My heart is doing a freaking chicken dance. “Donny, what is it?”
“I just… So much. My dad. I need to find out who tried to kill him. I need to find out who trashed Brendan’s place. It’s all my fault, Callie. If I hadn’t worked with the energy board to…” He says no more. It’s almost like he can’t bear to say the words.
“Donny, you can’t bear the burden for all of this.”
“I put it into motion.”
“Maybe the whole thing with regard to Brendan’s place being vandalized. I’ll give you that. But your dad getting shot. All the new information about your family… That’s not on you.”
“What if it is? You don’t know my history, Callie.”
I feel like I’m back in a damned cage.
Those words that Donny uttered only days ago have haunted me since.
What did Donny go through before he became a Steel? Do I even want to know? Can I stomach it?
“We all have a history, Donny. We’ve all done things we regret.”
His face takes on a distressed look, as if something is trapped inside him, gnawing at him from the inside out. I can almost see his mind churning, taking him back to something he never thinks about.
I know, because I’ve seen that look on my own face lately whenever I stare into a mirror.
I never thought about this Pat Lamone stuff. For ten years, it lay dormant inside me.
Until he came back to town.
“Donny… Please. Let me help you.”
“No one can help me, Callie. You can’t help me. You can only help yourself.” He inhales, lets it out slowly, and then tilts his neck up and stares at the ceiling. “And the best thing you might be able to do for yourself is to walk away from me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
DONNY
A cage doesn’t have to have bars.
My cage is a concrete room. A bucket and a roll of toilet paper sit in the corner where we poop and pee. It’s gross, and the smell made my eyes water at first, but I don’t smell it anymore.
Maybe it stopped stinking. We don’t get much to eat, so we don’t go that often anyway.
Dale says we just got used to the smell. That’s why we can’t smell it anymore.
But I prefer to think that it stopped stinking.
It hurts down there. I’m not even sure what they did to me.
It’s not something I ever thought about. Ever. I didn’t even know something like that could happen.
Dale tried to explain it to me once, after the first time.
They had done it to him a couple of times before they took me. And he tried. He tried so hard to get them to take him instead of me.
I didn’t understand.
Until I saw it happen.
I saw them do it to Dale right in front of me.