Garret shrugged carelessly. “With friends.”

Dad dropped his hold on him, causing my brother to stumble back. Thankfully, the recliner was right behind him, and he fell back into it like he’d meant to do it.

“Friends,” our father repeated. “You mean the lazy fuckers who use you for the cash in your pockets to pay for the drugs you smoke?”

“They don’t use me,” Garret told him. “I didn’t even pay for the…” His voice trailed off, and he coughed before clearing his throat and then blinking at me. “Hey, Nova, what happened to your lip? Wait, are those fingerprints on your neck?”

“Gar, you should probably shut up now,” I cautioned. “Do you notice Mom isn’t here?”

He blinked again. “Yeah. Where is she?”

I lifted a finger to my mouth, silently urging him to keep his mouth shut.

“She went for a walk with Raven,” Dad informed him, his voice still calm but full of ice. Not that Garret realized that. His hazy mind was too out of it for him to understand that Dad was at his most dangerous like this. Or that Mom was on a walk in order to calm down enough so that she didn’t kill her son the moment she set eyes on him.

I didn’t blame Garret for what happened to me that afternoon. How could he possibly have known that the enemy of my best friend’s family would send his men to deliver a message? He was just doing what he always did, fucking around and trying to ease by until he graduated and could go to New York to work for Ciro and Cristiano. He hated it in Creswell Springs—honestly, we both did, but for completely different reasons.

For Garret, he couldn’t stand the small-town life.

For me, I hated it because it was so far away from Ryan.

Mom and Dad, however, blamed Garret. Instead of having to ask River for a ride home, I should have been able to ask my brother. But I’d learned he wasn’t exactly the reliable type. If I’d asked him to wait around and give me a ride home, even if he’d said yes, I knew it would have been a wasted effort. He would have forgotten about me the instant one of his friends suggested skipping their last class and heading to someone’s house to get high.

Our parents expected him to think of protecting me first and foremost. Only once I was home in the safety of our four walls did they consider him free to do as he wanted. But they hadn’t realized yet that Garret only thought about one person, and that was himself.

He was selfish and still had a hell of a lot of growing up to do. I was hoping when he moved to New York to start working for the Vitucci family that summer, it would be a good thing for him. Ciro and Cristiano wouldn’t put up with his crap like Dad did. But in my heart, I knew it wasn’t going to change anything.