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I glare at the ground.I’ll make it end.
“There’s the anger,” a voice says next to me. “I was worried there when you came downstairs this morning looking like you were in love.”
I grind my teeth together as Farrow, having climbed off the float, turns to face me.
“Now that you’ve fucked her, it’s time to face him.”
“Leave Dylan out of this,” I say.
Weston’s band and cheerleaders march out, the drums setting the pace while pom poms shake in my peripheral.
“I’ll try,” is all he says.
He jumps back on the float, and I walk, barely seeing anyone else as I zone in on the Pirates ahead.
“And please welcome a team that always demands our very best,” Dad shouts, “the Weston High School Rebels!”
Boos fill the crowd, but the cheers and claps from Weston are louder, noisemakers and chants drowning out the assholes.
Groups of Rebels sing in sync, making everyone around me laugh.
I don’t, though. I glance back at Dylan. She gives me a smile.
And I turn back around.
We walk, and I pick up pace, leaving my team behind. The march goes on, the crowd on the sidewalks waving banners and taking pictures as I make my way through thecheerleaders, around the car carrying the coach and the administration.
“Hunter,” Dewitt calls, seeing me go.
I keep walking. Around the Pirate float. Through the Pirate football team. To the front of the pack where my brother walks.
I fall in next to him, keeping pace.
“Do you remember the time at the lake when you got me to jump off the dock?” I ask, raising my voice so he can hear me over all the music. “You’d done it a dozen times already, and I was scared.”
He stares ahead, and I see Stoli on his other side, keeping an eye on us.
“You waded in the water for five minutes,” I tell him, “encouraging me until I dove in?”
That was a good day, and the older we got, the less I remembered from being that young. But I always remembered that. He was in my corner, wanting me to succeed.
“Five years later…” I turn my head, staring ahead with him. “We were twelve, swimming in the same spot, and you got all of our friends to rush from the lake and leave me behind by myself.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Yourfriends,” I correct myself. “All of you hid from me the rest of the day, and I went and read in the back of Dad’s car, alone.”
It hurt to feel like I was on the outside. Unwanted.
What hurt more was that they planned it. He told them to do it.
“I used to think ‘I love him, but I don’t think I like him much,’” I say. “Now, I just fucking hate you.”
And I don’t care that tears fill my eyes or that I see my father on a podium to my left, watching us.
“If you ever impersonate me again,” I growl under my breath, “I’ll beat the shit out of you.”
“Do it now.”
And I fucking do.
I can’t contain it. Fisting his shirt, I slam my fist across his jaw and barely see him hit the ground before I’m on top of him.
