Rebel at Spruce High (Spruce Texas Romance #5) - Daryl Banner Page 0,32

art, and …” I can’t believe I’m defending someone I barely know to my parents. “He’s a good person, Mom.”

My dad lightly adds a useless, “He doesn’t sound bad at all,” to the discussion as he continues to cut his steak. Another curt noise from my mother’s throat, and he sets down his knife to face me. “Well, it’s also important to have influential people among your social circle. For instance, I just met Mayor Raymond today. The Mayor of Spruce! A bit of a dull conversationalist, but still, I—”

“Yeah, well maybe I can be the influential person in my social circle,” I cut him off. “Maybe I made a statement yesterday that I don’t tolerate bullying. Or is it that you want me to befriend these bullies? These people you say are … oh, what was it?” I turn my harsh eyes on my mother. “The ‘next Tanner Strong’ …? This town is doomed if that jock Hoyt is really the future of this place.” I get up from the table and toss my napkin at my plate.

“Donovan,” clips my mother’s voice coldly.

I’m up the stairs and back in my room, the door shut before I can hear another word from my parents. In the dark, I march over to my desk, sit at it, click on the lamp, then get right back to work on my drawing. I blacken the wings even further, daring for the shadows to consume it. Art is the only thing that tempers my fury.

It’s a whole hour later that a set of knuckles softly touch my door. As expected, it’s my dad’s head that pops in. “Son?”

I keep my back to him as I draw. I don’t respond.

“Are you working on something?”

“Just a thing,” I finally reply, then turn around. Only his facial hair is lit by the desk lamplight, making him appear like a floating mustache at my door. “Mom still mad at me?”

He slides partway into the room. “We spoke. Again. At length. She’s downstairs working on some things. Do you remember when we moved from California to Chicago? Our first move?”

“Yeah, I left all my childhood friends I grew up with.”

“I think it did a number on you. Maybe more than any of us want to acknowledge. I think a part of you might … resent me for taking you away from your community.” His eyes drop to a box of things I still haven’t unpacked, sitting outside my closet. “And yet again leaving Chicago for New York. And finally leaving New York for … well, for this small Texas town you can’t even find on a map, within arm’s reach of Houston and Austin and San Antonio.”

“Must be a really long arm,” I mumble.

He finds my sarcasm funny, giving one breathy chuckle. Then he comes into my room and sits on the edge of my bed, his eyes dancing around, taking in the walls as he gathers thoughts. “The thing is, son, I want good people in your life. Not like the rich kids you got twisted up with in New York. Or the street punks in Chicago. If you believe this Toby is a good, well-meaning person … then I think that just might be the sort of friend you need.”

“That makes one of you.”

“As for your mother … you know she loves you. She cares for you in her own way. We’re just concerned about seeing the same pattern of behavior play out here that played out up in New York.” His mustache twitches with irritation before he looks over at me. “We don’t want a repeat of that, Donovan. None of us do.”

I avert my gaze, thinking about that night that should never have happened, when my friend decided to take us all out in his dad’s BMW for a joyride. It wasn’t our first time to do something reckless together, but it sure was our last. And after a school year full of bad choices, playing with my trust-fund friends’ money, and narrowly avoiding the inside of a jail cell, that joyride was the nail in my carefree coffin. And that’s an especially comical way to say it, since what he ended up crashing his dad’s BMW into was the rear of a parked hearse. Thankfully, no one was inside—alive or dead—but it sure made for an entertaining scolding. “Is that what you want?” shouted his father an hour later on that very curb. “To end up in the back of a hearse? Dead? My