But his momma had always told him to do what was right. To stand his ground against anyone who would try to persuade him into drifting onto a dangerous route.
He figured his dad was included.
“Didn’t ask if you wanted to, boy. I told you. Now get your scrawny ass out of the truck and do it before I give you the kind of whooping that will leave you unable to sit for the next week.”
Nausea boiled in his guts, and his skin felt hot and sticky, his breaths coming hard as his heart pounded with fear.
Anger bubbled on the underside of it. He wanted to lash out the same way as his father had done. Strike him across the face. Maybe take the brick he clutched in his opposite hand and smash him on the side of the head with it.
His dad must have been able to see it because he swept in close, his voice cutting like razors across Silas’s face. “You want me to take your disobedience out on your momma for raising such a pathetic piece of shit?”
Silas bowed with the words. Terror ripped through him at bringing more attention to his mom. He tried his best to protect her. To stand in the way when their dad was coming for her.
Things had been good when their mom had kicked him out. Months of peace and his momma smiling, joy in her as she took care of him and his little sister and brother.
Meems had told her it was right. Called it taking out the trash.
But when thetrashhad come back, pounding at the door and demanding to be let inside, his momma had called the police.
They told her that she had no right to keep him out.
He was on the lease, and she had no papers saying he couldn’t be there.
Silas knew to his guts it was bullshit. Wrong that she had to let him back in. Wrong that he’dwonagain.
“Don’t sit there and act like you’re better than me,” his father sneered. “You got my blood running right through you. It’s time to use it. Now get out before I beat the man into you.”
Hatred boiled in that blood. The blood that Silas hated. He clenched his teeth, sucked for a bunch of breaths, and tried to shove off the fear.
But it chased him like a swarm of bees as he finally shoved open the door. His ears rang with adrenaline. A concoction of terror and hate and disgust.
He ran across the road and bashed the window of the car rather than hisdaddy’shead.
Glass shattered, little splinters that went everywhere.
But he wasn’t prepared for when an alarm started blaring. Shocked, he jolted back, eyes skating back and forth to see a bunch of people turning to look at him. Panicking, he started to run back for the truck.
But not before a guy came busting out from a store, right behind him in a flash.
Tackling him to the hard pavement below. His chest pressed so hard to the road that he thought it was going to cave in as the man pinned him down.
“You little shit. Did you just try to rob me? You bust my car window? You’re gonna pay for that.”
Silas struggled to break free, and for once, he was thankful his dad was there, that he could get this guy off him because he was crushing him bad.
Putting so much weight on him it was hard to breathe.
Only his attention cut to the opposite side of the road when the engine of his dad’s old truck suddenly roared, tires peeling out, the tail of his truck disappearing as it swerved down the street.
His momma stormed with him out of the Crimson Creek police station. She had his hand locked in hers, like he was four and she was marching him out of a store after throwing a tantrum.
The sun shone bright, and he blinked against the jarring rays. Jarred from sitting on a hard chair in a dark office for what had felt like an entire week, then the next released into the cool spring air.
He wanted to fall to his knees from the relief, but he tried to force his chest and chin up. To pretend like he hadn’t been the most scared in his life. That his heart hadn’t felt like it’d been stretched and mashed like Play-Doh.
The worst part was his mom. The way he could feel her entire body quaking. Her head held high too as she rushed with him down the five steps of the big building and around to the side of it.
There, she whipped him around, and she bent the smallest fraction since he was almost as tall as her, getting right in his face. “Tell me what happened.”
