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“Do you actually mean it this time? Or should I hold my breath for another seven years?”
I bristled, but I kept walking thanks to Chance steering me away from Conn. “Yeah, you do that. Hold your breath for seven years. Then I won’t have to stay away from three people I care about because one person is a total jackass.”
“Do you think that if you say that enough times, you’ll actually believe it?” Conn asked. “Because, Scout, come on. If I slipped you the key to my bedroom right this minute, you and I both know you’d be wet and naked between my sheets before Chance could take a swing at me for disrespecting a woman.”
This time, it was Chance who broke to a stop, creating a cloud of dust around our feet. He turned toward Conn. “You don’t want to be here. You’ve made that clear from the moment you showed up. So why don’t you leave? You’ll be happier, and I think everyone else will be too.”
“I know everyone else will be,” I mumbled, grabbing Chance’s hand in case he decided to charge Conn. Chance was the least violent person I knew, but nothing about this night had followed the theme of normal.
“Nah, I’m having too much fun here. I think I’ll stay a while. Besides, I only just got here.” Conn’s last couple words echoed in his bottle.
“I think you should leave,” Chance said in a level voice.
“What are you going to do if I don’t, brother? Hog-tie me, throw me in the back of your piece-of-shit truck, and drive me all the way back to California? Maybe kick my ass until you’ve broken a few bones? Or strap a couple cinder blocks to my feet and toss me into Falcon Lake?”
Conn was an outline in the doorway. From the yard, for the first time in my life, he looked so small and insignificant it seemed I could squish him between my thumb and index finger.
Chance shook his head. “There’s nothing worse I can do to you, Conn, than what you’ve already done to yourself.”
For a moment, it was quiet. Just when I started to believe those were the words that would shut Conn up, I was reminded that nothing would ever shut Conn Armstrong up.
“That was cold, brother,” he called after us. “I thought you were supposed to be the nice one.”
We had rounded the side of the house, out of Conn’s hearing range, when Chance bumped his shoulder to mine. “I am the nice one. If I was more like him, he’d be choking on his front teeth right now.”
