The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1)(53)

“Were you picturing bribery?” I ask quietly, still playing her tune from memory.

“Something like that.” She chews on her thumbnail, her eyes following me as I pace up and down the deck, head bowed, expanding now on what she played, throwing my own twist on it, adding my own sorrow into the mix. That's what this song is, after all: a haunting, beautiful, painful lament. When I'm finished, I sit on the deck again, Indian style, laying the guitar flat over my legs, so it doesn't get scratched.

“I want to tell you what happened to me,” Silver says. “But I worry.”

“What are you worried about?”

“That you’ll hear all of the gruesome, messed up details and you won’t be attracted to me anymore. You’ll feel sorry for me instead, and I don’t want that.”

“I can guarantee you, there is nothing in this world that could ever make me unattracted to you, Silver. And I’ll be sorry that something so fucking horrible happened to you, but I won’t pity you. You’re too strong to deserve anybody’s pity. What else?”

“I’m worried you’ll do something stupid. You said something pretty disturbing in the café. You said you were gonna hurt them. And you didn’t say you wouldn’t do anything to them after that.”

This is a tough one. Urgh. “I didn’t take back that comment, because I don’t plan on lying to you. Ever. And I will hurt them for what they did to you. D’you think they deserve to walk around, free, after causing so much pain? D’you think they won’t do it again to someone else if they’re left unchecked?”

She looks doubtful. “You forget I heard that conversation outside Darhower’s office. You’re on your final warning. If you do anything illegal, you’re gonna end up in jail, and that’s not something I can live with. Not for me. Plus, if you use violence against them, the way they used it against me, then how does that make you any better than them?”

Drumming my fingers against the top of her guitar, I consider this. The solution I come up with doesn’t make me happy, but it’s something at least. “What if I don’t do anything illegal? Or use violence?”

“How could you possibly avoid it?”

“I’m a resourceful guy. If I have to, I’ll make it work.”

“I don’t want to testify,” she says miserably. “I can’t face that. My parents wouldn’t be able to live with themselves if they knew.”

“They don’t know? Any of it?”

“You don’t understand. It’s not as simple as just telling them something bad happened to me. They had me so young. They’re good parents, but they have so much going on, Alex. They both work like crazy, and Max needs all of their focus. He’s just a kid. If I tell them this, he’ll fall by the wayside. Everything will be about me. Their lives will stop. I can’t do that to them. I can’t do that to Max.”

I can see how she’d think that, but her perspective is so warped. “They’re your parents, Argento. When they eventually do find out about this, they’re going to be so fucked up. They’re gonna be devastated that you didn’t trust them to have your back.”

She looks away, out over the lake; clearly, she doesn't want to hear this. She wants me to just understand and accept that she's made the right decision. I'm not going to get her to change her mind, so instead, I press for the offer I just made her. “How about it? All above board. A legal takedown. Not a single drop of bloodshed in the pursuit of justice?”

“And no testifying on my part.”

I sigh. “Fine. No testifying on your part.” She waits, considering my proposal, her eyes searching the calm water. “Come on. Don’t you want a little payback? Just a little revenge, for everything they put you through?”

“Of course I do.”

“Well?”

“Okay. If you think it's possible to accomplish that within those parameters, then you have my blessing. Do whatever you want. I'll give you a blow by blow account of what went down that night. But I'm not as brave as you, Alex. I don't think I can get through it if I have to say it out loud. I'll write it down, but you have to swear you'll burn it once you've read it. You have to fucking promise me, Alex. And you can't treat me any differently afterward.”

Mr. Elliot, my old therapist, would have balked at this deal. He would have said it would be better for her to say it out loud, that there would be some sort of catharsis to be had that way, but shit. Who am I to argue with her? If this is the way it's gotta be, then this is the way it's gotta be. I give her a three-fingered salute. “Scout's honor. I love a good fire. You have my word.”





21





SILVER





We spend the rest of the day watching movies and talking. We pretend like Alex didn’t tell me the story of his mother’s botched suicide, and I haven’t agreed to write a fucked up essay on that one time when I got sexually assaulted. He tells me more about his brother, about how he and Ben were placed in a couple of homes together in the beginning, but that they kept getting separated over and over again when Alex began to act out and made life difficult for their foster parents. He’s angry when he tells me about the woman who’s looking after Ben now—a legal secretary over in Bellingham called Jackie. She makes it hard for him to see his brother, switching up his visitation days, snooping into his business, reporting him to C.P.S. whenever he puts a foot wrong.