Chapter Four
It was difficult to understand what Silas was saying when I called him back.
Which was right away, because while he’d been running around dealing with whatever clusterfuck of drama my family dealt him, I haven’t had a goddamn call in hours.
The rig is clean, the station is clean, and I’ve spent the last hour trying to convince Tristan to start a queer EMS workers TikTok account with me, when I could have been fucking helping.
My dad showed up. Silas is taking the girls to our house, and Mom refused to go with him. There was also a random other woman there, but no one knows who she is.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I feel dumb as hell for letting myself get complacent. I got wrapped up in doing normal-people shit, and for just a fraction of a second, I forgot that I was trash, and this is what happens when you’re trash.
“Whatever it is, we’ll take care of it.”
Tristan’s rational approach to this situation is a lot more comforting than blind optimism would be, at least. He’s realistic.
He knows there’s no instant fix for it and he hates cops almost as much as I do, so I’m glad he offered to come with me.
In the past couple of months he’s also grown a mustache, which either makes him look like a hot West Hollywood OnlyFans model or a violent beat cop from the seventies, depending on the day.
Hopefully, my dad’s brain will go the cop route, not the gay route, and be intimidated into leaving.
The duty manager on shift today is chill, thankfully, and she unofficially gave us permission to go check on my mom as long as we stay within our service area and dropped everything like normal if a call came through.
It’s not technically within the rules, of course, but that’s one of the benefits to working someplace small where everyone lives in each other’s pockets.
It’s easier for things to slip through the cracks sometimes.
I really hope we don’t get a call until this is resolved, but of course the EMS gods are not going to let me get away with this shit for long.
The cab of the ambulance bounces as we ease up the long gravel path that passes for my driveway.
Well, it’s not my driveway anymore, I guess, but still.
We pull up in front, and I can’t see any immediate signs of property damage or destruction.
Not like last time, when Dad spent at least half an hour outside yelling shit and throwing anything that wasn’t frozen to the ground.
That’s a good sign, but I don’t get my hopes up. I keep having brief flashes of possibilities run through the foreground of my awareness, and they’re all so bad, I can’t tease apart which ones are realistic or not anymore.
Maybe he attacked her, and inside there’s some horrific, gory nightmare scene that’s going to haunt me forever.
Maybe they’re getting back together, and they’re both going to spiral back into drug abuse until they both OD and I have to fight for custody of Maddi and Sky.
Maybe Silas mistook someone else for my dad, and it’s really some fucking debt collector or something here to kidnap my mom and turn her out because she owes money she hasn’t told me about.
They’re all equally ridiculous and not, at the same time.
My breath is coming in quick, shallow puffs as Tristan and I pile out of the rig and jog toward the door. I can feel his eyes on me, but he doesn’t say anything. He puts his hand on my shoulder when I open the door, though, and I try to mentally hang on to that feeling of solidity.
I’ve never relied on an adult for shit. And Tristan barely qualifies, despite being almost a decade older than me. But right now, the squealing, grasping part of me that doesn’t want to face whatever’s inside needs that reassurance to lean into.
Inside, it doesn’t look like anything I was expecting. The quiet manages to set my nerves on edge even more somehow. I was amped up and thrumming, ready for a fight, and this unsettling level of calm only makes me feel more paranoid that something is deeply wrong.
Mom is in the kitchen, tapping out something on her cell with a cigarette pinched between her first two fingers—the skin there yellow-tinged and leathery from constantly being in this position—and a pile of ash crumbling on the Formica beneath her.
So much for no more smoking in the house.
She doesn’t look bruised or anything, which is good, but I still feel like this whole thing is unnatural.
When I look at the worn-out old La-Z-Boy in the corner, I find Dad. He’s fully reclined with the footrest out, his ratty boots kicked up on it, a fucking Pbr in his hand that he must have brought with him, and—of all things—a girl perched half on the arm, half on his lap.
She looks bored as hell, also holding a Pbr and scrolling on her phone. She can’t be much older than me, although she looks like life might have dealt her even rougher cards.
In the time it takes him to notice Tristan and I bursting in the door, everyone looking up at us, I also clock his fingers curled around her hip, the pad of his thumb teasing at the hem of her shirt absently.
It’s an exact mirror of a position I end up in with Silas a lot of the time.
We’re almost the same size, of course, but Silas still likes to pull me into his lap and fold me up smaller, and I love the sensation of his rough fingertips tracing over the sensitive skin of my hip, dipping lower and lower like a constant tease.
The physical feeling of being small and caged just does something to me.
I don’t know why, but this weird parallel makes the kindled anger inside of me erupt into a blind rage.
Those are hands that have hurt me, hurt Mom, torn this place apart, and done more drugs and other shit than I can remember, and now he’s sitting here with some fucking stranger, doing a sick parody of me and Silas and our actual, healthy fucking relationship.
I want to kill him.
“Get. Out.”
I bite the words out but don’t wait for a reply before crossing the room toward him and reaching for his shirt.
He looks shocked, although I don’t know why, considering how many rooms he’s been kicked out of in his life.
It’s easy to get two fistfuls of his shirt and start pulling him up.
His beer goes flying in the process. The girl scrambles to get out of the way but ends up on her ass on the floor, which I didn’t intend to happen but can’t process right now.
All I see is his stupid fucking face. It takes a lot of strength to yank him to his feet, but not as much as I’d expected.
EMS work has really strengthened my people-lifting muscles instead of my motocross muscles, and I’ve been bulking out in ways I didn’t expect.
I’m not tall enough to get him dangling, but I have caught him off-guard, and that makes satisfaction take up residence at the base of my spine, continuing to fan the flame of my rage.
He doesn’t deserve to exist.
Everyone else in the room is squawking behind me, but I’m doing my best to tune them out.
I’m here to get rid of the problem, and that’s what I’m doing.
Dad starts to fight me, pushing against me and cursing.
He’s tearing at my shirt, but not actually throwing punches, so it’s not enough to dislodge my grip.
“Cade!” Mom yells behind me, before I feel her deceptively strong hands tugging at my arms.
He’s already twisted her back to his side again, I see. Just like the other times.
I take a few steps back towards the door, getting ready to push him through and send him tumbling down the couple of steps onto his ass, but there’s something solid in my way.
The thing my back hits must be a person, because thick arms wrap around me from behind and start to squeeze. Not tight enough that I can’t breathe, but tight enough to make more adrenaline buzz through me.
“Stop.” I hear Tristan’s voice, low and steady in my ear. “Stop. Stop. Let him go and take a breath. Stop, Cade.”
It doesn’t make any sense. He’s squeezing me still, while Mom and the woman are both pawing at me, trying to get me to let go of Kyle. I had his ratty old Harley Davidson t-shirt fisted so tightly it must have been choking him out, because his face is beet red now and he’s gasping for air.
They pry him out of my hands, both women pulling him away from me with expressions of horror that I don’t fully process, but I know will hit me later and it won’t be good.
Meanwhile, Tristan is still holding me tight, dragging me backwards to increase the distance between me and Kyle.
I realize distantly that I’m struggling against Tristan’s hold, although I wasn’t conscious of it, and another surge of anger takes over my body.
The idea of stopping and letting it all go exists. It almost seems like a physical thing sitting just outside my grasp, small and slippery. I’m reaching for it, but the anger is pulling me under like a riptide so my fingertips can only graze the surface of the thing but never get a grip.
I want to stop. I just… can’t.
Plus, I can already feel the prick of shame for my actions waiting for me as soon as I let the anger slip away, and I’m not ready to deal with that yet.
Stoking my rage keeps a wall between me and the consequences of my actions, even if it’s only the consequence of shame, for another few minutes.
It’s not a conscious decision, but I’m dimly aware that some part of my mind has made this series of calculations, with or without my input.
I keep pulling against Tristan’s grip, but his feet are planted and he’s got height, weight and raw strength on me.
There’s a brief crushing moment where more than one reality layers on top of each other, and I think for a second it’s Dad’s hands crushing me, not Tristan’s.
It makes me feel a clench of deep, visceral fear that I haven’t experienced since I was much younger, before I try to shake the irrational thought away.
It’s Tristan, not Dad. And he’s helping me, not hurting me.