I gritted my teeth to keep from responding as my face slowly turned back towards hers.
“You made his life a living nightmare,” she said. “And I didn’t have the guts to stand up to you back then. But I promised myself that if I ever saw you again, I’d make sure it happened.”
I looked down into her face, seeing Derrick in her eyes as her nostrils flared with anger. People were peeking around the corner with their nosy-ass looks, trying to figure out where that horrendous sound had come from.
My cheek burned with an anger that filled my gut.
“Three years of therapy, Grayson. Three. You and Andy Prentice, the two of you are disgusting. You terrorized that high school at the expense of your own pleasure and you didn’t give a shit who you ruined in the process. The two of you were selfish, and for no other reason than the fact that you were both spoiled little brats.”
I bit down onto my tongue to keep from firing back at her.
“Go back to wherever the hell you came from. Because this town might be sinking, but at least we plugged the hole you and Andy created. And when you leave, take that pathetic excuse for a human being with you. Andy isn’t welcome, and neither are you.”
Then she stalked away, pushing her cart up the aisle as everyone stared with wide eyes and dropped jaws.
I felt the handprint glowing on my cheek and shame and guilt rising up my throat. I calmly finished my shopping, well aware of the outline making an appearance on my skin. I had gravely underestimated the reaction this town would have if I ever came back to it. I figured they had all forgotten about me. Like my mother had. Like my father had. But apparently, they hadn’t. Apparently, I had been such a shitty human being that this town was constantly on alert for me.
For Andy.
I sighed as I went through the cashier’s line, and I could tell he was checking me out faster than normal. Trying to get me out of there as fast as he could. I felt people’s eyes on me as I paid the man, then stuck everything into the cart and pushed it out into the parking lot. I stood there underneath the harsh Illinois sun and waited for Michelle, my head on a swivel as I searched for my rental car.
I had about fifteen minutes to kill before she was due to show back up.
Just because Andy liked me didn’t mean everyone else did, and Andy’s endorsement of my being back in town was probably what stirred up those emotions in the first place. People I thought I couldn’t impact at all I had actually impacted the most. And not in a good way. I started to wonder if this town was as relieved to see me go as I had been to get out of it.
The thought made my chest hurt.
I hated this place and all of the memories that came with it, but it was still my home. It was still the place where I was born and raised. And what did it say about me if my own home wanted me gone? Did I have a home if my home didn’t want me? If my own hometown wouldn’t accept me, then did that mean I never really had a home to begin with? I felt like that lost little seventeen-year old boy, freshly beaten by his father and filled with an anger and betrayal I didn’t know what to do with.
Maybe staying in town hadn’t been the best decision after all.
I knew I’d been an asshole as a child. A powder keg on the verge of exploding. I had been angry. Frustrated. Too big for my age and looking to take out my fear on someone else. Putting the fear of God in others was how I coped with my own fear once I stepped through the front doors of my father’s house, but that didn’t make what I did right. Admitting to myself that I had been a bully was hard because I had stepped in on my football coach many times when I thought he was bullying a member of the team. I’d made myself that buffer. Made myself that fence between angry coaches and innocent players.
It was hard to admit to myself that there was a point in my life where people felt they needed a buffer from me. But just because it was a hard pill to swallow didn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. It was obvious people were in pain because of my arrival in town. Haunted by my past actions enacted in high school, because I was a little shithead.
I put my hands to my mouth before sweeping them into my hair, taking with it the bullets of sweat appearing on my brow. I looked at my watch and saw I still had another five minutes. Five more minutes to dwell on my life as a teenager in this town and how mu
ch of a shitty human being I had been during those years.
The NFL straightened me out. College straightened me out. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t left this town with destruction in my wake. I’d used my anger towards my father and my hatred towards my mother to justify my actions, but that didn’t make them right. The idea of leaving that kind of pain behind—the kind of pain that stuck around for years while I prospered and garnered my billions—made my stomach turn.
I brought my hand up to my cheek and smoothed out the redness on my skin as I saw my rental car pull into the parking lot. I could only hope that when I left this town again, I left it with a positive interaction instead of a bad one.
Because if this town deserved anything, it was a little reprieve from the negative actions of those that inhabited it. Anton knew that. Something told me Michelle knew that. And it was time I started believing in that. No matter how much I wanted to leave this place in my dust, and no matter how many times I told myself I never wanted to come back, that didn’t mean I could discard it without caring about what those in town thought and felt in the process.
That was a lesson I didn’t understand as an eighteen-year old drafted for football.
But as a grown man, it was a lesson I’d make sure I carried with me.
Chapter 22
Michelle
I walked into the diner Stillsville boasted of. It was a place I frequented often. I had even worked there for a spell until Anton gave me the job taking care of his property, but a part of me did miss the place. There was always someone greeting me with a smile, ready to rush up to me and give me a hug.
Today, that person was Cecily.
“I’m so happy to see you!” she exclaimed, as she wrapped her arms around me.