Riders (Riders, #1)(26)

I nod. Breathe. Breathe and trudge out of the past.

The chemical taste of the drugs is still in my mouth, but not as strong as when I last noticed it. Cordero’s perfume hasn’t let up, though. It is legit breaking me down. Nose hair by nose hair.

“Okay,” I say, finally feeling back here. “Shoot.”

“You trusted her blindly?”

I have to think about that for a second. My dad would have said trust is blind. If you knew something for sure then it’d be knowing. Totally different thing.

“I’m not saying I’d bought in completely, but I was willing to go along. I knew she was my best option for figuring things out. But if you’re asking me whether I trusted her from the start? I think I did. It was just a gut feeling that she wasn’t going to lead me astray. But I also knew there was more to her. I could tell she was good at hiding things. At keeping things to herself. And I was right.”

“About which part? That you could trust her or that she kept secrets?”

“I still trust her, even though she lied to me. I’ll get to that part. And she did hide things from me, but for my own good. I’ll get to that, too.”

Cordero falls silent. I think I’ve confused her. Welcome to knowing Daryn.

I picture her the last time I saw her, in Jotunheimen. Night. The fjord burning around me. I’d been with the guys, waiting to be airlifted out. Waiting for Daryn to join us. Then I’d yelled my head off when I’d realized she’d chosen to stay behind.

Nice, Blake. Way to keep remembering this. Real helpful.

“Why did you wonder if you’re good?” Cordero is asking me.

I’ve checked out again. I need to focus. Finish this and get back to work. The Kindred are still out there. “Because I wasn’t sure.”

“Why weren’t you sure?” she asks.

I glance at Texas and Beretta. I know I’ve already said plenty that’s highly personal, but this … it’s something I’ve never admitted to anyone.

“Why wasn’t I sure?” I hear myself say, and I know the whole story’s on its way out. My mouth won’t stop. I’m hemorrhaging memories and personal failures. These drugs suck. “You have to understand something, Cordero. Before my dad died, I had friends, decent grades, some promise in baseball. I had everything. After, I tried to keep my life the same. I tried to hang on to all that. But it was like when you’re hanging on a pull-up bar. You’re good for a little while. Then your muscles start to shake, but you keep telling yourself hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. But eventually it’s not up to you anymore. Your muscles give out and you drop. That’s what happened to me. I held on for a while. Then I dropped. I dropped, but I didn’t want my mom or my sister to worry, so I tried to hide how far down I was.

“I kept going to school, but my grades slipped. I stopped playing baseball, but I’d still go to the games. For a while, I’d still go to parties with my buddies but, mentally, I just wasn’t there. I didn’t care. About anything. It all seemed meaningless. How was I supposed to care about calculus when my dad was gone? All I had was anger. Anger that was … immense. Immense and burning, like I was carrying the sun around inside me. I only let it go when I was alone, hiking or running. Camping. Around other people, I worked my ass off to keep it inside. I buried it deep, except for this one time when I didn’t.”

“What happened the one time?”

“I screwed up.” Hold, Blake. Hold the line here.

Cordero waits.

“It was after a baseball game senior year. I wasn’t playing. I was up in the stands, watching my old team take on one of our rivals. They always played dirty and the game was tense from the beginning. In the last inning, it got a lot worse when the pitcher for the other team purposely pegged my buddy Griffin, who I mentioned earlier, while he was batting. The ball hit Griff’s helmet, probably going around eighty-five miles an hour. A missile. He went down hard. His helmet was cracked. He could have died, but he didn’t. He was okay, but I wasn’t.

“People don’t understand how easy it can happen. How fast everything can just … change. I watched the rest of that last inning without seeing it. I was thinking about Griff and if he’d died. Thinking about the pain his family would feel. His little brothers, Reed and Caden. His dad. His mom. The whole time that anger in me was stirring up. Pure fire. I waited until the game was over. Until the pitcher was heading to the parking lot to get on the bus. Then I jumped him.”

“You attacked him.”

“I did. I got him down on the ground and I hit him until people pulled me off. I only threw a few punches but I messed him up. The guy had to have stitches around his eye and his mouth. He needed one of his teeth replaced.”

I pause and notice that my legs and my arms have tensed up and my muscles are twitching. Thinking about that night always starts an earthquake inside me. It makes me want to run until there are no thoughts left in my head.

“The only reason his parents didn’t press charges was because Half Moon Bay’s a small town and, as it turned out, his dad had met my dad once or twice. This guy, Mr. Milligan, he was an ex-Marine and I guess some kind of loyalty among warrior brothers kicked in. No police report was filed. I wasn’t eighteen yet. Nothing went on my record, so … I got away with it.”