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I can’t believe it either but it must be the truth if Vince is saying it and if that stupid #Hashtag post is saying it. “I think so.”
“You think so? You don’t know for sure?”
“Mia,” I say. “It was just a fight, okay? An illegal, underground fight! Shit happens! I wasn’t trying to kill anyone!” I start to say that it wasn’t my fault, but that would be a lie. “I know it’s my fault, all of it. I didn’t tell you because you would freak out, Mia.”
“Yes!” Mia says. “Freaking out would have been the right response for something like this! This…what is happening just now, Teague, that’s what I would have been freaking out over. But I guess you wanted to win that fight more than you wanted to be with me, Teague. You chose this. Whatever follows, is on you.”
She hangs up.
I’m left stranded and with no idea what to do next.
Sebastian is still sitting there across from me and looking worried. “How do you not hate me, Sebastian?” I yell. “Everyone else is!”
He says nothing.
We both sit there in silence for a long time before he gets up. “I don’t buy it,” he says, picking up his jacket from the back of the couch and putting it on.
“What’re you talking about?”
“I don’t buy it, Teague. That guy was fine! Vince told me he was stable! How did he suddenly just die? Something doesn’t fit, Teague.”
“Maybe you just want to believe I’m innocent.”
“You should want that too, Teague. You hear me? You are innocent. I know you didn’t kill anyone. Okay? Even if that guy did die, Teague, accidents happen all the time! And he knew the risks going in. You didn’t break into someone’s place and stabbed a knife into them; you were at a fucking boxing match! It’s a game! Sometimes players get wounded and die; you know how many football injuries kill high school and college students every year? No one puts those guys in jail! Brutal or not, it’s considered a sport.”
“The difference,” I say. “Is that this was illegal.”
“Yeah. That’s about the only difference.”
“Legal games have rules; they have…safeguards for the protection of their players.”
“Yeah,” Sebastian says. “That’s why so many of them end up dead or with life-long injuries.”
“The percentage of dying in a legal game is lower than in some illegal match!”
“Yeah. LOWER. Not zero. Not negative.”
“What’re you going to do, Sebastian?” I yell. “Change the world’s ideas about violent sports?”
“No. But if they can get away with it, I’ll make sure that you can too.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet,” Sebastian says. “But I’ll figure something out, Teague. I promise. And if nothing works, then we’ll just get you out of this town even if you have to run from the cops for the rest of your life.”
“I don’t run, Sebastian.”
“We can talk about that later.”
“No, Sebastian. I’m not going to run. If this does go down badly, I’m going to own up to what I did, even if I end up in prison.”
Sebastian looks at me, and I know what he’s thinking. But he has to know that’s not even an option as far as I’m concerned. “Fine,” he says at last. “Then I guess I’ll just have to find a way to get you out of this mess.”
Something About the Pain
MIA
“Maybe this is a hoax, Mia.” Selena says, still glaring at her phone screen. “I just can’t believe Teague is capable of anything like this.”
