The discomfort makes me shift. I play it off, bringing my nails up to examine them. I’d forgotten how exhausting it can be to always act something you don’t feel.
“You don’t have to tell me the details. It’s going to be just like in Tokyo.”
“What are you talking about?”
“With Kobayashi. When I convinced him to basically give us that pallet of electronics?”
“We-ell,” Dad laughs, lifting a hand up to stop me, shaking his head, that glint of competition in his eye. “You’re overplaying your involvement in that, Dubs. But I love the confidence.”
“What are you talking about? It was my sweet-talking that—”
“Iblackmailedhim,” Dad snaps, leaning forward, his fingertips on the table, his eyes molten as he stares at me. “That’s what got us that shit, Dubs, and that wasn’t even the primary part of the job. We needed the pallet to get into the—”
He stops, either registering his mistake, or seeing the smile on my face. Leaning away from me, he raises his chin, already starting to shake his head as I pull the recording device from my other pocket. His eyes lock onto it.
“Don’t even bother trying to take it from me,” I say, eyes steely as I stare at him. “It’s all on the cloud, secured. Destroying this device won’t do anything.”
Dad swallows, crossing his arms. “Fine. What do you want?”
“Leave me alone,” I say, that sick feeling in my stomach only ballooning. “Let me live my life how I want to. Stop trying to pull me back.”
I’m severing the one tie I have to this. If I go back to my other life—trying to be good, doing stuff the right way—I could very much crash and burn. With Vic turning me away, Luca not believing me, and no job, things are looking rough.
But I know who I am. And I’m not going to do the wrong thing just because it’s the easy thing.
Besides, Gran believes in me. She always has, even when everyone else in the family slowly lost faith.
“You’re making a mistake, Dubs,” Dad says when I get up.
“It’s mine to make.”
His head lolls to the side. “You know. If you turn that in—the stuff they didn’t lock you up for—you’re going right back to jail with me. I could just take us both down.”
“You could,” I allow, nodding, “but you won’t.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you may not be a good dad,” I say, lifting my chin, “but I know that you love me. Enough to let me go.”
His bottom lip moves, and it’s the only show of emotion I’m going to get. The only sign that I’m right. I don’t stay, don’t linger to see what else he’s going to stay.
Instead, I turn on my heel and walk out the way I came.
Luca
“She’s not going to come.”
“She’ll come, Luca,” Cal says.
“I really fucked up, man.” I drop my face into my hands, forcing myself to take several deep breaths. After that first playoff game, when Wren started becoming distant, I’d already missed her. Now, not having been around her physically for nearly two weeks, the suffering is almost impossible to bear.
I don’t know what I’m going to do if she doesn’t show up. Or if she comes and tells me I blew my shot with her.
Cal is quiet for a moment, and there’s nothing but the sound of the bushes behind us, just beginning to bloom from a long, rainy April. Quietly, he asks, “Are you sure this is the best place to do this whole thing?”
I lift my head from my hands. Last night, we played against Boston, and Wren wasn’t there. It felt like trying to walk with my legs tied together. And now Sloane has reached out to her, promising to try and get her to meet me at the arena.
Cal and I are sitting on the bench right next to the trash can where I dropped that folder. Where I told Wren my secret, and things between us shifted.
