Page 19 of Hard to Score

Needing to understand.

“Drew.” He reaches out to touch my arm. I yank it from his reach as the anger bubbles over and the disbelief keeps rising. “I know it will be an adjustment for all of us, but it’s for the best.”

“You said they were wrong!” I scream, his lack of a reaction only adding fuel to my fire. “You told me it was a lie and you didn’t do it, and yet you’re just walking away? What are people going to think—”

“That’s enough!” His voice thunders through the room and sucks all of the oxygen from it.

My head spins. My heart races. Everything in my orbit tilts off its axis, and I can’t find my balance.

“I wanted you to hear it from me before you catch wind of it from the press. And after we leave this room, we’ll never speak of it again.”

“But—”

“Goddammit, Drew!”

His words startle me. Almost as much as his fist pounding on the TV cabinet beside him. They knock me back into the moment, into a reality I can’t comprehend nor do I want to.

“Did you throw the game, Dad? Did you?” I scream, not caring about respect or that he’s my dad. How is this happening? How is this possible?

“Son.”

“No.” I back away at the word, head shaking, mind not wanting to believe. My dad isn’t someone who would risk everything, risk our safety. He’s strong, he’s loyal to his team, his friends—He’s loyal to his friends. He’d do anything for them . . . No. Surely not. But what else could it be? Fuck. “It was Kenyon, wasn’t it?” I grasp at straws. “I heard—in the Keys. You guys were drinking and you were talking about betting on games. I thought . . . Oh my God.” I pull down on the back of my neck as my feet move, eating up space to abate my anger. “He did it, didn’t he? He did it and you’re taking the fall for it. That’s why you refuse to talk to the press about it. That’s why you’re slipping away quietly. Claire Kincade died and you’re going to take the fall for him, aren’t you?”

There’s a worried glance that my mom gives my dad. The look every kid knows that means you’ve caught them in something and she’s warning him to not speak.

Their eyes hold for a beat as Maggs looks over to me, tears welling in her eyes. She saw the look too. She knows something bad happened too.

“Dad, don’t bullshit me.”

“Drew!” My mother shouts—definitely at my cursing and defiance—but I don’t care.

“It was Kenyon, wasn’t it?”

“Drew! Do not mention his name in this house ever again,” my mom says sternly, her eyes meeting my dad’s briefly but I’m too amped up, too confused, and only feel like it reinforces what I’ve just said.

I’m in his face again, my chest bumping his, wanting a reaction out of him—needing a reaction from him. Needing to know that I’m right. “You would never do this. It’s not possible.”

But instead of him responding like I need him to, he turns his back to me and walks toward the windows. The ones that have their blinds closed to prevent the prying eyes of the press, who have been camped out in the front yard for the past few weeks.

They’re as hungry for an answer from my dad as I am.

“There will be some changes going forward,” he says when he finally speaks. “A new life for our family. Adjustments will have to be made.” And he continues on and on, but I stop listening, because he’s not saying the things I need him to say. The things I need him to explain.

And when he walks from the room, leaving us there with absolutely no answers, both my sister and my mom remain while I jog after him.

“Dad.” Desperation is in every thread of my voice and when he turns to face me, where he’s standing in the hallway, he’s framed in a way so there is no mistaking how beaten down he is.

Tears fill his eyes as our gazes meet. He offers me a somber nod, an apology without giving one, before turning his back and walking down the hall.

And it hasn’t been discussed since.

CHAPTER NINE

BREXTON

“SO THINGS WERE FINE AND then they all of a sudden weren’t?” Dekker asks from where she stands in the doorway. The sun reflects off her engagement ring and sends prisms all over my office, as I silently chastise myself for saying anything at all.

Of course, she was going to grab hold of that tiny morsel of information and demand a whole feast.