“Thank God, no one got hurt. Thank God, you’re all right.” My mom’s repeated words over and over did nothing to calm the situation. Not as he told her to leave the room. Not as he threatened she’d suffer the consequences if she didn’t let him teach me a lesson. Not as her eyes met mine when he shut the door, closing her out. Coward.

And then, I stood there with a shit-eating grin on my face and a fuck-you lift to my chin as he showed me with his fists and insults the “lesson” he wanted me to learn.

He yanks again, and I grit my teeth as he drags me to the corner of the strip mall, where we stand a foot away from the glass storefront so no one can really see us.

“So help me God, boy,” Sal sneers. “I’m going to make a man out of you one way or another.”

“So what? So I can be just as pathetic as you?” I counter. “I’m not going. Not a chance in hell.”

Sure, I crashed his car, but the prick had it coming to him. There’s only so much a man can take, so much second-string living a person should put up with—and I, right or wrong, reached my breaking point last night.

“I don’t think you’re understanding the situation, son,” he says, like it’s a slur. “You drove a car drunk, underage, and crashed it. You then fled the scene of an accident—”

“I did not. I called you.” And it took everything I had to do just that, but I was scared and hurt and Boone hightailed it out of there on foot so he wouldn’t get in trouble, since he’d already had some trouble with the law. “You came to pick me up and pulled the car out of there with your Jeep.”

His smile is gloating. “Really?” He feigns innocence. “Because from the way I recall it, and how I’ll gladly tell the cops when I file a report, my troubled stepson stole my car out of spite. And despite being only twenty, he broke into my liquor cabinet, got drunk, stole money out of my safe—”

“What are you talking about?”

He yanks my arm even harder, his fingers bruising and threatening on my bicep. “And after he stole my liquor, my money, and my car, he decided to go drinking and driving where he crashed my car, injured his passenger, and then fled the scene of the crime after damaging a fence and other personal property.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind.” I say the words, but silent panic is suddenly clawing its way up my throat.