into gear and we’re on the move once again. He lifts his fingers from the steering wheel to wave at the guard whose hard frown lines are impossible to miss.
Stone lets out a breath. “They’re not going to let this keep happening. My last name only goes so far.”
Wyatt turns onto his back, his hand moving out and falling against the backseat near my head. I have to slide out of its trajectory before it hits me. “I fucked up,” he grumbles.
“Huh?”
Lucas turns around from the backseat. “Don’t mind him. He blabbers when he’s shitfaced.”
I nod, and he drops his gaze to my steadying strokes through Wyatt’s hair. Without his cowboy hat, he looks younger. His face holds a more youthful expression, or perhaps that’s because he doesn’t have the strength to keep the hard glint in his eyes he usually carries.
I’m not over what he said earlier, but this guy, the one in front of me right now, is obviously broken. At least in this moment.
“She probably won’t talk to me again,” he says on a sigh.
Stone’s heavy gaze meets mine in the mirror, and it’s then that I realize Wyatt is talking about me. His words are slurred, almost as if he’s talking in his sleep. I guess this would be more aptly described as talking while passed the fuck out. “How did he even get the alcohol?” I ask the guys.
Lucas shrugs. “How does Wyatt ever do anything? When he sets his mind to something, he just gets it done. He probably took an Uber all the way here and made the driver stop at a convenience store off one of the exits.”
I think back through our conversation earlier at school. Something isn’t adding up. I’m not sure what I said or did that would’ve caused him to do this. He’s the one who yelled at me, after all.
“Girls are bitches, man,” he grumbles.
A growl works its way up my throat, but Lucas turns to put his hand on my knee. He shakes his head. “That’s not about you,” he whispers. Louder, he says. “We know, man. Everything’s good.”
“She killed my father.”
Horror rips through me, and I gasp.
Those words were quieter than the others, but I’m sure I heard him right. I try to twist them into saying something completely different but when I lift my gaze and see Stone staring back at me, I know there’s no way I heard it wrong. Someone killed Wyatt’s father.
“We know, man,” Lucas says.
I keep running my hand through his hair. He sighs into me, finally curling up until soft snores signal that he’s sleeping it off. I guess there’s the reason why Wyatt has issues with women? Whoever this “she” is fucked him up.
I lie my head back and close my eyes, wondering what horrors Wyatt has had to go through and just how far in his past these things happened.
We could drop a pin in the car and hear it hit. That’s how silent the car ride back to Jacobs Manor is. When we get there, Stone and Lucas get Wyatt to his feet. He’s combative at first, even taking a swing at both of them. He’s too drunk to do any real damage, and it allows Stone to wrap him up, leading him toward the house.
I lag behind, watching the whole thing as they take Wyatt to his room and close the door behind them. I stand in the hallway for a little while. I hear the pipes start to run water and then a string of curses travels through the walls as Wyatt pitches a fit.
Fingering the brim of Wyatt’s hat, I take it into my room with me. I set it on the nightstand and then strip, putting my PJ’s on, so I can slip into bed. Despite wishing sleep would come, my mind keeps wandering to Wyatt and what he said to me at school and how the night ended. I’m upset still, but I also long to know what makes that boy tick. All of them, actually.
I’m easy to figure out. Poor girl with barely any history. I mean, how much history can you have if you’ve barely ever left the house let alone the small town you live in? I’ve only started to gather a history since meeting the guys.
Here I thought I was on this grand adventure ever since I was a little girl, but now I know mine is just starting.
Halfway through the night, my door opens, and Wyatt steps