid and a Band-Aid at the same time. “Are you going to marry her?”
“I’d like to.”
I wish I could talk to Breanna. “Then you should.” And I meet his eyes to let him know the words rolling off my lips are sincere.
Dad somewhat smiles, but he strokes his goatee to hide it. “I know it’s been hard, but you’ve done good with giving the Millers space.”
It’s what they requested when they agreed to meet with Dad and Eli a few days after the train incident. Breanna had told them everything and I guess they met with the club so they could confirm her story.
Dad and Eli explained how the club intended to find evidence on the guys blackmailing Breanna. Turns out that’s what the board agreed and voted on after I had come to them for help.
The club has kept the Millers updated on what they’ve discovered and Breanna and I have been allowed no contact. Last image I have of her is with dirt on her face and pain in her eyes as she walked into her house the day Kyle lost his mind. Last words she said to me were “I love you,” and I told her, “It’ll be okay.”
“I promise the club will work this out,” Dad says.
I nod because there isn’t much else I can do. Dad, Eli and Pigpen set me straight after their first meeting with the Millers. Rushing over and disobeying her parents would make things worse on Breanna and she’s had enough of bad. I wanted her to have good.
“Ready to go?”
I stand and so does Dad. He pats my back as we head for our bikes. We have one more stop for the security business before we return home.
Breanna
THIS GIRL IS smarter than me. Way smarter. Where I remember random facts, she remembers everything. For instance...
“You wore those socks two days ago.” Her name is Denver and she bites on her pinkie nail. She’s always nibbling on her nails, and it’s odd how in the four weeks we’ve been roommates, it’s stopped bothering me. “There’s a small hole under the blue stripe.”
She sits cross-legged on her perfectly made bed. Denver continuously calls attention to these types of things. At first it annoyed the crap out of me, and it was easy to understand why every roommate she had jumped ship, but then I noticed how she sat by herself in the dining hall and how most girls whispered as she walked by, and the annoyance dissolved.
Somehow I had been making friends, because my level of freak-of-nature brain activity was the same as most everyone else here, but Denver had become the outcast. She didn’t know how to talk to people, because she was either too intelligent or too awkward. Either way, I wasn’t interested in being like the people who tortured me in Snowflake. Instead, I decided to be her friend.