Page 63 of Hard to Lose

Gunner

Seven Years Ago

Sal yanks my arm with a force that has my body screaming.

Everywhere. A 1965 Mustang doesn’t exactly have the same safety standards that cars nowadays have—and fuck, does every muscle and bone in my body feel it right now.

It doesn’t help that Sal’s fists did a number on me after he found out about the accident last night.

“Thank God, no one got hurt. Thank God, you’re all right.” My mom’s repeated words over and over did nothing to calm the situation. Not as he told her to leave the room. Not as he threatened she’d suffer the consequences if she didn’t let him teach me a lesson. Not as her eyes met mine when he shut the door, closing her out. Coward.

And then, I stood there with a shit-eating grin on my face and a fuck-you lift to my chin as he showed me with his fists and insults the “lesson” he wanted me to learn.

He yanks again, and I grit my teeth as he drags me to the corner of the strip mall, where we stand a foot away from the glass storefront so no one can really see us.

“So help me God, boy,” Sal sneers. “I’m going to make a man out of you one way or another.”

“So what? So I can be just as pathetic as you?” I counter. “I’m not going. Not a chance in hell.”

Sure, I crashed his car, but the prick had it coming to him. There’s only so much a man can take, so much second-string living a person should put up with—and I, right or wrong, reached my breaking point last night.

“I don’t think you’re understanding the situation, son,” he says, like it’s a slur. “You drove a car drunk, underage, and crashed it. You then fled the scene of an accident—”

“I did not. I called you.” And it took everything I had to do just that, but I was scared and hurt and Boone hightailed it out of there on foot so he wouldn’t get in trouble, since he’d already had some trouble with the law. “You came to pick me up and pulled the car out of there with your Jeep.”

His smile is gloating. “Really?” He feigns innocence. “Because from the way I recall it, and how I’ll gladly tell the cops when I file a report, my troubled stepson stole my car out of spite. And despite being only twenty, he broke into my liquor cabinet, got drunk, stole money out of my safe—”

“What are you talking about?”

He yanks my arm even harder, his fingers bruising and threatening on my bicep. “And after he stole my liquor, my money, and my car, he decided to go drinking and driving where he crashed my car, injured his passenger, and then fled the scene of the crime after damaging a fence and other personal property.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind.” I say the words, but silent panic is suddenly clawing its way up my throat.

“Am I?” He chuckles. “Officer, I know he’s my stepson and I love him dearly, but I think this time I need to teach him a lesson. I want to press full charges for all of these infractions, because this time he got off lucky and didn’t kill anyone, but next time . . . and there will be a next time, it might be a lot worse.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” But the look in Sal’s eyes says he would.

“I can be real convincing.” Another creepy smile that makes me feel like he’s been planning on getting me out of their life for some time now, and I just gave him the opportunity to put it in motion. “I already put in a call last night to my friend at the station. He said you’d be in a good three, four years.” He shrugs.

“Fuck this. Fuck you.” He’s bluffing. He wouldn’t. And yet deep down, I know he’s not. He’s been trying to damage my mother’s view of me ever since they got married. And now that my stepbrother Marcus is getting attention for baseball, wouldn’t it be easier to get rid of the one who shines brighter?

I feel sick to my stomach and not just because I’m hungover. But because he means it. He means this.

“By the look on your face, you’re getting it now.” He leans in closer so I can smell the stale smell of alcohol and cigarettes on his breath. “I own a piece of everything you are, Ryan.”

“Go to hell.”

His chuckle is low and degrading and has me clenching my fists. “What do you think your dad would say if he could see you now? At least he was an honorable man. At least he would have taken responsibility for his actions. At least—”

“You don’t know shit about my father.” Tears burn and rage fires inside of me. Fuck Sal. Fuck my father for never coming home and leaving me here with this asshole. And fuck my mother for letting this happen. All of it. Every damn part of it.

“What I do know, is that I’m marching you into this recruitment office and making you enlist, or I’m calling the cops and pressing charges. Fuck if I care. But you can spend four years becoming a man serving your country or four years behind bars being Billy-Bob’s girlfriend. You decide, son.”

My heart stops, fucking dies, at his words . . . especially when it hits me that we are literally standing ten feet from the army recruitment office’s doors.

I was so preoccupied worrying and anticipating another fist, that I didn’t think to notice where he parked. Where we were headed.

And now I’m frozen with dread.