Page 100 of Lucky Shot

I pull my phone out and open up social media. What the hell photo is Whitney talking about?

I see it within seconds. Me in the green shirt and my date, Kayley was in a tight, white dress that left little to the imagination. It was from three months ago on the first night of Xfest, an EDM music festival I was asked to attend.

But the gossip site it’s posted on said it was from an after-party I went to the night Whitney came to me at the stadium.

Fuck.

If I were her, I’d be pissed too. I’m so wrapped up in scrutinizing ways to prove to Whitney otherwise that I don’t notice her heading back toward me until the passenger door opens.

“Is everything okay—”

“Just drive,” she says quietly and then reins back in her emotion. “Please. Can you just get us out of here?”

I back out of the driveway as a means of response. Unsure where I’m driving, I meander through the streets, feeling like she needs a few minutes. Simply dropping her off and leaving her alone doesn’t feel like the right thing to do.

Nor is it what I want to do.

So I navigate the streets of wherever we are like a driver lost without directions.

“His dad’s a dealer. Always has unsavory people, criminals, whatever you want to call them, in and out of that damn house. It’s not the first time there have been cops there, but . . . hell if I’m not constantly worried about Joey. About what he sees and the danger his parents choose to actively put him in.”

“Bloody hell.” I sigh and run a hand through my hair. “That’s brutal.”

“She’s so hell-bent on loving her husband that she’s neglecting her son.” She sniffs but it doesn’t hide the anger in her voice. “How do you justify that? How do you fix that?”

“I don’t know that you can,” I murmur as I take yet another left.

“Exactly,” she says quietly as she looks out the window as I pull up to a red light. “I’d like to think that I can, but I can’t. Parents picking drugs over their kids. Like that’s a shocking twist.” There’s a level of disgust in her voice that goes way beyond what just transpired, and I can only assume somewhere in her personal story she understands this in a way no kid should.

“I’m sorry.” It’s all I can think to say, but I’m pretty sure it’s sufficient for the woman who refuses to allow anyone to pity her.

“So am I,” she says softly. “I know from experience how it feels for your mom to love something like that more.”

I reach over and place my hand on her knee. Her body stiffens, and I forget we’re in a “fight.” But I do something I never do, I let her in. “Yeah. Me too.”

Her head whips over to look at me while I continue to stare straight ahead. Fuck, man. “In my case it wasn’t drugs, but it was just as powerful. Money. Power. Affluence. It sounds bloody crazy, but she sold her soul and, in a sense, her son for them.”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

I repeat back to her what she said to me. “So am I.”

I drive aimlessly, snaking through the streets that have seen better days but don’t pay much attention to them. I’m lost in my own thoughts about figurative wounds that never heal and how easily they split back open unexpectedly at the inanest thing.

Whitney sighs and shakes her head in my periphery. “It’s a helpless feeling but I try my hardest.”

“It doesn’t go unnoticed.”

“The only thing I can do is give kids like Joey the same reprieve I had—soccer. This academy. A place where for just a little bit of time, they can feel like the world is a better place and hasn’t passed them by and forgotten about them.”

Jesus. The visual those words evoke is both gut-wrenching and beautiful. And you only added to it that first day you didn’t show.

“There’s no other love that should come between a mother and her child. None. Not a husband. Not a lover. Not a drug. Christ.” She says the words about Joey but has no clue how much they speak to me and the life I’ve lived.

I turn to study her profile as she looks out at the city beyond, so taken with her words that I miss that the light has turned green.

A horn honks to jar me out of my thoughts.

“Look, about earlier . . .”