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“We were just leaving.”
“Why did you come here in the first place?” he asks.
“We were just leaving.”
“Leavenow,then.”
“My pleasure,” I mumble, grabbing Rhett’s arm and pulling him past Stroud as they glower at each other like two boxers in a ring.
“Don’t you dare turn around,” I hiss to Rhett, dragging him down the driveway. “Get in.” I shove Rhett into the Jeep, then quickly jump in, start the engine and reverse out of the lot.
“What the hell was that?” I snap, watching Stroud’s silhouette fade in my rearview mirror. “You know you can’t get in a fight with him. If I wouldn’t have been there, you two would have bashed each other’s faces in and you’d be back in jail. I could see it in your eyes.”
Instead of answering my question, he asks his own. “What were you asking Crystal about when she ran out? Why did you chase her?”
“Answer my question first. There is more between you and Stroud than just the obvious connection to the trial.” I scowl as we pass the Taylors’ home. Bitch.
“Stroud’s a piece of shit.”
“We’ve established that. Why?”
I blow past the gate and turn onto the gravel road that leads into town. Night has fallen. A few stars are beginning to twinkle around the top of the moon peeking out from the treetops. Cold air whips through the cab of the Jeep.
“Stroud and I went to high school together,” Rhett says.
“Are you guys the same age?” Keeping one hand on the wheel, I open the console with the other and pull out a pack of baby wipes.
Rhett frowns.
“Clean yourself up, you look like Freddy Krueger.”
He yanks a wipe from the pack, passively taps his cheek—nowhere close to the wound—then tosses it out the window.
I shake my head. “Keep going about you and Stroud.”
“I’m one year younger than he is,” he says. “He was a bully in high school. The cliché jock who fed his ego by bullying kids who couldn’t fend for themselves.” He glances over his shoulder, checking to see if the detective is following us. “One day, I was leaving school and I saw him and his buddies picking on this nerdy kid that everyone made fun of. They were taking his lunch, dumping everything out of his backpack. Just being idiots.”
I shake my head. I despise bullies.
“The kid’s name was Andy. He was notoriously poor, the smelly kid in class. Wore shoes covered in duct tape, relied on the summer lunch program to eat. I think I only saw him wear three outfits the entire time he went to high school. He was a kid to a single mother who I think was addicted to drugs.”
“And what happened?”
“I snapped. Ran up and kicked their asses. Broke Stroud’s nose and gave him a black eye in front of all his buddies.”
“No kidding?”
“That’s not all. His dad showed up at my house later that night, drunk, wearing one of those old Bud LiteI love you, Man,T-shirts. You know, from the nineties commercials?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Yeah, one of those. I don’t know why I remember that. Anyway, he confronts my dad. They get into a fistfight, right there on our front porch. Two grown men going at it like idiotic teenagers.”
“You’rejoking.”
“Nope. One of the neighbors called the cops. It was a whole ordeal. I was so embarrassed—even though I’d started it all.”
“No you didn’t. You defended an innocent child—don’t blame yourself.”
