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The doctor shook his head and smiled. “I’ll see you in three weeks, Mr. Mulin.”
As I drove him back home, I started thinking about other ways I could get the money for his surgery. Like maybe picking up a few extra shifts at the gas station or getting another job. Dad could probably sense me thinking because he patted my hand.
“Don’t think too hard, Charlie bear,” he said, smiling. “I’ll be fine.”
How?I wanted to cry out.How are you going to be fine if we can’t even afford the basic stuff you need?
But I didn’t want to upset him even more by looking stressed, so I faked a smile and said nothing.
Still, as I got ready and went to work, I was a ball of anxiety and stress on multiple levels. Ivanna wasn’t at work today, so I had a lot of time to myself and my thoughts. And that wasn’t a good thing.
As I walked to the break room, I spotted Zane walking in the opposite direction. My heart immediately began pounding with excitement, and I held up my hand to greet him. His eyes flickered over to me, but then he walked past me without saying or doing anything. As if I didn’t exist, didn’t matter.
And maybe I should have expected it, but it hurt like hell.
By the middle of the day, I couldn’t take it anymore. My emotions were riding high, and I felt like if I didn’t release them, I was going to explode, so I ducked into the storage closet just to scream or something. No one would hear me anyway. People barely used this hallway because the toilet at the other end was broken.
And as I stood in silence, I thought about everything that was currently wrong in my life.
My dad was sick, probably dying.
I kissed my sister’s ex-husband, who was a cold bastard.
And he now knew we hid his son, Casey, from him, and he would probably do something underhanded to take Casey away.
And there was no way we could fight him.
I wanted to rage, to scream, to get mad about how unfair life was.
But instead, I sank to the floor and started crying.
16
ZANE
Delivered.
My “Who the fuck are you?”text still read as delivered. I resisted the urge to take throw the phone against the wall just for the satisfaction of seeing it crack into a million pieces.
Instead, I tossed it on the table because common sense intervened. The phone was the only thing still connecting me to the motherfucker who was tormenting me.
Even though he never fucking answered any of my texts. Every single ring went straight to voicemail, all my texts were unread, and the fucker kept sending me pictures of Toby.
He sent another one just yesterday, accompanied by the words “Catch Me If You Can.” That was Toby’s favorite movie. They showed it on repeat for a few weeks on cable at one of our foster homes, and he never missed a single showing. It was likely because it featured a little boy sneaking on a ship, scamming a bunch of rich people, and getting away with it. That was Toby’s dream. He said that was one thing he could do when he got the proper tools—some financial scamming.
“We just need some money upfront,” he would say. “And then, we set up an LLC and make it look fancy like on the TV. And then we get those rich bastards to take a bite.” He’d proceeded to lay out the game plan for me too. Toby hated hurting people physically, but he had no problem stealing from people who had money. He’d only steal a little at a time so as not to completely bankrupt the person—a conscientious thief.
I was the opposite. I didn’t have as great a brain as he did, nor did I have a conscience. And, as I found out later, I could stomach a lot of bloodshed.
So I became a person who beat up other poor fuckers for a living.
And beating up those fuckers kept me from him when he needed me the most.
I could feel the violence crawling under my skin now, turning my entire body into a boiling cauldron. I was at work, and I was mad as shit. I wish I could fuck off and go beat the hell out of my punching bags, but I had a bunch of meetings this morning. Plus, beating the fuck out of my punching bag had probably become an unhealthy obsession at this point. This was the second one I tore through this month alone.
But the whole week had been a fucking horror show.
You could do something else to ease it. The whisper was seductive in my mind, and it was her voice—Charlotte’s innocent tinkling tone. The image of her this morning flashed through my mind. Her awkward wave tugged at a tenderness inside me that I didn’t know I had. And I wanted to go right to her and drag her off somewhere quiet where we could be alone so I could lose myself in her softness and the fresh, clean taste of her innocence.
