Travis. “Did that little shit do this to you? He hit you?”
Jerking my head away, I push at his hand. “I held a knife to his throat.”
“A knife? Jesus … ‘the hell were you thinking?”
“He called you a drunk and a loser.”
The dismissive wave of his hand grates on me.
Hands balled to fists at my side, I want to punch something. “Just because you don’t care about any sort of reputation, doesn’t mean I should have to deal with the things they say! It’s a crap deal having to be tied to you, sometimes.”
Shoulders slouching, he lowers his gaze and nods. “Yeah, kid. I imagine it is.”
I despise the way my chest aches with remorse all of a sudden. I swear this man is the king of manipulating emotions.
Flame completely smothered by sand, he waves for me to follow after him, and I do, stealing one more glance at the empty beach where the two boys are long gone from now.
I plop down in the passenger seat of the beaten-down truck he’s driven for nearly ten years, and shove the pills from my pants into my coat pocket, where they’re less likely to fall out.
Russ falls into the driver’s seat beside me, and there’s a brief moment of silence before he holds out his palm between us.
I glance down at his hand and back to him, doing my best to school my face when I say, “What?”
“C’mon, girl, I ain’t got all damn night.”
On a huff, I reach into my pocket and hand him the bag of pills.
His groan sounds like the raspy chug of a dying engine. “You have any idea how many times you should’ve been locked up by now?”
“You don’t actually want me to answer, right? It’s rhetorical?”
He tucks the pills into his coat and fires up the truck, revving the engine that sounds like the noise he made in his throat just seconds ago. “You’re nineteen years old. How the hell d’you expect me to get on with my life if I gotta keep bailing you out of trouble?”
“I didn’t ask you to--”
“Don’t even say it. This shitshow was a sequence of events that woulda ended with you in jail for the night. And drugs? Are you fucking kidding me?”
Hypocrite. I was fourteen when I had my first sip of alcohol, while sitting out in the shack waiting for his monster buck to come in. Whiskey, of all things. Of course, I hated it, as I’m sure he hoped I would. “But if it was a six pack of beers, you’d be cool with it, right?”
“Beer is different.” The cans he’s accumulated in the back rattle in mocking, as the truck bumbles over the curb where he pulls out of the lot.
“How? Is it addicting? Yes. Could I die consuming it in large quantities? Yes. Is it illegal for my age? Yes.”
“Don’t be a smartass, Cely. It’s different. I don’t worry about you drinking on occasion. But those pills … you don’t know where they’re coming from. What’s in ‘em.”
“Are you kidding me? Travis probably scams them from his mom’s medicine cabinet. That’s top of the line shit. No generics. No additives, or preservatives.”
“You always gotta have an argument, don’t ya?”
Shrugging, I cross my arms and watch the dusky stretch of Lake Superior slip past the window in streaks of pink and yellow. “Just defending my case, is all. No different than you defending yours.” The beer cans rattle a second time, drawing a smile to my face. “However many you have back there.”
“That’s over the course of months.”
“And that’s only a fraction of what you have back at the house.” If I were to check right now, the guy would probably fail a breathalyzer. It’s a joke between us, that if someone hooked a tap to his vein, they’d probably get a mild buzz off drinking his blood. Thing is, he’s so big and drinks so frequently, I can’t say I’ve ever really seen the guy shit-faced. He’s passed out on occasion, but that takes the hard stuff to accomplish. “I’m not abusing them, okay? They help me sleep, is all.”
“There are more legal ways of falling asleep at night, Cely.”
“What? Counting sheep? Chamomile tea? Who, aside from cat ladies and yoga fanatics, drinks chamomile tea?”
“It so happens, I do. And it works. Soothes my stomach after dinner.”
“Well, it won’t work on me. The things that keep me awake are …” The window beside me blurs into a dark silhouette of passing houses, and the