Walk the Edge (Thunder Road, #2)(15)

It’s five in the morning. Got in after midnight, and thirty seconds after striding in, I figured out Dad brought a girl home. Walked out and I spent the rest of the night nursing a beer on the steps to the porch.

“You okay?” he asks.

It’s an awkward question, but because I’m biologically his, he feels compelled to ask. We both know he doesn’t want the honest answer. “Yeah.”

“You’ve been in here for a while.” Dad hacks and it’s a reminder as to why I rarely smoke cigarettes. “And it’s early. Sun’s not up yet.”

That’s the point. If I wait in here long enough, Dad will have the opportunity to keep his promise. After Mom died, Dad and I were torn up—at least I thought we both were. I continually gasped for breath like a fish living on dry land and I had assumed Dad felt the same.

But then a few weeks after her death, I caught Dad kissing another woman at the clubhouse. I was ten and in tears. The blonde was barely old enough to drink and vomited after she saw my reaction. Dad was old enough to know better and dropped to his knees.

He promised he’d never disrespect me or my mother by bringing a woman home. His promise disintegrated two months after Mom’s funeral, but he did offer me another oath. One that has stung less and less as the years have passed, but one I expect him to uphold—even tonight.

Dad swore to never let a woman sleep in the same bed as my mother. Never overnight. Not even for an hour. He would do his business and then she’d leave.

I remain in this shower because at two this morning the light sneaking out of Dad’s bedroom door went out. The girl he brought home—she stayed.

The first rays of morning light will hit soon, and if I hang in here long enough, then Dad could possibly keep his promise—he won’t further disrespect the memory of my mother.

“Razor?” he asks again, probably questioning whether he misunderstood my response and it’s someone from the club in here. The door creaks as if he’s opening it more and the last thing I want is to be naked in front of my father.

I turn off the water. “I’m fine. Give me a few.”

There’s a tension-filled silence. He knows what he’s done. I know what he’s done. Neither of us can fix it.

“I thought you would be out all night,” he says. “Heard you and Chevy had dates.”

Mom told me once Dad’s a man worth forgiving. There are billions of other words she could have said before she walked out the door, but that was her chosen parting advice. One more confirmation that I am what the good people of Snowflake say I am: cursed.

I rub my face as beads of water track down my body. The girls and then crashing at Chevy’s place—that was the plan. But thanks to Breanna Miller, I ran late, and when I met up with Chevy and the girls, my brain wasn’t there, it was with Mom.

I had heard Dad was back in town early from his security run for the club, so I cut the night short. I was the moron to assume coming home might solve my problems.

“Told you I’d be home when you got back in town,” I snap. “I keep my promises.”

Silence. The word promises cutting through both of us like a blade.

The door shuts and I silently curse. A long time ago, in a world I barely remember, the two of us used to talk. About stupid shit. About anything. The sound a motorcycle makes before it drops into gear. The best spot to catch bluegill. Which MMA fighter deserved to win. Detective Jake Barlow said Dad worshipped me. Goes to show how jacked up his theories are.

I slide the curtain and the metal rings jingle. The cracked mirror’s fogged and it distorts my image—slashing my face in half so that one side is higher than the other. Creating an external image of what I am on the inside: unbalanced.

I take my time toweling off and slip on a fresh pair of jeans. When I open the door to the bathroom, the cooler air nips at my skin. Dad leans on his forearms against the chest-high narrow table in the kitchen area of the front room. His eyes switch from the television on the wall to me.

Dad has red hair with a brown tint and his recently grown-in thin beard is the same color. I matched his height last year and surpassed him in what he can bench-press the year before. When we’re standing side by side, people can spot the minute ways we resemble the other, but I know what Dad sees when he looks at me: blond hair, blue eyes. He sees Mom.

According to the weatherman, it’s supposed to be a hot day. Scorching. He also reminds those of us who don’t live under a rock that tomorrow is our first day of school. In slow motion, I turn my head to Dad’s bedroom. The bed’s made and there’s no one in sight.

The woman—she’s gone. My wish was granted. As much as I thought her leaving before sunrise would heal the oozing wound inside me, it didn’t. Sunrise wasn’t my breaking point. I broke earlier this morning when the light flipped off. I was just living in denial.

“We need to talk,” Dad says.

I agree. We do. About Mom, the detective, the file, but it feels wrong to discuss anything associated with Mom now. “I haven’t slept yet. Later?”

“All right.” Dad focuses on the coffee cup next to his hand. “Later.”

I head for my room, and when I reach the door, Dad stops me. “Razor...”

I pause, but I don’t respond. I’m not doing this and Dad knows better than to push me.

“I heard about the detective and we’re going to hash this out—me and you.”