Prologue #3
He turned and looked me up and down, a grimace visible on his sagging face. “Who are you?”
Anger at myself rose inside me, and I tried to get it under control. I didn’t want to appear rattled. I wanted to be calm. Resolute. But all I could think of was that they’d sped off with Julianna to who knows where, and I wasn’t there with her. She was alone.
My faraway stare must have been alarming because the police officer grabbed my arm, stirring me out of shock. “You okay? Were you in this?” His head tilted toward the accident scene.
I felt exhausted, and my shoulders slumped. I hadn’t answered him. His eyes narrowed on me. “Where were you?”
It must have been obvious I’d been in a wreck - my clothes were tattered in places, my appearance was disheveled, and I had Julianna’s blood from her head wound on me.
She’s gone. I should have been with her.
“I did this,” I said, eyes whipping up to face the police officer. “I wrecked the truck. Julianna…”
“That’s the girl?” he asked.
I nodded before continuing, “She wasn’t driving, if that’s what she said. There was a deer, but I was drinking earlier?—”
The man’s forehead scrunched up. “What? Why would you—if you’d just—are you of legal age?”
“Nineteen,” I replied.
He shook his head, looking at the ground. “Dammit. You just outright confessed to a crime, young man. I’ll have to take you in. You know that, right?”
“Yes, sir.” My voice sounded steadier than I felt. “I’m not—I’m pretty sure I’m sober now. But I had to do the right thing.”
The officer nodded, looking somber.
My thoughts and the officer’s actions were temporarily halted when a car came around the curve, lights shining onto us. It stopped several hundred yards back, pulling over into the small sliver of grass on the side of the road.
It was my father’s Mercedes. To make matters worse, he was driving. Not only was it out of character for him to drive himself anywhere, but he looked determined, too. I saw it in the way he stopped the car, got out of the driver’s seat, and opened the door.
He pulled his sports jacket around him and buttoned it at the front before striding toward us.
Many people in town said I was a miniature version of my father.
He was handsome, to be sure, and that part of the equation felt good.
But any other speck of my father that I inherited made me want to obliterate myself.
Even in that moment, when I should have feared his consequence, I hated him.
I hated him for every insult he’d ever said to me.
All the backhands and pushes into walls.
The times I’d watched him hit my mother.
Never enough to mar her beauty, but enough to make her feel like a bug under his shoe.
I hated that he was never home, never a clear witness to what he did to his son and wife, as he treated us like objects he was forced to put up with.
He ran his hand through his slicked-back hair, and by the time he reached the officer and me, a couple of other nearby officers had made their way over to our huddle.
“Gentlemen. Chief McKay.”
I stared at my father, my rage manifesting in a tick in my clenched jaw. He didn’t even look my way. He kept his eyes on the chief.
“Ah, glad they were able to get a hold of you, Mr. Winchester. This is your truck?”
“Yes, it’s mine. I’ll assume all responsibilities and costs for the removal, of course. If you can instruct the wrecker to take it to whatever the nearest shop is, I’d appreciate it.”
The chief’s skepticism melted into thin air, making me huff out an exasperated breath. The audacity of my father knew no bounds.
“Of course,” the chief said, completely accepting the command, and instructed one of his underlings to make it so.
“Now, I’d like to take my wayward son home…” My father locked eyes with the chief as if telling him something without saying it out loud.
The chief swallowed.
“I can’t do that, Mr. Winchester. Your boy here admitted he’d been drinking when they crashed.”
“They?” My father’s eyes narrowed .
“Yes. Your son was with a girl.”
“Julianna East,” another deputy volunteered, flipping through papers behind us.
“Yes, Miss East,” the chief reiterated. “She was transported to the hospital. The EMT said she was stable.”
My father’s seething gaze turned onto me. I tried to keep my face neutral. I wanted nothing to bleed through so he could use it against me. The hardness in his expression told me everything I needed to know. This wasn’t going to end well.
“We can resolve this amicably, right, Chief?” My father’s voice was smooth.
The police chief’s face paled. My father put his arm around the man, leading him away from me while talking in his ear. They spoke for what seemed like an eternity. Then they shook hands, hard and fast, like people in business, not like a deadbeat Dad and a sworn officer of law.
The moment my father turned away from the chief, his face transformed from that of a smooth businessman to a dangerous villain.
“Get in the car,” he grumbled as he passed me. He would not dare to put a hand on me, knowing I’d fight back. Unable to do anything else, I followed him and got into his car’s passenger seat .
He turned the key, starting the engine.
“What did you do?” I asked him sternly, crossing my arms.
“Don’t take that fucking tone with me,” my father spat as he drove in the direction of the house. “Your disappointments know no bounds, do they? Why did I have to be the one to spawn such an ignorant piece of trash?”
I winced but immediately felt anger tightening my chest. I wanted him to fear me for once rather than me fearing him, but I didn’t know how to make that happen. I was at his mercy.
“Aren’t you worried if I’m hurt? Or maybe about Julianna…”
“I couldn’t give two shits about that girl. And you...” he pointed a finger at me while keeping his eyes ahead, “you deserve whatever injuries you have. So no, I’m not worried. What kind of stunt did you think you were pulling, anyway? Driving drunk?”
“That’s awesome, coming from a man who just paid off the police.” The words left my mouth before I could filter them.
“You should be thanking me,” he said through clenched teeth.
He was driving so fast that I closed my eyes to block out my inevitable demise once he lost control.
“I should have had your ass thrown in jail. That little exchange cost me ten fucking grand. You left the scene, and then you came back? What the fuck?”
I swallowed, willing my voice to stay calm. Steady.
“Julianna begged me to drive. I was taking her home from a party.”
“That’s Leota East’s granddaughter,” my father snapped angrily.
“Yes, Julianna,” I replied. “Leota is her Grams.”
“Are you fucking around with her?”
“Not yet.”
My Dad scoffed. “Well, you won’t be. So get that shit out of your head. ”
“That’s not your decision,” I muttered, my blood pressure rising again.
“It is my decision, and I say you stay away from her and her grandmother. I don’t know what you see in her anyway. She’s got the body of a manatee —”
“Don’t fucking talk about her like that.” My voice was hardened steel, and I wanted to knock him out. But my father did not even flinch. Instead, he switched trajectories.
“Whit’s going down a path to success, and I know you have to be around him, but those other Easts? Complete waste of time putting anything into them. I should have reined you in long ago. I let you be around them far too much and their fucking Leave It to Beaver life.”
“You just hate them because of what you did,” I snapped, my tone mocking.
“Does the guilt gnaw at you? Do you ever think about how you sold that plant and threw a couple of hundred families in Mill Creek into poverty? Including Grams and Whit and Julianna? You don’t like that little reminder of what a piece of shit you are, do you?
” I watched as a vein in his forehead began to pulse.
Yet I kept on. “Or is it because your only son chose them? Because I’ll choose them every time. ”
He slammed on the brakes, and I lurched forward and to the right, my already tender head hitting the car window.
“Listen to me, and hear me well,” he yelled, his voice ringing in my ears. “Get around that girl or her grandmother again, and I will see to it that you never play football again. You’ll come back to Mill Creek and work for my businesses, and I will make your life a living hell.”
It was my turn to scoff. “You can’t revoke my scholarship. That’s not up to you.”
He laughed then, loud and boisterous. The blood in my veins turned to ice.
“You’re so na?ve, boy. The only reason you have a scholarship is because of me,” he said smugly.
“You think you earned that? Do you think you got first string as a freshman in the greatest high school football program because of your little record? No. The only reason you have a scholarship is because of me. I met with the chairman. I paid for the scholarship. I got you where you are. Not you. Me.”
My heart plummeted to my feet as his words echoed in my ears, head, and bones. I couldn’t feel, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t speak.
“So yes, you will stay away from Leota East. If I hear a single whisper of you messing around with the East girl, so help me God, I will take everything from you. You’ve seen what I’m capable of, and it can get so much worse. Don’t fuck with me, son.”
“Don’t you call me that ever again.” My booming voice echoed in the car cab. “You’ve never treated me like a father, and I want to be anything but your son.”
His hands gripped the steering wheel, his jaw tight.
“You were made from me, Bram Winchester. My blood runs through your veins. There’s nothing you can do to change that.
” His voice quietened. “And don’t say one word to anyone about what happened tonight.
Julianna was driving. That’s the beginning and end of the story. ”
My burning anger gave way to embarrassment and dejection as exhaustion swept over me. My father had paid for my scholarship. I didn’t earn it. I thought I was free of him, but my whole future rested on his shoulders.
He was right. I was nothing. Blinded by the inexperience of youth.
Yet my father couldn’t have been more wrong about Julianna. She wasn’t a waste of time. She was sunshine, intelligence, and kindness—all things good and bright in the world.
But she was too good for me. She had always been and would always be.