Micah laughs, a bitter snarl of a sound. “You stupid motherfucker. Even now, even all these years later, you still think this is all about you. My mom died. My father doesn’t love me enough. Paul’s my best friend, not yours.” Micah’s face goes ugly and mean, contorting with his awful words. “That’s always been your problem, but I’m here to tell you this time it’s not. This thing with Bobby, it’s not about you.”

“What are you talking about? Of course it’s about me. I was the reckless one, the idiot who insisted on driving even though I couldn’t see straight. I was the one who leaned into that curve, took it way too fast.”

Micah fills up his lungs and roars, “It wasn’t you, asshole.” Three quick puffs of air, sharp in the dark quiet, and I struggle to focus on his words, slipping through the hills like smoke. It wasn’t him, what? “Bobby’s car was a stick.”

For the longest time, no one speaks. There’s just sirens and black night and Jax, breathing hard.

He shakes his head. “No, it was—”

“You wanted to drive,” Micah says. “Hell, you tried to, but you couldn’t. You killed the engine, about launched us all through the windshield. I wouldn’t stop laughing, so you dragged me out of the car and tried to fight me, but your punches never landed because you were too plastered.”

The memories flicker, spinning and blurring before they fall into place. How Jax dropped behind the wheel. How the car lurched forward only to stop. The laughter, the fighting. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I understand it now. Jax didn’t push down on the clutch when he started the engine. I know, because the same thing happened to me once in Chet’s Jeep, right before he taught me how to operate a stick.

Jax grunts. “No. That’s not right. I remember getting into the driver’s seat. I remember holding the wheel. It wasn’t a stick.”

“Yes, it was,” Chet says, and all heads swing in his direction. The sirens are deafening now, screeching around the curves at the top of the hill, and he shouts to be heard above them. “Bobby’s car was a Camaro Z28 1LE. Chevy’s lightweight race car package. Built for the track, but most people buy ’em to drive on the roads. Especially roads like the ones around here.”

Chet again, with his car facts, stuff nobody else knows or cares to retain.

“So?” Jax’s voice is impatient.

“So all LEs are manual transmissions. Chevy doesn’t make them any other way.”

I stare at Micah, and oh my God. For twenty years, he’s kept this sickening secret that he’s responsible for the crash.

No, it’s more than that.