“Doc?”

She spun her head around and quirked a brow at my outstretched hand. I held the file in the other. “I think I know how we can help each other.”

“How?”

I crouched down in front of her. I tapped her on the forehead with the file. I flashed her my best reassuring smile. “First…” I brushed a curl off her shoulder, and she stiffened at my touch, “…you need to get your ass in the motherfucking car.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PREPPY

“Why is it so important to you to get King’s kid out of the system?” Dre asked after I explained to her the situation with King and Max.

“Because he can’t do shit while he’s locked up, and because he’s not just my best friend. He’s family, and family fights for one another,” I said, turning onto a dirt road. It was pitch-black out, and where we were at there was no such thing as streetlights. Thankfully, I could find the place we were going drunk, high, and naked.

And I have.

“You make it sound so simple,” she said.

“It is. When I was a kid there wasn’t anyone around to fight for me. My mom was a piece of shit and so was every single man who found their way into her fucking bedroom.” I shrugged like it was nothing, but I’d rather take a spike to the eye than talk about my childhood, but I needed Dre to understand the situation. “She was a junkie, a loser, a deplorable human being. I learned from her. She was a walking ‘what not to do’ guide to family.”

“A junkie loser,” Dre repeated softly, looking out the window.

“Ain’t no other way to describe her because that’s exactly what she was,” I said.

“Go on.”

I tapped my fingers to the beat of the Kane Brown song playing on the radio. “Mommy dearest was the worst of the worst, and not like she outright beat me or anything, but she wasn’t exactly a member of the PTA. There was this one guy that she married, well maybe she married him, she called him my stepdad, but I don’t remember a wedding or anything. Anyway, his name was Tim, he was the worst of them all.”

“What did he do?” she asked, hesitantly, no longer looking out the window but at me.

I cracked my jaw as I recalled the day King walked in and found Tim rutting into me like a fucking barnyard pig. “He beat the living shit out of me…amongst other things.”

I heard her sharp intake of breath.

“Don’t pity me.” I glanced over at Dre, who was picking at her nails and looking down at her lap. “I sure as shit don’t. Listen, life isn’t about what happened to you in your past, it’s about where you are now and where you’re going. Onward and upward and all that jazz.”

“That’s very poetic,” Dre said. “But I’m surprised you moved on without seeking justice or revenge.”

I smirked. “Oh, I got revenge. That fucker is very VERY…let’s just say what he is rhymes with, shed.”

“How?” She shifted so she was sitting sideways. I leaned into her as well, until I was only inches from her face.

“That’s not important,” I said, not able to help my smile as I recalled a teenaged King taking that fucker out of this world, like the fucking trash he was.

“That’s actually kind of extraordinary,” Dre said after a long pause, her words taking me by surprise.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because, most people wouldn’t be able to recover from something that crippling.” And again, I didn’t know if she was talking about me or herself.

I scoffed. “Nah, I just don’t let what that cocksucker did dictate my life. If I do, then he wins. Besides, him and my mom made my life so fucking miserable that now I appreciate every damn good thing that comes my way, and even some of the bad. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have recognized King as my brother that first day on the playground at school, or taken to Grace when she showed a kid wearing wrinkled pants a bit of kindness.”

“WRINKLED pants?” Dre asked, dramatically opening her mouth in mock surprise, and my mind immediately went to something else she could do with those lips that could make her gasp.

Or gag.

I cleared my throat and looked away. “Yeah, now THAT would probably go down as the biggest tragedy of my childhood. By far.”

Dre giggled, and the sound did something to suck the heaviness from the air like a vacuum.

I pulled in between two pine trees and killed the engine, leaving the radio on. I flipped off my headlights and the still waters of the Caloosahatchee appeared spread out in front of us. To the right was the causeway, its high back out of the water like the Loch Ness monster doing stretches. The shore, on the other side of the river, twinkled with lights from hotels and condos. Occasionally, a set of headlights would appear from the other side and travel over the causeway like a slow moving shooting star over the beasts back.

“It’s beautiful here,” Dre said, leaning over the dashboard and looking out over the water. “I forgot how much I love it here. My summers here with Mirna were the best of my life.”

“Me too,” I admitted.

She sighed and sat back against the seat. “So you need to get Max out of the system. How exactly can I help with that?”

I picked the file up from my center console and set it on her lap. I leaned over to her with my chin resting just above her shoulder. I wet my thumb on my tongue when a few of the pages wanted to be assholes and stick together. When I got them separated I plucked the paper I needed out of the file and held it up, only to find Dre staring at my mouth when I handed it to her. “What?”

She put her hands on the seat and shifted like she couldn’t get comfortable. “Nothing,” she said, pointing down to the file again. “What is all this?”

“I’m going to need your talents if I’m going to make any of this work.”

“Talents?” she asked, looking confused. “Did Mirna tell you I had some sort of talent? Because I think you might of caught her during one of her bad times. The only talent I have is sabotaging my own life.” She tapped her index finger a few times against the seam of her lips. “Oh!” she exclaimed with a snap of her fingers. Leaning closer, she placed a hand on the side of her lips as if she were warding off lip readers. “When I was in kindergarten I ALWAYS colored inside the lines. Although, I’m sad to say I never pursued it professionally.” She sighed deeply. “One of my many many regrets in life.”