His scowl darkened. “This isn’t your truck, Silver.”
I blinked at him. “So?”
He grumbled under his breath, reached for something underneath the seat, then closed the truck door again.
And to make myself not a liar, I went ahead and paired my phone up with his Bluetooth speaker.
It was surprisingly easy, and a modern commodity that I wished I had in my old Grand Am.
One day, I might very well get a new car that had Bluetooth capabilities.
A vehicle that I didn’t have to kick the dash on the passenger side to get it started up.
When my mom had taken out all the loans in my and Aella’s names, she’d ruined our credit to the point that even seven years wouldn’t clear the history from our names.
I’d had to scrape together cash from a summertime job, and save for years, before I was able to outright buy my car.
Lucky for me, my grandfather was a mechanic, and he’d taught me how to keep the ol’ girl running.
Unlucky for me, those times were few and far between because my dad hated his dad, and I only got to see Grampa when Dad had done his disappearing act for a couple of weeks—he did that a lot over the years.
Not that it bothered me.
It actually kind of worked in my favor because then my grandma and grandpa would get me. They’d also been willing to take Aella, too, and had done so a lot and treated her like their own. At least until Dad got back, found out, and threw a fit.
Dad hated Aella because Mom threw a fucking fit when Dad didn’t take both Aella and me for the weekend. She even went to court, and a judge saw fit to force Dad to take her.
I loved having Aella there. It meant that I didn’t have to suffer alone.
But over the years, I finally saw that for the selfish act that it was, and didn’t complain when she was old enough to stay home and make her own decisions not to go.
By the time we were thirteen, she’d stopped coming along with me, and I started suffering in silence.
I didn’t want her to know how awful it was when I went to my dad’s.
If she knew, then she’d come with me again, and I didn’t want her to have to suffer, too.
By then, I’d made the decision to put on a smiling face whether I was happy or not, and I’d kept that persona since I was thirteen and hated the world.
The door to the tow truck opened again and something was shoved back under the seat before Webber got back into the vehicle.
“Ready?” he asked.
I blinked. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I guess that’s a good question,” he murmured as he buckled himself in. “Buckle your seat belt.”
Three
Feral.
—Text from Webber to Silver
WEBBER
The drive back to the shop was done in silence—except for Silver’s constant stream of songs.
She was overly quiet, and I was on the verge of asking why when we pulled into the shop’s large parking area.
