“It most definitely does. You think I don’t remember you from that day?” I ask him.
“That day is the least of our concerns.”
“Ourconcerns?”
He shuffles on his feet and flicks the butt of his smoke on the ground before snubbing it out with the toe of his boot. “Your boy is getting himself into some serious shit.”
My stomach takes off like a bird in flight. “What are you talking about? Wait.” I squeeze my eyes shut and tighten my arms around myself. “You can at least tell me what your name is before you say more.”
“Finn.”
“Okay, Finn. Well, I’m?—”
“Violet, yeah, I know. Can we cut past the pleasantries? You need to talk some sense into your boyfriend before he fucks up his life worse than it already is.”
I rub my lips together and inhale a deep breath, wanting to reach out to Colson but also knowing it’s not my place to do so. He took that away from me, from him. “Colson and I aren’t together anymore. What he does isn’t my business.”
“Fuck that.”
“Excuse me?”
His voice turns harsher. “I said,fuck that.Whether he wants help or not, he needs it, and it can’t be from me. So it’s either you or his rich, money-whipped cousin. Pussy always wins, which is why I came to you first.”
“You don’t need to be rude.” I balk but then curiosity gets the best of me. “What’s he doing that’s so bad?”
Last I knew, Colson was holing himself up in his house and drinking straight from the bottle. What could he possibly be doing that could fuck up his life more? Part of me wants to walk away and not give Finn the time of day, but then I think about the what-ifs.
What if Colson really is in trouble?
What if he needs someone?
What if he needsme?
What if he needs me and I…I ignore that?
“Talking is pointless. It’d be better to show you.”
“You think I trust you enough to get in a car with you?” To this day, instinct tells me that he’s the reason behind Colson showing up at my door with a bloody lip and bruised torso. Nothing good can possibly come from following his lead. What if he’s just saying this to get me alone and then, I don’t know, something bad happens?
I don’t know the full story because Colson never shared it with me, but there’s something there. I can feel it in the way my stomach squeezes.
“You don’t need to trust me. You need to ask yourself how much you care about him.”
I swallow and croak out, “I care about him more than you’ll ever know.”
“So then let me show you.” He starts walking and leads the way as if it’s just that simple. That easy to follow him into the unknown.
“Wait,” I call out, watching his retreating form. He’s a silhouette in the night. A dim and mystifying outline of a man who can’t be much older than Colson. “I’m not…I don’t think this is a good idea. I need more from you.”
He takes three large strides back until he’s a headspace away. “Listen, Violet, I don’t really feel like standing here and shooting the shit with you. Facts are, Colson is losing his fucking head after finding out thathisfather ismydad. And maybe that doesn’t mean shit to you. Maybe it means a whole fucking slew of things. Either way, he’s making decisions based on emotion instead of logic, and it’s going to get him killed just like it did his mom. Is that what you want? You want to see him go out even faster than she did? Because the people he’s associating with will put a bullet in his goddamn head and put him six feet under if he so much as thinks about double crossing them.”
My head spins.
His father is my dad.
Bullet in his goddamn head.
Six feet under.
