I rejected the offer every single time.
When I was in college, I came to terms with the fact that I would never know him. I thought I was at peace. I stopped hating Loren Hale for just existing. I stopped listening to my mother condemn a kid that had no say in being born. I slowly stopped talking to my father, losing contact because I didn’t need him.
The trust fund, I use. I figure it’s payment for all the lies I had to keep for that fucking asshole.
One day. That’s all it took to change my idealistic, head-in-the-fucking-sand, life. Outside at a college Halloween party, a fight started. I watched four guys on the track team—the one I was the captain of at Penn—go up against a lean-built guy. I recognized him from all those photos my father showed me.
He wasn’t how I’d imagined. He wasn’t surrounded by frat guys, crushing beers over their heads.
He was alone.
His girlfriend came into the fight later, to defend him, but it was too late. She missed the part where my teammate accused him of drinking expensive booze in a locked cabinet. She missed the part where Lo egged him on, just so the guy would swing.
He hit my brother. I stood and watched Lo get decked in the face.
It was in that fucking moment that I realized how wrong I had been. I didn’t see a prick with a hundred friends and cash up to his chin. Not a jock, not an athlete like me. I saw a guy wanting to be punched, asking to feel that pain. I saw someone so fucking hurt and broken and sick.
Four against one.
All that time, I wanted to live the life he had. I hated playing the bastard outcast when I was really the legitimate son. But if our roles were reversed, if I had lived with my alcoholic father, I would have been there.
That would have been me: tormented, drunk, weak and alone.
My father was trying to tell me that Lo wasn’t the popular kid I’d dreamed up. He was just as much of an outsider as I was. The difference: I had the strength to defend myself. I wasn’t beaten down by our father like Lo had been. I didn’t even contemplate the fucking horror of living with Jonathan twenty-four-seven, hearing the why are you such a pussy? comment every day. I had blinders on. I could only see what was wrong with me. I couldn’t fathom Loren getting a shitty bargain too.
That night at the Halloween party, I left the false peace I’d built for myself. It wasn’t a gut reaction. I stood there and watched Lo get beat on before I made a decision to intervene. And once I fucking made it, I never turned back.
“You want a glass of whiskey?” I give him a look. “Why don’t I just push you in front of a fucking freight train? It’s about the same.”
He stands up and lets out an agitated laugh. “Do you even know what this feels like?” He extends his arms, his eyes bloodshot. “I feel like I’m going out of my goddamn mind, Ryke. Tell me what I should do? Huh? Nothing takes this pain away, not running, not fucking the girl I love, not anything.”
I haven’t been where he is, not to this extent.
“You relapsed a few times,” I say. “But you can get back to where you were.”
He shakes his head.
“So what?” I narrow my eyes. “You’re going to drink a beer? You’re going to chug a bottle of whiskey? Then what? You’ll ruin your relationship with Lily. You’ll feel like shit in the morning. You’ll wish you were fucking dead—”
“What do you think I’m wishing now?!” he shouts, his face reddens in pain. And my lungs constrict. “I hate myself for breaking my sobriety. I hate that I’m at this place in my life again.”
“You were under a lot of scrutiny,” I back-peddle, realizing he doesn’t need me to be a hardass, something I revert to on instinct. I push people too much sometimes.
“You’re under the same scrutiny, and I didn’t see you breaking your sobriety.”
“It’s different.” I haven’t had a drink in nine years. “The media was saying some pretty awful shit, Lo. You coped the first way you knew how. No one blames you. We just want to fucking help you.” We’re all public spectacles, under constant gaze of cameras, because of the Calloway girls, the daughters of a soda mogul.
By proximity to the Calloways, we’ve been roped into the spotlight. It’s not fucking fun. I wear a baseball cap just to try to disguise myself, but thankfully cameramen have better things to do than film us this early in the morning.
But they’ll be out trying to get a picture of us at noon.
“You don’t believe them, do you?” Lo suddenly asks, his voice still edged.