Looking at her from below, her face soft, her thoughts somewhere else, he figured she hadn’t forgotten either, and he wondered if she sat at a freshman football game thinking her sister should be cheerleading. He wondered if it crushed her to think those things.

And he hoped she didn’t because he didn’t like the idea of her feeling crushed.

His eyes never leaving her, Carson wanted to call to her.

No, he wanted to go sit with her. Put his arm around her shoulders. Tell her how he felt that she took his back with the bitches who were so bitchy he didn’t get why she called them friends.

He didn’t do that.

He heard gravel shifting and looked from Carissa.

Julie Baum was headed his way under the bleachers, a smile on her face.

They were meeting there. A date.

Or the kind of dates Carson Steele got.

She wasn’t going to introduce him to her parents either. Her folks thought she was at the game with her girls. Carson would buy her a burger, find someplace to fuck her, return her to her friends, and they’d take her home.

He’d get off.

She’d get off too.

Then she probably wouldn’t think about him, except when she could arrange another meet where she could use him to get off and still do what she could to catch that football player’s eye. The one with no neck that had a dad who was a surgeon.

Which was okay with him.

It was because, not including the no-neck football player, he would do the same.

* * *

Carson’s boot connected with his dad’s face and the man didn’t even groan when his head snapped around.

Out cold.

Carson stared down at him, lifting a hand to wipe the blood pouring out of his nose from his mouth.

Then he spat on him.

He was two months away from eighteen. More than that from graduating.

But fuck it.

It was time to leave.

He’d never laid a hand on his father, but tonight was bad. The man had been in a rage. A frigging rage about a new oil stain on the floor of the garage.

Their house was old. There were so many stains on the garage floor, it was a wonder his old man noticed a new one.

But he did and he lost it.

And for the first time, Carson did too.

So he was done.

Carson was going to disappear.

So he didn’t get his degree.

Shit happened.