he begins. “You need to fix this with Slade, whatever it is. He loves you, it radiates off him. You love him too or you wouldn’t have let it go so far. You have to fix what was broken and fix yourself.”
I nod, swallowing. Lucas swipes away one more tear and then he walks past me and gets into his car. I spin around and call out his name. He stops and looks back over his shoulder at me.
“You know I love you Lucas, I always will.”
He forces a smile. “Yeah, I know.”
Then, just like that, he’s gone.
Chapter Twenty Six
I sit in the kitchen pressing ice to my face for the next few hours. I feel numb, emotions are running wild in my head and I can’t take a breath without it being painful. I don’t understand why my dad let Slade take all the blame. I don’t understand why they never told me. I don’t understand how Slade has lived with such pain, thinking he killed someone. I don’t know anything and it burns.
I hear the door open mid-way through my thoughts and I jerk my head up to see Slade step through. He said he wasn’t coming home tonight so why is he here? I glance at his battered face, and something doesn’t look right. He’s trembling and I’m damn sure that black eye wasn’t there before, Lucas didn’t hit him that hard. I leap off the bench and rush over, stopping in front of him. Holy shit he looks terrible.
“Slade, what…”
I reach out and press a hand on his chest and he winces so loudly I leap back. He leans against the door frame, staring down at me and his expression is pure agony. Something is wrong.
“Slade what happened?”
“Just…just…got bashed on the way home.”
“What?” I cry.
“It’s nothing Dash, a bunch of drunk boys got a few in.”
“Slade, you’re hurt, I can see it.”
“I’ll be ok.”
I grip his shirt before he can react and I lift it up. A soft whimpering sound comes out of my mouth at the fresh, purple bruises covering his beautiful body. I narrow my eyes at the fading ones too. He’s not telling me the truth, I just know it.
“You’re lying to me,” I say in a soft voice.
He looks down at me and I turn my eyes up to meet his.
“I…”
“Who does this Slade?”
“Dash, don’t…”
“Don’t you lie to me Slade or I’ll call an ambulance and make these questions a whole lot worse.”
“No, you can’t do that!”
“THEN TELL ME WHO DID THIS?” I scream.
“Michael,” he whispers.
I feel like someone has slapped me. I knew Michael was an asshole, but I never knew he would hurt his son.
“How long?” I choke out.
“It started about a year after we became friends, he suspected…”
It hits me like a brick and I stumble backwards. I know exactly what he suspected. He suspected Slade and I were getting close, he suspected his son might lose because of me. He beat him to keep him away from me. Oh god, my mother knew, she knew and that’s why she used to help us sneak around. Oh god…she knew.
“My mother knew, didn’t she?”
He shakes his head. “She didn’t know for sure, but yeah, she suspected it.”
“Oh god, Slade…this…this is my fault?”
He grips my face and rasps out, “No!”
“It’s because of our friendship. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you let me help you?”
“I couldn’t,” he whispers. “I couldn’t tell you because I couldn’t lose you Dash. I knew you would run. I knew you would do it to save me and I couldn’t bear it.”
“It’s why you started fading off in the few months before you left, isn’t it? Why you started becoming so cold towards me?”
“I did that because he was making me leave, he knew things were getting too close between us and so he organized my racing elsewhere. He knew I’d follow, I had no money to stay, racing was my life and I loved it. I was going, I didn’t really have a choice and I knew it would break you, so I figured if you hated me…”
“It wouldn’t hurt so much,” I finish for him.
“I know that was a stupid move, Dash, I really do. I was trying to protect you.”
“It’s why you treated me so badly when we saw each other at that race, isn’t it?”
“It killed me Dash, but he warned me so…hard…and I mean that quite literally. When I came back this time and I tried to be an asshole,