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Zayne Wilder.
My best friend.
I had only known him for a little over a year, but we had grown close. He had gained the street name Joker because he laughed at everything. No matter the situation's seriousness, his smile was always on his face. Even when he told me he killed his father, he chuckled, but Joker only played the cards he was dealt.
We both had rough backgrounds—both with men hurting us somehow. Jeffery Wilder, his dad, was a different kind of abuser, the type who left behind broken arms, noses, and worse thanthat, broken souls—the sort who left behind a son so scarred he no longer felt anything and laughed his hurt away.
Still, even with an icy heart, Joker had murdered his father for us, and I couldn’t throw my friend under the bus after what he had done for me.
As if directing me to continue, he lifted a brow, and I looked away.
I nodded. “I do.”
The truth.
There were so many ways to spin it, but the fact was, my truth had been taken away from me the second Lorne Walsh had “broken me in,” his words ... not mine. My truth had died with my mother the day my father murdered her in front of me. My truth was sad, and it left behind a young boy who no longer understood what was wrong and what was right—a boy who only wanted to be free from all of it.
Lorne Walsh sat across from me, but I couldn’t look at him. His weasel of a lawyer was perched beside him with a confident grin plastered on his pockmarked face. They both assumed he would get away with the murder since he was innocent. Otherwise, Lorne would have told the truth and admitted child molestation, a lesser charge. I didn’t want him to do that. I never wanted anyone to know what he had done to me.
Joker knew, but only after he had plied me with tequila, and my lightweight ass got trashed, cried, and spilled the beans. It was the same night we planned my escape from Lorne, and even though we had both been drunk, he had still gone through with it.
I swallowed again, scanning the room and passing over my aunt Sherry, scowling back at me and my cousin Tina, who was playing on her new iPhone, before landing on Tori.
My heart broke.
I had to rip apart many lives to free myself from Lorne. My aunt Sherry and cousin Tina lived better because of Lorne’s bank account. They had been living paycheck to paycheck when Lorne stepped into the restaurant where she waited tables and asked her on a date, and because of me, she and Tina would once again have to struggle.
But it was Lorne’s daughter, Tori, who got to me.
Victoria Walsh and her little sister, Gracie, welcomed me into their home when my blood resented my presence. We grew close, and I felt things I had no right feeling. Tori was a lovely girl from a good home, and I was just Koah Saint, the dirty Hawaiian boy thrust into their lives because his father was a monster and his mother was an angel.
We were the same age, and living in her house meant we went to the same school. She was an intelligent, clean girl, and I would never be good enough. Even at fourteen, I knew that, but I cared about her more than my family.
I felt bad for keeping the secret about her father from her, but I didn’t want to hurt her. I had kept my secret for as long as possible until I broke. I wasn’t sure what would happen to her and Gracie since their mother had died years before, but I was trying to save my life and the lives of other boys who I knew for a fact had been touched by her father.
Tori stared back at me, her whiskey-colored eyes sad and full of tears. Her eyes owned me from the first second I saw her, and the guilt digging into my chest shredded me. She knew the truth. She had been with her father the night Joker murdered his father. She knew her dad was innocent. And while she had sworn she was with her father that night, everyone believed she was trying to cover for him.
It was her word against mine. So when I opened my mouth and told the jury I had seen Lorne Walsh pull the trigger, she and I both knew I was lying. And while I saved myself and every other boy from being molested by her father, I lost the only girl ever to own my young heart.
Lorne Walsh got life in prison because of my testimony, and when I left the courtroom, I exhaled, knowing he could never hurt me again. I was lighter, yet my guilt pulled me down.
My aunt no longer had a place to live, meaning I no longer had one. We would have to pack our things and leave the second we returned to Lorne’s house. I hadn’t thought about living arrangements and things of that nature when I confessed to Joker.
Thanks to my tequila-wrecked train of thought, I hadn’t thought about much of anything. But as I walked behind my aunt Sherry toward the courthouse exit, I felt selfish for what I had done.
Tori and Gracie.
Aunt Sherry and my cousin Tina.
I had torn through their lives like a wrecking ball when I really should have just run away from Lorne.
When we reached the exit, my Aunt Sherry spun on her heels and glared down at me. A lonely tear escaped her dark lashes, taking hints of mascara with it as it drained down her cheek.
“No,” she spat, crossing her arms and shaking her head. “You’re not going with us.”
Pain lashed across my chest, making me gasp.
Why did no one ever want me?
