The answer to that could be found in a heavy truth I hadn’t even admitted to my friends: Dick DeWitt owned me. That wasn’t hyperbole; it was a fact. This interaction was more than a case of small-town unpleasantness. It was my boss checking in on me.
While there was no way in hell I’d have knowingly signed a deal with this particular devil, I’d been focused on better percentages in my most recent negotiations, not the fact that my contract could be sold. It took me far too long to discover that the person who now stood to make the most money off my sales—the one who, behind a multitude of shell corporations, owned basically everything I’d ever done—was Dick DeWitt.
Once I’d known the score, I had been too ashamed to tell anyone.
“Maybe you missed the news, but that littleincidentput me in the hospital. My doctor has recommended that I stay off the road for an extended amount of time, and I am following her recommendation.”
“Your doctor’s recommendation doesn’t take into account your contractual obligations.”
I shifted on a bit of loose asphalt. “You should read the contract again,” I said, though I knew this was only a temporary reprieve. In the long run, he still had me over a barrel. “I’m to fulfill all touring obligations unless I am deemed physically or mentally unfit. Pretty sure it’s a toss-up which one applies right now, but considering that I’m a month out from a feeding tube, I’m guessing you don’t have a leg to stand on.”
“You’re well enough to drive yourself around town,” he pointed out.
“Barely,” I said, with a smile I didn’t feel. “I’ve got a lot of recovery still to go.”
He lingered, assessing me from top to bottom. If his sour expression was any indication, he found me lacking. He knocked twice on the edge of the truck bed. “My lawyer will be in contact with your doctor.”
With that, he stepped onto the sidewalk and disappeared around the corner, leaving me nauseated and powerless. It was a DeWitt family trait, going after people they perceived to be weak. I let myself into the truck and shivered as I recalled the encounters with his son that had set us on this path.
I leaned against the fence at the far end of the baseball practice field, waiting for my cousin as the wind whipped my carefully styled hair into a spiky mess that matched my mood.
I’d started out the year thinking high school would be so much better than middle school. However, being a freshman—afish, as the seniors called us—was not at all what it was cracked up to be. Most of my classes sucked, hardly any of the jocks appreciated my humor, and I’d landed in the principal’s office so many times he’d decided I should be the school mascot, on account of the fact that I couldn’t sit still.
Upside: in the coyote mascot uniform, I was catnip to cheerleaders of all genders.
Downside: the uniform made me a pretty easy target for bullies.
“Hey, shrimp dick!”
Fuck.Speak of the devil.
A chill raced down my spine, and my breathing sped up. Fucking Chase DeWitt. As much as I hated the assholes in high school, I especially hated the one guy who kept lurking on school grounds even though he’d graduated.
Chase and his friends had fucked up Holden Paige so badly last summer that he’d almost died. Beckett and I had discovered him near the big senior bonfire, broken and bleeding out on the forest floor. I’d had Beckett wrap his belt around Holden’s upper arm to stanch the worst of it while we waited for emergency services to arrive.
We later learned that he likely would have died if we hadn’t found him, and I always shuddered to think about how close the Paiges had come to losing their son. Chase and his buddies should’ve copped an attempted murder charge, but the DeWitt family connections had taken care of that.
Needless to say, Chase was not my biggest fan.
“Hey, shrimp dick! Are you deaf?”
He’d tried to intimidate me all year, but I was always surrounded by my friends. Except for today.
Fuck a duck.
“Why are you so interested in my dick, Chase?” I tossed back, my mouth writing a check I had no hope of cashing, especially when I realized that he wasn’t alone.
Surrounded by the same losers he always hung out with, Chase looked down his nose as he shoved me, forcing me back against the fence. “Whatever, you shrimp-dicked little f?—”
I cut him off, grabbing my junk. “Why don’t you ask your sister how big my cock can get?”
I didn’t even know if he had a sister, but the way the veins bulged in his neck told me that I’d hit a nerve.Good.
Or… maybe not. Chase and his dickhead friends circled me, two of ’em wearing shitkickers. Dammit. One of these days my mouth really was going to get me killed.
Chase’s snarl was vicious. “Shouldn’t a said that, you tiny piece of shit. Lane, hold him. Let’s show him what happens to guys with big mouths and tiny dicks.”
I turned to run, but Lane grabbed me, bruising my skinny arms. I shouted for Ozzie at the top of my lungs, but it felt like my voice didn’t have any reach past this dark circle of angry young men.
