Messy Love(78)

Without realizing what I was doing, without keeping in mind that the big dude who hadn’t cracked a word could very well put a bullet in my head, I grabbed the asshole by the neck in one hand and twisted one of his arms behind his back with the other.

His wrist was tiny in my grip, so damn fragile his bones were the only thing I felt in my palm. He tried to wriggle out of my grip, but he was too weak by the drugs, the lack of muscles and he wasn’t blind with anger and fear like I was. It drove a man to great length.

“Fuck!’’ the big dude blurted and tried to get me off his junkie friend, but even if he had me by several pounds, I held on. “Let him go!’’

I grunted and pushed Tim against the brick wall. He cried in pain and closed his eyes tight, but that didn’t stop the crazy smile from stretching his lips wide until a crevice oozed blood.

“You better talk now,’’ I gritted out, my voice so tight it lashed out.

“Get off me,’’ he panted out as I squeezed his throat and pushed his arms higher on his back until I knew just a tiny little push would dislocate his shoulder. Just a push.

“Enough!’’ the guy yelled in my ear, getting me in a headlock that cut off most of my oxygen intake. It didn’t stop me.

“Who were you talking about? TELL ME!’’

And then it was over. The guy released me with a curse and cocked a gun to the back of my head. Right there in the middle of the afternoon, right where everybody could see.

I froze when the cold metal registered against my skull. Funny how my hair didn’t prevent me from feeling the weight of it and the coldness. The guy took off the safety, and I knew that if I didn’t release Tim his friend wouldn't think twice about putting that bullet in my head. I could end up there, bleeding out from the head, unrecognizable unless someone took my dental reports. I could get cold on the pavement while my parents would get a call to tell them I’d have been killed by gunshot, probably robbed.

And it would still boil down to one person.

My biological father.

Everything in me screamed to hurt Tim and get to the bottom of this, but even if I was driving people away from me, it didn’t mean that I was ready to leave them. My parents and Ava, they meant the world to me, and they deserved more than that pain. Ralph was my best friend and had been with me from the get-go. He was going through some shit and deserved someone to be there for him in return.

And Marissa.

Marissa was in my heart, so deep she made me want to believe, even now with a gun to my head and the prospect of getting my biological father in my life again all the more real, that better things could come.

One finger at a time, the joints aching from going against what I craved in the deepest of me, I released Tim and held up my hands in surrender. The asshole bumped his head against the wall when I stopped supporting him. His thin chest heaved. His crazed eyes settled on me with a quiet threat clear as fucking day.

The gun retreated from the back of my head and with it the big dude that crowded me.

“Don’t fucking move,’’ the guy warned and put a heavy hand on my shoulder as if to ensure I wouldn’t go after his friend again. Damn, I was dying to. I shook with the pent-up energy whirring through me. But I wouldn’t move. I chose my family, my best friend and the woman that ensnared me.

“You’re going to hurt, Wyatt,’’ Tim said darkly, spitting down near my shoes before he walked past me without another look, but he wouldn’t go without saying at least one last thing. “There are eyes on you, asshole.’’

Where I was burning up with rage and fear a moment ago, I froze instantly, my whole body going into what could only be hypothermia. I couldn’t be this cold for no reason. I couldn’t lose the sensations in my fingers and feet for no reason. And I sure couldn’t be feeling the ice in my lungs for no reason.

But it wasn’t for nothing, and the weather had nothing to do with it. Hell, it was late June already, and Atlanta wasn’t known to be cold at that time of the year. The asshole’s parting words found echo inside me as I looked around the street, stopping at everything I saw moving.

The cat that ran between cars a block down. The man that held his toddler’s hand as the kid pointed excitedly at a bird that shit on a car. The teenager that dribbled his basketball while walking up the street and bobbing his head, probably following the rhythm of the music playing in his ears. The lady that cleaned the window of her clothing shop.

And then, then I caught a man’s back as he entered a building nearby. A quick glance before the heavy door closed after him told me he was of average height, thinly muscled and with dark brown hair weaved in with gray hair. He could be anybody.

He could be my biological father.

Throat parched, heart unevenly beating in my chest and fear rendering me to the position of the little boy I used to be, the little boy that went into the corner of the closet that was used as his room to rock back and forth while hugging himself tightly in comfort.

I stood there frozen in the middle of the street, unsure if that man had been watching me. If he was my father. I stood there until the car I was standing next to beeped open, and a dapper suit walked briskly to it, distractedly and pointedly asking me to move.

I did. I moved and resumed my walk back home with the impossible certainty that the man hiding in the building had been my monster of a father.

***