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“You fucking—”
Todd tacked Dylan, ramming his shoulder into Dylan’s midsection and pushing him back a few feet. Dylan didn’t go down, though. He was bigger than Todd and sober, so he kept himself upright easily.
“Knock it off!” Dylan shoved Todd off him, but Todd came back for more. Dylan’s punch drew the attention of everyone who wasn’t already watching.
Shane and Vera both watched, eyes wide, mouths open. Vera glanced at me with a questioning frown, shaking her head.
I should have gone to them and explained, tried to smooth it over somehow. I should have donesomething.
But all my guilt about Todd and the horrible things he’d just said to me seemed to take all the fight right out of me. I had to get out of there.
I ran out. I should have gotten out before Todd confronted me. And I shouldn’t have thrown my water in his face.
It wasn’t my fault he’d turned to substances again because he was upset. But I still felt like I could have handed everything so much better than I did.
I got in my car and went home, crying the whole way at how useless I felt, hoping like hell that the fight didn’t last long, and Dylan could explain things to Shane and Vera.
47
DYLAN
I pulledLana’s number up and stared at my phone.
After the tasting ended, I’d driven by her house to make sure her car was there. I needed to know she’d made it home safely.
She had. I almost pulled in and knocked. But I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk to her yet.
I backed out of my contacts and put my phone down. I still wasn’t ready, mostly because I didn’t know what the hell to say.
If I knew everything was going to be okay despite what had happened, I would have called her and at least told her that. But we hadn’t talked since I’d quickly hung up the night before, upset about Todd.
I didn’t want to call her and have to tell her how badly things had gone after she left.
“You’ll have to excuse us,” Shane had said abruptly after Carl and Aaron had managed to get Todd into a cab.
“If you’ll let me explain,” I’d said, but Vera had shaken her head. “We can’t have our brand associated with this kind of thing, Dylan. Drunken brawling? I’m sorry, but we need to go.”
I couldn’t convince them to stay and let me explain, but I hoped that tomorrow they might listen to me. I was sure they were shocked, and I didn’t blame them for not wanting their company name associated with anything like that.
The news all seemed pretty bad, and that was the last thing I wanted to share with Lana. I
also didn’t know quite what to say about Todd and the rest except that I was sorry for the way he acted. And I was sorry for our conversation the night before.
I really hadn’t meant to accuse her, and I knew how I’d sounded. She hadn’t told Todd, and it wasn’t really her fault that he’d figured it out by looking at her.
How could she control something like that?
No, the fault lay solely with Todd here, for letting himself go back to his bad habits the minute he was upset about something. I understood that he was an alcoholic and an addict. But that wasn’t an excuse to get away with terrible behavior.
At least, it wasn’t going to be with me. Not anymore.
That was a conversation that had to wait too.
There was no point in trying to reason with Todd until he was sober again. I hoped I could catch him sober while he was in town, at least. I didn’t know if he’d regret what he did or just try to keep comforting himself with booze.
As soon as he was sober enough to understand me, he and I were going to have a talk. And I was going to draw a hard line on what behavior I would find acceptable from him from there on out.
If he couldn’t abide by that, he’d need to steer clear of me until he could.
