tell pulling out my teacher card had disarmed him.
“It’s just,” Howe continued, “it seems a little strange that he knew you were going to be at this place, then some guy attacks you, and he steps in.”
Kyle seemed to cringe.
“Wouldn’t be the first time a kid pulled a prank on a new teacher at the school. Am I right, Kyle?”
“What the—” Kyle started.
“I think if it was a prank between friends, he’s going to have a very pissed-off friend later,” I said.
Officer Howe seemed to appreciate my logic as he nodded. “Fair enough. But I’ll say it again, if that was really some methhead looking to take a wallet—and in this town, that’s likely the case—that was a dumb move. You don’t throw yourself between someone and a knife. Got it?”
“Yeah.” Kyle obviously wanted this whole thing to be over, and after what an ass Officer Howe had been, I more than understood why.
Fortunately, after his suspicion of Kyle tapered, he and his colleagues only asked us a few more questions until they were satisfied and moved along, promising they would contact us if they came up with a suspect matching my description.
Kyle seemed relieved when they finally drove off. “What a night,” he remarked, taking a deep breath.
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“About the way that cop acted, like you might have been involved. I know you wouldn’t have done anything like that.”
“You don’t really know me well enough to be sure I wasn’t.” He took another breath. “Anyway, won’t be the first time I’ve been accused of shit, or the last. Trust me.” Between his expression and the bitterness in his tone, it was a loaded comment. I couldn’t help wondering how his father being a known pastor in town played into it.
“As I told you before, and as Officer Howe said, you really should never throw yourself in the middle of something like that.”
“You gotta show fucks like that that they can’t get away with hurting people.”
I stood my ground. “It was dangerous.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? A thank-you is all I need for what I did back there.”
“That guy had a knife.”
“A dumb kid with a knife doesn’t scare me, Mr. Warner. Did you see the way he was holding that thing? I figured it was about to shake right out of his hand. Didn’t know what he was doing.”
“Well, you knew what you were doing when you were painting that gravel with his blood.”
I was being a little dramatic, but not by much. I did wonder where the hell a kid like him had learned to fight like that.
“I’ll have to file a report with the school too,” I added. “You might have to write up something for Administration.”
“Whatever.”
He was over the night, and I sure as hell understood why.
“You said you Ubered?” It was something he’d mentioned while the cops were chatting with us. “Do you need a ride? It’s the least I can do.”
He looked me over, almost like he was trying to decide if he could trust getting a ride from me, which seemed odd at this point, after everything that had transpired.
“Sure, Mr. Warner. Let’s do that.”
7
Kyle
As I buckled up in James’s car, he asked, “Where do you live?”
“Turn on your car.”
He hesitated, his expression twisting up, but he obeyed, giving me the opportunity to enter the address in the GPS on his dash.
He closed his eyes and laughed. It was nice seeing him smile after everything we’d been through that night.
“Oh, wow. Twenty minutes,” he said as the address popped up. “I didn’t realize you lived so far outside downtown.”
“You don’t know much about me.”
Maybe I was being a dick for iterating the fact. I wasn’t trying to be mean, but it was clear by the way he jerked back at my comment that he took it worse than I’d intended. Fuck, I was bad at being human.
“I know you have an impressive left hook,” he came back with, which broke the tension as we shared another laugh. He had this uncanny way of cutting right through the awkwardness, especially after that cop had been such an asshole.
He put the car in drive before heading out of the lot, into the street.
“‘At length from us may find, who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe,’” he noted.
“Is this a pop quiz on Milton, or are you trying to make a point? Because I’m pretty confident force served us fine back there.”