53. Loren Hale
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
LOREN HALE
We don’t even make it out of New Jersey before my phone buzzes in the middle console. The word DAD flashing in big bold letters.
“Don’t answer that,” Ryke says.
I’m driving. And I disobey his orders, answering the phone and keeping one hand on the wheel. I feel Ryke’s hot glare without taking my eyes off the road.
“Loren.” My father’s voice sounds through the receiver. “I need you to stop by the house sometime today.” His tone is pretty casual, so I figure the topic centers on my new company. It’s barely on its feet, but he loves to add his opinion.
“I’m heading out of town, so I won’t be anywhere near Philly.”
“Then readjust your schedule.”
“It’s not that easy?—”
“I’m not asking.”
Ryke shakes his head repeatedly beside me, probably watching my eyes begin to darken the longer I talk to our dad. “You should have rejected the deal for your trust fund,” he says under his breath.
I pull the speaker away from my mouth to talk to Ryke. “I heard you the hundredth time you said it.”
“You’re his bitch,” Ryke rephrases, as if that’ll make me understand.
I grit my teeth, the highway signs zipping overhead. I need to get off the next exit if I want to see my dad .
I press the phone back to my ear. “What is it about?” I ask him.
“The leak.”
I nearly jerk the car into the other lane, a Trailblazer next to us.
“Lo!” Ryke yells, clutching the door. He snaps on his seatbelt.
Shit. “Sorry.” I start switching lanes, properly this time, heading towards the exit.
“Wait, where are you going?” Ryke asks angrily. He knows I’m heading to Philly. He just doesn’t know why.
I put the phone on speaker, realizing that Ryke will throw a tantrum unless he hears the truth from my father.
I set the cell on my lap. “You know who the leak is?” I ask aloud, my heart thrumming.
After a month without the knowledge, I was resigned with the fact that it just didn’t matter.
Mostly because I didn’t have the energy to hunt down Mason or Aaron and care for Lily.
I chose the right option, to be there for my best friend.
But I want the information that has eluded us for so long.
And the resentful, dark and bitter part of me wants this fucker’s head on a spike.
“Yeah,” he says. “I found the leak.”
“How?”
“The tabloid who first reported the news finally broke and gave us their source. It took five million to loosen their lips and uncover this bullshit.” He doesn’t add you owe me every penny. Even so, I feel like I do.
“Who is it?” I ask, my hands clutching the steering wheel so tightly.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Dad?!” I shout. A car honks, and I realize I swerved into his lane and cut off a pick-up truck.
“Keep your eyes on the fucking road,” Ryke chastises. “Or pull over and I’ll drive.” No, he’ll take us the other direction. And right now, I’m too wired to go climb a mountai n
“Is Ryke with you?” my dad asks roughly.
“We’re on our way,” I tell him, ignoring how Ryke is searing a death glare into the phone.
“No, we fucking aren’t,” Ryke refutes.
“You both should come,” he tells us. “This is important, and I don’t want to discuss it over the phone.” He hangs up.
I flick on my blinker and drive along a side street, off the highway.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Ryke asks.
“He knows who the leak is,” I say like he’s an idiot. “What the fuck are you doing? We’ve spent months trying to track down this asshole.”
Ryke stares at the road with a hard gaze. “Maybe you should drop me off somewhere.”
I frown. “What? Where?” What’s wrong with him?
“Like anywhere but there.”
And then I realize that Ryke hasn’t come into contact with my father since the Christmas Charity Gala. Before rehab. Before everything.
A brutal silence strings though the car. And then I say softly, “Are you scared of him?”
“I can’t stand to look at his face.”
“What did he personally do to you?” I ask.
“I hated him because my mother did,” Ryke says briefly, but I can tell his mind is reeling, so I’m not surprised when he divulges more. “…when I was older, I tried to look at him differently, but she painted a portrait of a monster. So when I stare at his face, that’s all I fucking see.”
His words sink in, and I don’t have anything to say. I can’t change the way he pictures Jonathan Hale. That damage is too deep-seated.
“I tried to forget about him,” Ryke says, staring out the window. “I tried to act like I just didn’t have a dad. And then…” He shakes his head.
“What?” I prod .
“…and then I met you. And all that hate just came back ten times stronger than before.”
I hesitate before I ask. I fear his answer. “Why?” This is where he’ll say I’m just like my father. I’m the monster of the story. The thing to be hated.
“You defend him,” Ryke tells me. “He says some pretty fucking horrible things right to your face, and you just stand there and take it or you walk away. And then the next day, you’ll talk about Jonathan like he’s a fucking savior.
” I can’t feel that great burst of relief when he doesn’t compare me to him. I just feel like shit.
I grit my teeth. “What am I supposed to do? Punch him? I wasn’t into the whole let me beat the hell out of my father tragedy growing up. Sorry.”
“You’re right,” Ryke says, surprising me. “You were stuck in that house, with that fucking asshole. But right now, you have the option to leave him. And you’re going back.”
“He’s not all bad.”
“And there you go, sticking up for him again.”
“He’s my father.”
“He’s our father,” Ryke retorts.
I hit the wheel with my hand, nervous and pissed and so fueled right now.
“I can’t cut him out of my life!” Not because of the money.
Not because of the trust fund or the information I need from him.
I can’t leave Jonathan Hale because he’s my family.
He’s my dad, and before Ryke and Lily, he’s all I fucking had.
“Pull over for a second.”
“I’m not turning around.”
“Just pull over.”
I drive into a gas station and park the car by the pump. I face Ryke, and my chest rises at the empathy in his eyes. He’s about to drop a bomb on me, but he knows I can take it.
“No one is going to tell you this,” Ryke says. “Everyone says it behind your back, but you’re going to hear it from me, right now. ”
I stare at him for a long moment, already hearing his words before he says them. I think I know. I’ve always known.
“Our dad abuses you,” Ryke says, his eyes reddening. “He’s verbally abusive, and he’s fucked with your head.”
I let this sink in, but I’m so numb to the answer. I just nod. “Yeah, I know.”
Ryke nods a few times too, watching me, trying to gauge my mental state.
And maybe he’s reliving the fact that he was the older brother, the one who was handed the better deal of two really shitty ones, not having to be raised by him, not having to endure the onslaught of fucking grow up!
I didn’t raise you to be such an idiot! Why are you crying? Stop. Fucking. Crying.
“Don’t guilt yourself over this,” I tell Ryke. I feel nothing. I should be red in the eyes like him, but I just can’t be. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Yeah,” Ryke says, nodding again, but he’s more upset than before. “The fact that you believe you can have a real relationship with him fucking terrifies me, Lo. That’s what kills me. And that’s why I don’t want to go there and watch him try to emotionally manipulate you.”
I break his gaze and stare at the wheel. “I’m not asking you to come with me.” My voice is edged but considerably low. “I can drop you off at your house.”
We sit in uncomfortable silence again. For maybe five minutes, both of us just thinking.
And then Ryke says, “If I go, you think he’ll lay off you?”
“Is that even a question?”
Ryke nods. “All right. Let’s go.”
“Are you sure?” He would do that? He’d go stomach a whole hour or two with our father just so the verbal assaults are redirected his way?
“Yeah. I’m sure. ”
I don’t know what I’m feeling. My lungs seem to lift from my chest, and I know what word I want to say. I know what word I can’t.
Thank you.
In this moment, I truly feel like I have a brother. One that’s probably too good for me.