All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(26)
“You want to talk about Lawayne. Right now. And this is how you bring it up.”
“I said watch your damn mouth. I won’t say it again. You’re big, but I’ve busted bigger, and trust me, babe, I can bust you. I can bust every inch of you, believe it.”
“If you want money—”
“Fuck you.” Dad delivered the two words like they were cartridges sliding into the chamber. “Lawayne says you got something. Something that’s his.”
Technically, I didn’t, not anymore, but I tried to keep anything from showing on my face. During my search for Samantha’s killer, I had broken into Lawayne’s office and taken his gun. When Luke had taken me captive, he had tossed the gun down a storm drain. For all I knew, it was still there, but I hadn’t retrieved it for one simple reason: I didn’t have a safe place to hide it. When Lawayne had tried to coerce me into helping him, I had threatened him with the stolen gun—specifically, I had threatened to take it to the police. Since then, Lawayne and I had been in a stalemate, but I knew it couldn’t go on forever. Lawayne wasn’t the kind to leave loose ends, and I was about as loose as they came.
“Well?” Dad said.
“I don’t have it.”
“Bullshit.” He jabbed a finger at me. “Bull-fucking-shit, don’t lie to me. Don’t you dare lie to me. You got it, and he wants it, and I’m squeezed in the middle. Squeezed, baby, squeezed like my head’s going to pop off if this keeps up. So give it up.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Give it to me.” Spittle flew from his mouth and dappled the sofa. “Right now. Give it to me, give it to me.”
Dad didn’t get sprung, not like Mom. No compression, no tightening, nothing like degrees. Dad was a firework, or a rabid dog, or a heart attack. When Dad hit, Dad just fucking hit, and right then, he lunged for me.
I threw the door open and raced into the chilly October afternoon.
I ran for a quarter mile, and Dad ran after me—barefoot, red-faced, swearing at God and the Devil and everything in between. Eventually, though, he gave up, and I finished the walk into town at a slower pace. I shoved my hands in my pockets, to keep them from shaking, and my breathing had this funny hitch to it, like it was broken in one place and I kept hitting that same spot over and over again. Cars raced past me, fast, so fast, and my heart was trying to go faster. I counted to a hundred. I counted it out again. I took deep breaths, but nothing worked, nothing really worked, because I couldn’t breathe, and because I was hot, and because the world had shrunk down to this tiny gray cylinder of sky and asphalt and cars kept racing past me.
I knew what I needed, but I wanted to do it my way. The other night, at Bighorn Burger, I’d been careless. Sloppy, to be honest. And now Becca knew, and now Austin knew. Or at least, they thought they knew. So I wanted to do it my way, and I wanted to be careful. Austin’s house was on the other side of town, so I stopped at Lumber Jack’s and bought a package of razor blades. In the customer restroom, I locked myself in a stall and unbuttoned the shirt and sliced a perfect line, as long as my hand, along my side. Not deep, not too deep. But deep enough that it hurt and sparked like a downed power line, and the world felt clean again, crystal-clear again. With a wad of toilet paper, I covered the cut until the bleeding stopped. Then I buttoned up my shirt and left.
It wasn’t as good as a cut I could see, but those were too dangerous. It was enough that I could feel it, feel the painful tugs with every movement. Outside, I took a deep breath, looked the October sun in the eye, and tucked the remaining razor blades in my back pocket. Today was easy. Today I could do anything.
When I got to Austin’s house, I didn’t have to knock on the door, and I didn’t have to endure those awkward minutes when Debra Miller threw frantic glances at me while she tried to look at everything else in the world but me, and I didn’t have to pretend that I didn’t know that she was pretending to be glad to see me or be glad that her son was dating me or be glad that her son had turned out not to be so golden because he was, it also turned out, gay. Today, I didn’t have to do any of that because Austin was outside, pushing a lawnmower along at a steady roar. Shirtless. Well. Well, well, well.
As he turned back in my direction, he caught sight of me, and for a moment, something I couldn’t decipher crossed his expression. Fear, maybe. Or shock. Or anger. Probably all three, based on how we’d left things last night. But then he nodded and waved as he headed towards me. The lawnmower’s roar swelled until it cut off and, with a puff of green, grassy smell, it grumbled to a stop. Austin held up his arms, standing at an angle so I could only see him in profile.
“Pretty sweaty, just warning you.”
I kissed him on the cheek. “It’s a good look on you.”
He kept his face turned at an angle, and he reddened at the kiss. Clasping the back of my neck, he examined me, and a shadow moved over his features. “You ok? You look—I don’t know. Are you? Ok, I mean.”
“Nope. I’m great.”
“Yeah?”
My smile faded as I looked him up and down. With one hand, I cupped his jaw and turned his head towards me. For a moment he resisted, and then he sighed and let me. A nasty scrape ran from his temple, disappearing under his hair, and his cheek had split in two places. Bruises, black-and-blue, ran up his jaw.