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“Can’t we just tell your dad you’ve made amends without actually doing it? I’ll send him an email, call him, whatever he wants.” I was practically begging, but I’d agree to almost anything if it meant Derek would get the hell out of our lives and leave us alone forever.
“You know he’d never take me at my word. And he wouldn’t believe you either. He’s probably having me followed right now.” He glanced around, scanning the street behind him.
I huffed out a sound of disgust. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“I know he’s having you followed. He probably always has. He knows about Ryan. It was actually his idea to get rid of him, said it would help you see who you really belonged with . . .”
Derek continued to talk, but my shock and disbelief drowned out his words.
“Stop,” I whispered, then raised my voice. “Stop. Stop!” When Derek’s mouth snapped shut, I looked directly into his cold, dead eyes. “This is insane. Madness. I don’t belong with you. I never did.”
“Well, dear old Dad doesn’t see it that way.”
“What does he want? For us to be some big happy family?”
“In a nutshell.”
“How are we supposed to do that?”
“We’ll have to convince him. Together.”
I shook my head, refusing to believe this was happening. “No.”
Derek leaned toward me, his posture threatening. “He’s going to give the company to my cousin, Sofia. My worthless fucking cousin who couldn’t count out a hundred pennies if his life depended on it. I’ll be the laughingstock of the firm. The first Huntington son who didn’t take over for his father in sixty years.”
“I don’t care,” I said, my tone cruel. If Derek thought for even a second that he’d have my sympathy, he was batshit crazy. “I’m not doing this for you.”
“If you take away my future, I’ll take away yours.” He looked me dead in the eye, his expression cold.
My body chilled with his threat. Stunned, I stood there with my head swimming, my eyes watering, as I wondered what to do. Would he really hurt Ryan?
Derek gave me a sly look. “Remember what happened to that boy in high school? What was his name again?”
I searched my memory, and Joseph Bray’s image appeared in my mind. I was surprised I could still stand upright once I connected the dots with the memories that flooded through me.
“Joseph,” I said in a whisper, and Derek nodded.
“That’s right. Joseph. Shame what happened to him. Ended his football career, didn’t it?”
I refused to move, or answer the questions he clearly remembered the answers to. After all this time, I finally knew the truth.
Part of me had always suspected that Derek had either caused Joseph’s car accident or was involved in it. I had heard the whispers in the hallway and seen the stares from my classmates, but I never knew for sure, and no one was brave enough to tell me what they also suspected. Over time, the whispers stopped and the suspicion seemed to die down.
Derek had become distant from me a few days before the crash, and I remembered asking him what was wrong. We’d only been dating a few months, and I thought he’d grown tired of me already and was planning to break up with me. I continued to ask him but he blew me off, insisting that I was being paranoid. But after Joseph’s accident, Derek walked around school like he was untouchable, his arm wrapped possessively around my waist, everything between us back to normal.
Guilt flooded my veins, as if the accident had happened yesterday rather than almost a decade ago. It killed me knowing it was my fault that Joseph’s legs were broken and he would never play football again. If Derek hadn’t found out about Joseph asking me out during lunch one day, the crash never would have happened. Joseph would have had a completely different life than the one he ended up living.
How could I ever forgive myself?
“I know what you’re thinking, Sofia, but I didn’t do it because of you.” Derek sounded disgusted that I could even contemplate being the reason for his actions.
“Then why did you?”
Derek glared at me. “He embarrassed me in front of the whole school. He disrespected me by asking you out. Joseph knew you belonged to me. Everyone knew. I was humiliated, and had to teach him a lesson.”
“But he always blamed himself for that crash. You know how much he hated himself for it. He said he never knew why he fell asleep at the wheel that night,” I said, trying to put together all the pieces from that night so long ago. “That he didn’t remember even being tired before he got into the car.”
Derek smirked. “That’s what happens when something gets slipped into your post-workout drink. Knocked him out cold in less than ten minutes.”
