Page 108

FIFTEEN YEARS OLD

“What the fuck, man? Where’d you get all that dough?” Trevan kept his voice lowered as he angled in toward Silas.

Silas glanced at his closed bedroom door like his mom might have her ear pressed to the other side of it.

Satisfied they were alone, Silas let Trevan take a closer peek at the pile of cash stuffed into his backpack.

“Got a job,” Silas said.

Trevan’s brows might as well have hopped a plane with the way they hit the sky. “A job? Where’d you find a job that pays you like that around here?”

Besides, he knew firsthand that Silas already had a job. At the mercantile. Same as him, and that shit was part time and minimum wage.

Silas cringed. Guilt skimmed off him like toxic vapor, and his eyes dropped to the floor.

Nerves rattled through Trevan. “Dude, what’s going on?”

“My dad…” Silas trailed off.

A surge of anger mushroomed inside Trevan.

A fucking atomic bomb.

He’d never met the bastard, but he’d seen him driving around out front a couple times. Trying to get back in Silas’s mom’s good graces.

Fat chance of that, considering the guy had gotten Silas into a whole ton of trouble when he was young. Making him steal and take the fall. Plus, he’d been abusive to Silas’s mom, Christina.

As disgusting and pathetic as the men Trevan’s mother loved to drag home.

Christina Mercer was a whole ton wiser than his mom, though.

Kinder.

Understanding.

She had welcomed him into their home like he belonged when he knew he would never truly belong anywhere.

The same as Meems had done. Insisting that he call her that. The women caring for him as if he could ever be worthy of being a part of their family.

His mom never let him forget he had nothing to offer.

It made Trevan sick to his stomach to think of Silas getting messed up with that guy.

He was his dad, yeah. He got having a hole in your life and wanting to fill it.

But Trevan had heard the stories. Saw the wounds that had been inflicted.

“What the hell, Si?” Trevan wheezed between his teeth.

Silas sank down onto the side of his bed and burrowed his head into his hands, then dropped them like bricks. He pinned Trevan with a harsh stare. “I didn’t tell you for you to judge me.”

Frustration puffed from Trevan’s nose, and he rubbed anxiously at his chin. “I’m not. I just…you’re working for him? Where?”

Silas looked at the wall.

Shame so thick that it was suffocating.

Anxiety twisted through Trevan. A foreboding that made his knees shake.