Tate gave up trying to cover for him, sighed, and glanced back at Caleb once. Then he looked back at me.

“Because he’s my brother,” he said. “Caleb has some issues. He’s on parole for some shit that went down back in Miami with a girl. If he gets into any more trouble, he’ll go to jail for a long time. I’m just looking out for my little brother.”

He reached out and patted my shoulder and then lit up a cigarette. “I’ll talk to him,” he added. He put the cigarette between his lips and took a long pull. “It’s about time he and I had a brotherly heart-to-heart anyway. He’s starting to fuck up a lot again.”

I shook my head, resolved to take Bray and go back to Georgia now that I finally got her to somewhat entertain the idea. I looked at her. She looked at me. And then I said to Tate, “Look, I appreciate it, you coming back for us like that, but I think it’s better that we go home.” Bray’s hand tightened around mine and at first I took it as her way of quietly agreeing with me, standing beside my decision, but that wasn’t it at all. She caught my eye and I saw in hers nothing but pleading and refusal.

I tried to ignore it.

“Besides,” I said to Tate, “your brother is unstable. I don’t feel like I can trust him anymore.”

I never trusted him really to begin with, but after what he did last night, what little trust I did have was gone. I now realized that in this particular situation, Bray was almost no better than Caleb. She knew what he had done and didn’t tell anyone, just like Caleb. But I made up excuses for her: She wasn’t on parole. She wasn’t the one who dropped the drugs into everyone’s drinks. She—who was I kidding? Bray was just as much at fault. The only difference was that I loved her.

“Caleb won’t be a problem,” Tate said, trying to change my mind. “Like I said, I’ll talk to him. Shit, I’ve already had it out with him on the way here about what went down. He may be ‘unstable’ and a prick at times, but he always listens to me. And he knows I’ll kick his ass if I have to.”

“Elias?” Bray said softly. “Let’s just go with them. Please.”

I knew it had nothing to do with any of them but everything to do with being afraid to go back home and face what happened. I was going to refuse. I had it settled in my mind that Bray and I were going back to Georgia. Nothing that Tate could say or promise was going to change that.

But then I saw something flicker across Bray’s features just as she let go of my hand and took a half step back. She wasn’t going to go back with me. I knew by that look on her face, that pleading, solemn darkness that had consumed her—if I chose to go back, she would stay with them. I wouldn’t be able to force her. I knew she wouldn’t have wanted to leave me and that it would take everything in her to do it, but there was no way she was going back.

All I wanted to do was protect her.

I had already made up my mind by then to stay, but I wanted to know some things about Tate first, before I openly agreed.

“Why do you care where we go, anyway?” I asked.

Tate smiled and blew out a stream of smoke. “We just like having you around.” He started gesturing with his cigarette hand. “I have to go back to work in a week. I had almost a full month of vacation time racked up at my job. If I didn’t use it I was gonna lose it. So that’s what I’m doing. And hell, it’s been great. I’m getting paid to hop around Florida and party.”

I never took him for the hard-working type, much less being such a hard worker that he had that much vacation time he had never used. This actually kind of blew my mind. And I felt very small all of a sudden. Here I was, jobless, homeless, standing in a parking lot with nowhere to go and no way to get there. I had worked all my life, from the age of sixteen. I helped my mom out with bills and groceries just about every month. Now, I felt as much a lowlife as that piece of shit who stole my car.

Tate went on, “Damn, man, I thought it was just going to be me, Jen, and my brother. Now, with Ditzy Dope-for-Brains and Grace the Powerpuff Girl back there, sometimes I feel like I’m going to lose my shit. As if Jen beating the shit out of me at least once a week and Caleb fuckin’ up wasn’t enough. You two are a breath of fresh air.”

“She beats the shit out of you?” Bray asked with an air of serious disbelief.

Tate threw his head back and laughed. Then he flicked what was left of the cigarette across the parking lot. “Well, I let her, of course. I like it, she likes it but pretends she doesn’t. It all works out.” He shrugged and added, “So what do you say? Go back home or stay with us for just one more week and help keep me sane before I have to crawl back into that nut-suffocating suit?” He cocked his head to one side thoughtfully.

“You work in a suit?” Bray asked, her eyebrows drawing inward.

I admit, I was just as astonished by the possibility as she appeared to be.

Tate smiled with teeth. “Yeah. Unfortunately.”

Jen slid the window down on the Jeep and yelled, “Baby, come on! Your gas light just dinged!”

Tate looked back at us with what I thought he meant as being puppy-dog eyes, but he looked more confident and impish than innocent.

I thought about it for a moment. Bray looked like she was holding her breath the whole time.

“All right,” I said, and both of their faces lit up. “But seriously, man, talk to Caleb. I know you’re his brother and all, but if he fucks up like that again, and Bray or I are involved, I won’t come to you for permission to beat the fuck out of him.”

Tate nodded. “It’s a deal.”

We shook on it and were on our way to Panama City.

Chapter Twenty

Elias

Panama City was the turning point. I didn’t think that things could get any worse, but lately rock bottom was just never the bottom anymore. We had stayed there for four days, and the week Tate had left of his vacation time was suspiciously extended.

It began on Sunday night when Tate got a phone call. We had been staying at the house of one of Caleb’s friends, Adam. He was someone Caleb apparently had gone to college with. Like Tate and his job, I never took Caleb for the college type. Come to find out he had to drop out when he was sent to prison after that thing with the girl in Miami that Tate had mentioned to me previously.

Adam’s house was several miles from the beach. I was glad for that, because I was getting sick of looking at the ocean and dusting sand out of my shoes.

I missed home. As much as I wanted to be with Bray, I missed the summer river parties and the southern lakes. I missed my mom’s fried chicken on Friday nights. I missed hanging out in a friend’s backyard with a beer and listening to the crickets and frogs with their strangely calming melodious racket during long summer nights. And the fireflies. Always the fireflies. But what I missed the most was my quiet life, the one where I went to work every day and came home to my own apartment and could kick back and watch television. I didn’t have to worry about anything except maybe Mitchell. But he was fixable. This situation, I knew, wasn’t.

As I sat on the back porch of Adam’s house in Panama City, listening to Tate get upset while on that phone call, I pictured being home. I wondered—every single day, in fact—what life would’ve been like if that night at the river had never happened. I thought of Bray and how she came back into my life, and how everything was so perfect, the way I had always imagined it. A part of me couldn’t help but blame her for how everything ended up… destroyed. I felt guilty for thinking that way, not only because it was half my fault, but because I didn’t want to feel that way about her at all. I loved her so much. But I had begun to feel a lot of anger and resentment toward her, too. I… OK, I started to realize that Bray, despite all that I loved about her, was ruining her life and selfishly taking me down with her. And my tolerance for forgiveness was beginning to fade.

It was my fault as much as it was hers, but I had tried on several occasions to talk some sense into her. I tried to get her to go back. I knew I never should’ve let her leave in the first place. But I was weak in that moment, standing next to Jana’s body with Bray next to me shattered and lost and afraid and in so much pain. It was a fucking mistake to run with her. I know. I fucking know it more than anyone. But I couldn’t take back what I had done. All I could do was try to fix it along the way. But Bray fought me at every turn and for that I began to feel resentment.

“Listen, man,” Tate said into his cell phone pressed to his ear. “I’ll get it, all right? No—No, just hear me out. I’ll bring it myself. I can leave first thing in the morning after the bank opens and I can be in Corpus Christi by tomorrow night. Yeah. This is my cell phone number. Don’t call Caleb about anything. No, just let me deal with it.” He began to nod heavily as if wanting the call be over with already. “I know, man. Do me a favor and don’t deal with him anymore.” A few more nods and broken sentences and he hung up. I saw his teeth grinding as the cell phone disappeared in his fist. I thought he was going to smash it on the concrete beam holding up the porch roof, but he calmed himself at the last second.

“I know it’s none of my business, Tate, but why are you still covering for him? Sounds like some serious shit.”

He sat down heavily in the empty wrought-iron chair. The cell phone clanked against the matching table as he tossed it carelessly on top. He ran both hands over the top of his head and let out a long, aggravated breath.