“The Smith & Wesson under my bed would beg to differ.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder and arches an eyebrow at her ex-husband. There’s a confidence to her stance now, like she’s found some sort of equilibrium here.
I know she’s lying about the gun. She better be, at least, or Cade will have one more thing to lose his mind over.
Kris turns to look at me, and for a second she lets the false bravado fall and sighs.
“Really, Silas. He’s an asshole but he’s not here to murder me with a skanky accomplice. This is my mess, let me take care of it. You can help me by getting the girls out of here. They shouldn’t have to add more fights witnessed to their shitty childhoods.”
I hesitate again. I don’t want to go, but I also don’t feel like I have the authority to tell Kris what to do in her house. And the girls are probably crying all alone in my truck right now, wondering what’s going on.
“Fine,” I say, terrified that I’m making the wrong choice. “I’ll take them home, but Cade is on his way.”
Shit. Actually, I still haven’t called him.
“Okay. Go.”
She waves me away, and Kyle looks at me with no interest, now that it’s clear I’m not going to fight him. Unease sits heavy in my gut as I let myself out, but at least the whole situation felt significantly less like a powder keg.
As soon as I’m outside, I see that I was right and the girls are crying in the truck. Shit. I quickly text Cade 911 asking him to call me as soon as he can and then head for the driver’s seat. He probably can’t leave shift, but as soon as he’s not in the middle of saving someone’s life, he should be able to call me and tell me what to do. Because I have no idea what just happened, or if any of what I did even helped.
Chapter Four
It was difficult to understand what Silas was saying when I called him back. Which was right away, because while he’d been running around dealing with whatever clusterfuck of drama my family dealt him, I haven’t had a goddamn call in hours. The rig is clean, the station is clean, and I’ve spent the last hour trying to convince Tristan to start a queer EMS workers TikTok account with me, when I could have been fucking helping.
My dad showed up. Silas is taking the girls to our house, and Mom refused to go with him. There was also a random other woman there, but no one knows who she is.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I feel dumb as hell for letting myself get complacent. I got wrapped up in doing normal-people shit, and for just a fraction of a second, I forgot that I was trash, and this is what happens when you’re trash.
“Whatever it is, we’ll take care of it.”
Tristan’s rational approach to this situation is a lot more comforting than blind optimism would be, at least. He’s realistic. He knows there’s no instant fix for it and he hates cops almost as much as I do, so I’m glad he offered to come with me. In the past couple of months he’s also grown a mustache, which either makes him look like a hot West Hollywood OnlyFans model or a violent beat cop from the seventies, depending on the day. Hopefully, my dad’s brain will go the cop route, not the gay route, and be intimidated into leaving.
The duty manager on shift today is chill, thankfully, and she unofficially gave us permission to go check on my mom as long as we stay within our service area and dropped everything like normal if a call came through. It’s not technically within the rules, of course, but that’s one of the benefits to working someplace small where everyone lives in each other’s pockets. It’s easier for things to slip through the cracks sometimes.
I really hope we don’t get a call until this is resolved, but of course the EMS gods are not going to let me get away with this shit for long.
The cab of the ambulance bounces as we ease up the long gravel path that passes for my driveway. Well, it’s not my driveway anymore, I guess, but still. We pull up in front, and I can’t see any immediate signs of property damage or destruction. Not like last time, when Dad spent at least half an hour outside yelling shit and throwing anything that wasn’t frozen to the ground.
That’s a good sign, but I don’t get my hopes up. I keep having brief flashes of possibilities run through the foreground of my awareness, and they’re all so bad, I can’t tease apart which ones are realistic or not anymore.
Maybe he attacked her, and inside there’s some horrific, gory nightmare scene that’s going to haunt me forever.
Maybe they’re getting back together, and they’re both going to spiral back into drug abuse until they both OD and I have to fight for custody of Maddi and Sky.
Maybe Silas mistook someone else for my dad, and it’s really some fucking debt collector or something here to kidnap my mom and turn her out because she owes money she hasn’t told me about.
They’re all equally ridiculous and not, at the same time.
My breath is coming in quick, shallow puffs as Tristan and I pile out of the rig and jog toward the door. I can feel his eyes on me, but he doesn’t say anything. He puts his hand on my shoulder when I open the door, though, and I try to mentally hang on to that feeling of solidity.
I’ve never relied on an adult for shit. And Tristan barely qualifies, despite being almost a decade older than me. But right now, the squealing, grasping part of me that doesn’t want to face whatever’s inside needs that reassurance to lean into.
Inside, it doesn’t look like anything I was expecting. The quiet manages to set my nerves on edge even more somehow. I was amped up and thrumming, ready for a fight, and this unsettling level of calm only makes me feel more paranoid that something is deeply wrong.
Mom is in the kitchen, tapping out something on her cell with a cigarette pinched between her first two fingers—the skin there yellow-tinged and leathery from constantly being in this position—and a pile of ash crumbling on the Formica beneath her.
So much for no more smoking in the house.
