I stare out at the passing scenery, face growing hot. Sebastian isn’t wrong. I knew coming here with him was a risk, like putting two lit bombs together in one room. Bass’s fuse had already been lit that morning with the altercation between him and Heston. As upset as I am at him, I’m even more pissed off at myself. I know it’s my own fault. I didn’t follow my instincts. In fact, I’ve been outright ignoring them for weeks now.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have brought you there,” I concede.
“Yes, you fucking should have!” He must see me flinch from the corner of his eye, because his shoulders drop, chest expanding with a deep inhale. “But you should have told me what I was walking into. You should have told me it was him—how fucking bad it was. At least then, I could have been a little smarter about it.” His bruised knuckles flex as he grips the steering wheel.
I know how he sees this. It’s just like that night at the docks. Bass storms in to save the day and ends up messing shit up. He means well—I see that now—but that doesn’t make it better. “I’ve handled it on my own for a long time, Bass.”
“With what?” He asks, shooting me an incredulous look. “Your knife? The panic attacks? By not letting anyone ever touch you? That’s not handling anything, it’s just helping you hide the problem.”
Irritation licks at the back of my neck and I flip it back on him. “Like I’m the only one not handling shit? Your whole life is one daredevil stunt after the other. Fights, street racing, pranks, police chases, concussions? You didn’t even give a shit when I threatened you with a knife! You came closer, like you were daring me to hurt you!” I swallow, watching his face darken with every word. “Don’t act like you’d handle it any better.”
“Yeah, I’d kick his fucking teeth in,” he argues, teeth gritted as the phone chimes with another ignored text. “If you’d heard some of the shit he said about you…” He’s getting worked up again, and that’s the issue.
“It doesn’t fucking matter. That wasn’t your fight, Sebastian. It doesn’t give you the right—”
“The people who had the right weren’t fucking taking it!” His hand comes down hard, loud on the steering wheel. “Your mom wasn’t even—and you. What the fuck were you doing, Sugar? You can’t let people treat you like that. You have to fucking—” He lets out this deep, frustrated sound when his phone chimes again. “You have to stand up for yourself.”
“Stand up for myself?” I ask, voice dangerously low. “You think I’ve just been going through life, getting the shit beat out of me like some passive little chew toy? You think I just sat there and did fucking nothing?!”
“That’s what it looked like to me.”
And the thing is, I’ve been pissed off a lot in my life. Most of it was impotent rage, just swirling around in my chest, completely without any place to really spend it. Despite that, I’m shocked to feel that nothing—not even years spent under Doug’s heel—has made me feel as irate as I do right this fucking second.
“How dare you.” God, I’m fucking shaking with it, entirely unable to keep the quiver from my voice. “How fucking dare you imply I’m to blame for this.”
He gives me a belligerent, shocked look. “I never said—”
“That’s exactly what you’re saying,” I volley back. “Because maybe you don’t know that I reported him when I was twelve. Hell, twice when I was thirteen! You obviously don’t know that each time, my counselor took me home, to my fucking mother, who told her I was just acting out. Clearly, it never fucking occurred to you how shit works sometimes when you aren’t the biggest name in school, so let me spell it out for you: No one fucking cares, Sebastian!” The phone chimes again and I consider chucking it out the goddamn window. “You know what each of those attempts at standing up for myself got me? I know you do. You’ve seen it on my back. So don’t you ever fucking suggest that I did anything less than survive, because that’s what I did. I survived. And that’s a hell of a lot more than some people manage.”
The car’s quiet for a long, suspended moment. Even the person texting him seems to give us a break for this—for Sebastian to feel like shit for even considering…
“Look,” he starts, but then the phone goes off again.
Fed up, I snatch it from the console to see what the fuck.
Saturday night
Just as I’m deciding that means absolutely nothing, another bout of texts comes in.
Or I might need a fix for my sweet tooth.
You can tell me just how good it tastes.
Or not. I’ll find out myself.
I thrust him the phone, nodding to the light we’re stopped at, about two blocks from Merle’s. “Your brother apparently has some very urgent business regarding food.” I’m thinking he’ll take the stoplight to reply to the messages, but that doesn’t happen.
He stares down at the phone, turns it off, sets it back in the console, and places his hands at perfect ten and two. He’s looking straight ahead when he says, “Don’t ever look at my phone again.”
I gape at him. “It’s been going off the whole drive!”
When he finally looks at me, I know that cold, empty look has nothing to do with what happened in the Briar Cliffs. This is the same expression he was wearing this morning. Shuttered and blank. “I don’t have any right to your life, but you have the right to mine?”
I swallow, something heavy and bitter landing in the pit of my stomach. “What’s the big deal?”
&nb
sp; “I told you I don’t like him knowing my business. I had a reason.” His nostrils flare, the muscle in the back of his jaw ticking. “You should have stayed upstairs.”