God in heaven,hewas Aria’s dad!
I couldn’t have been more shocked. When she’d said she lived next door, she’d literally meantnext door.
Still, though, I never would have imagined he was her father, and it was weird since I didn’t think he was that much older than me.
“You told her it would be better not to go if she didn’t know what she wanted to do.”
God, I had said that, but I’d said some other good stuff too.
“I think you’ll find that I encouraged her to go.”
“By saying she shouldn’t go?” His eyes blazed, and I could totally see the melodramatic psychopath Aria had described. “You wouldn’t believe the hard work and effort I put into making sure she has a chance to go to college, so I don’t need her taking advice from some walking Barbie with daddy’s credit card who probably never went to college.”
Something snapped inside me, justsnapped. In the back of my mind, I remembered Aria telling me her father never listened to her. I saw firsthand that it was true, because I doubted she would have forgotten to tell him I went to Yale.
Once again, someone else had formed a negative opinion of me that they believed to be true, and it infuriated me. It infuriated me more because of what he said and because it was him saying it.
My hand rose up and landed upon his cheek so hard it left a mark.
“Fucking asshole. How dare you speak to me like that?” I cried, shocked at myself that I’d just slapped him—him, a cop who already had my name on his hit list. I didn’t care though. I really didn’t. He was out of line and deserved it. He didn’t know me; anyone who knew me knew to never talk about my father. “I went to Yale, and my father died for his country with a Medal of Honor.”
Just saying that stirred up memories I didn’t want to think about.
Walking Barbie with daddy’s credit card…
I wish.
Leaving him standing there, I jumped in my car and sped off.
The previous week I’d been so excited to be here, but now I just wanted to go home.
* * *
Ryan
* * *
It seemed like fucking things up was a daily thing for me, completely and utterly.
I remembered when I was sixteen and I first went to juvi. Mom and Dad were so disappointed in me, hated the self-destruct mission I’d been on. I hadn’t seen it that way then, and I didn’t until maybe years later when I started to look back on all the things I’d done. Having a child had made me grow up fast—faster than fast, like overnight fast. I had to.
This felt like that time when I was intent on destroying myself. I couldn’t see what I was doing until things went wrong, went to hell, and I’d ended up hurting people I shouldn’t.
Brooke couldn’t have been more right. I was a fucking asshole, and that was all I’d been to her since she arrived.
What was worse was that Aria saw what happened and was mad at me too.
That morning, we’d been talking about college. I’d said I wanted her to get home early so she could study, and that was when she’d told me about Brooke.
I remembered her talking, us arguing, and then she’d told me what Brooke had said. I hadn’t stayed to find out what else Brooke had said because rage had built within me. It had reached a boiling point when I saw Brooke sauntering out of her house without a care in the world, and suddenly I was moving—moving toward her and screaming at her.
I was basically telling her to keep her nose out of our business. Then I was offensive. Even if I didn’t know her, I shouldn’t have called her a walking Barbie with daddy’s credit card.
That slap had woken me up and made me feel like the asshole I was.
“I went to Yale, and my father died for his country with a Medal of Honor.”
Her words echoed in my mind, repeating long after she sped away and left me standing there, and they were still there as Aria launched her attack on me, telling me off for making her look bad to someone she admired.
