Page 29 of Burning Demons (Burning Torments #1)

Chapter 29

Tate

The door closed behind me, and I raced down the hall, through the kitchen, and out the back door before Wren was even out of his truck. The old hinge squeaked when he slammed it, but I was already halfway across the backyard, running full throttle for the trees.

I couldn’t be here. I had to get away.

With my backpack on my shoulder, I dodged limbs and roots as I disappeared into the woods. Acres of nature separated the streets and houses out here. I came to a road that looked a lot like the one we lived on, but I kept going. And going. I didn’t stop until I came to a park Wren passed through when he went running.

My lungs burned from the effort to outrun the demons chasing me, and I slumped onto a swing, ready to give up and let them eat me alive. Gray clouds swirled over my head, and a cold blast hit me square in the chest. Fuck, it was cold, but I gulped in the breeze, adding an ache to the sting.

I couldn’t think beyond the pain. There was no plan here. I dropped my bag between my feet and dug out my smokes and lighter. Tears and my shaking hands ruined the first one, but I managed to get the second one lit and sucked down its calming effect.

Low rumbles of thunder added to the voices in my head. I shivered but didn’t bother leaving. I didn’t even move. With my temple against the old, dirty chain of the swing, I sat, defeated, and let the demons have me. Years of Mother’s degradation, eternal nights of Franklin’s manipulation, months of Winnie’s cheerful words, all of them shouted over one another. The sounds were as real as grasping hands clawing at my limbs while I kicked to resurface.

Wren’s words sliced them to bits.

The part about not getting how he’d disappointed Winnie wasn’t what blasted a hole in my chest. It wasn’t what made me run, not caring that he hadn’t stopped the truck. Buried in those words was the accusation that I didn’t understand love.

Before moving here, he would’ve been right. I had no clue what love was then. I knew necessity. I knew existing and surviving. I knew games and faking every aspect of life. I knew how to turn the lights out when my body was used. I knew how to be happy for the scraps I was tossed.

But that was then.

Didn’t Wren see? Did he not see how he’d changed the rules? Wren had scraped the imitation of the life I’d known and showed me what lay beneath. I knew love now. That insubstantial idea that was hard to describe yet easy to give in to. It was there between Wren and Winnie, between Winnie and Dad. They loved each other and had opened their lives for me. And I, I fell in love with all of them, one by one, in different ways, but dammit, I knew fucking love, and Wren just stomped all over that.

“Motherfucker,” I growled and stared at the sky.

I should go home, face Dad, and clean up. I should punch Wren in the fucking face until he realized I was so pissed at him because of the love he thought I didn’t get . But I didn’t.

The afternoon darkened quickly with the thick clouds. I sent Dad a text explaining as much as possible and telling him I was okay. Of course, he wanted to know where I was. He wanted to come get me—because, yeah, he cared, Wren . I knew love, fucker—but I told Dad I needed space.

Finally, he asked me to tell him where I was, not that he was coming to get me, but just to know in case I needed him later. So I did. I trusted Dad. Something that was as hard to realize as it was to do, but I trusted him when he gave me his word.

After that, I called Percy. I never thought of myself as the type to obtain or keep a friend, but he’d become just that. He might even be my best friend outside of Wren, who was in the friendship doghouse at the moment.

“Hello?” Percy said with an uncertain voice when he had to have seen my name pop up.

“Hey,” I said.

After a long pause, Percy said, “Are you okay?”

I huffed a disgusted chuckle. “Good gossip travels quickly, huh?”

“Yeah. Emily told me.”

“Well, whatever. I’m not sorry about getting my ass kicked. I started it.”

“Did you do that for me?”

I sighed and hung my head. “Some for you. Some for me.”

“Thank you, Tate.”

I chuckled for real. “Don’t thank me, fuck. I lost.”

“Don’t be a sore dick about it.” I chuckled again at this little fifteen-year-old cursing and doing it horribly too. “No one’s ever stood up for me, win or lose, so thanks. It means a lot.”

“You’d do the same. No, you’re smarter than me. You’d find a better way to get them and win.”

Percy giggled. “Yeah, like copy their SIM cards and send a bunch of fake shit from their phones.”

“You can do that?”

“No, of course not. I saw it in a movie.”

“Oh.” I snorted, then laughed, and Percy joined me.

When we got quiet again, he said, “And about coming out? You okay with that?”

I shrugged and stared at the black sky. “Yeah. I never wanted to be in the closet. Well, I never considered myself in the closet.”

“Me neither, but I keep to myself anyway, so who’s gonna know.”

“Exactly.”

“Yeah.”

After another long pause, I said, “How about you? Your dad pissed about what the Wolf Pack did?”

“Yeah. I’m grounded until graduation. Actually, I think I’m grounded until college.”

“The fuck? Seriously?”

“Told you. Dad’s good at ignoring all things me, and this made him have to face it.”

“Fuck.” I groaned. “I know a little something about that. My mother was the same way. Huge differences, but yeah, she ignored me too.”

“Why are parents such assholes?”

“Not all are.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

I got lost in my thoughts, thinking about Dad and how he made a good parent, even though I was not planned and dropped on him out of nowhere.

“Tate, do you think there is happiness for us? I mean, with all the stuff we’ve had to deal with, do you think it’s possible to move on?”

Good question and one I had thought about many times. The answer? Yeah. Yeah, it was possible to move on, to be happy, because I had almost been there. But that happy road wasn’t a given, and it took a lot of work to achieve. Work like confronting the things that held us back, overcoming the things we could, and accepting the things we couldn’t.

Happy required facing and owning up to the bad shit, or it would always stain the good times. The path to happy also meant making mistakes along the way, maybe giving in to the self-doubt sometimes, but knowing how to get out of it and seeing it as a setback, not a new course.

Most importantly, happy was a place of my making, my doing, and no one else’s. I was the one to set the boundaries and the goals. I was the one to set the markers and the achievements. And it was about fucking time I did.

“Tate?”

“Yes, Percy. Happy is out there for us.”

“Good. I knew that, but I wanted to make sure you did too.”

I chuckled. “You shithead.”

“Whatever. So what’s your first step? For me, I think I’m gonna go stay with my aunt for a while. She lives a few towns over, but she likes me.”

“You’ll be happy there?” I asked.

“It’s a start. It’s a step in the right direction. What’s yours?”

I sighed and built the words in my head. I had known it all along. With the first step away from home I took, I knew I needed to go back. I needed to burn the demons instead of running from them.

“I’ve gotta face my stepfather.”

“Is that safe?”

“I don’t know.”

“You need backup?”

I huffed. “Probably?”

“Are you gonna take backup?”

“Probably not, and stop reading me so well.”

Percy giggled. “No can do. I told you I was smart, right?”

“That you did.”

I stayed at the park until after midnight and would’ve stayed longer, but I was freezing. I took the streets home, remembering the way since I knew where I had ended up. Dad was awake and worried. He took me to the downstairs bathroom and cleaned the cut on my forehead and checked my other bruises. It wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. After a long hug, he sent me upstairs to shower and said we would talk more in the morning. I hadn’t expected that to start the second I woke up, though.

“Tate. Come on, now. Get up.”

With a grunt, I rolled over with Dad shaking my shoulder. “What time is it?”

“Seven. I’m heading to the school with you once you’re dressed and ready. The principal’s admin called this morning. You and Wren are getting suspended.”

“Fuck,” I groaned. Not that it hadn’t been expected, but still. How else could I fuck everything up?

I probably shouldn’t have asked that.

By some miracle, Wren and I missed each other in the hallway and bathroom as we got ready. When I jogged down the stairs close to eight, his truck was already rumbling down the street.

“He left me?” I asked what I had thought was no one.

“You’re going with me,” Dad said from the living room.

“You don’t need to. I don’t want to fuck up your day.”

“Too late for that.”

Great. I dropped my head and sighed.

The way to school was the same as every other morning for months now and different too. I wasn’t heading in for a day of class; I was going only to be formally told I couldn’t come back for however many days. I was going to get that official document or whatever that labeled me a deviant.

The students and teachers we passed on the way in did horrible jobs of staring without being noticed. Most were curious, but more than a few were angry or disgusted.

Wren and Winnie were already in the principal’s office. Wren lifted his chin from staring at his clasped hands to then stare at me. I didn’t know what this meant for us. Would he be pissed forever? Was this all my fault? His mother’s bad attitude, the suspension, all of it was because of me, but did he blame me?

I couldn’t read him, and I hated that.

A voice cleared, startling me, and in reflex, I turned at the noise. When I looked back at Wren, he stared at his hands again.

Principal Woodson’s office busted at the seams with not only him and the four of us but his admin, the football coach, and one of the school’s counselors.

I didn’t pay attention to most of what was said. Why did I need to? We were getting suspended for fighting, plain as that. Woodson threw in some bible verses and personal beliefs about violence. I bit my cheek so that I wouldn’t snap at his hypocrisy. Where was Woodson’s righteousness yesterday when Percy stood right here in this office, nearly in a state of panic, and this very man treated him as if he were the wrongdoer?

Fuck this place.

The very second we could leave, I rushed from the room.

“Tate,” Dad called after me, and I slowed in the hallway. “You need anything from your locker?”

Like what? Homework I couldn’t turn in or school books I wasn’t about to touch over this mandated break? “No, sir. I’m good.”

“All right then.” Dad headed for the exit.

Winnie and Wren came out after us and turned for the faculty parking when we went to the main entrance.

“You boys are grounded until after the new year, at the least. Not that you really went anywhere anyway.”

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled, expecting all of that.

We got to his truck, but his phone rang.

“Hey, sugar, what is it?” Dad said as he answered, and then a second later, he swore. “Son of a bitch! All right. We’ll head over.”

“What?” I asked when he hung up.

“Someone worked over Wren’s truck.”

What? We’d only been here thirty minutes, if that.

We drove around to the parking for seniors that was between buildings and next to the faculty parking. Wren had driven separately because Winnie was going to go to work afterward. Apparently, a half hour was all that was needed. Someone—and by someone, I meant very specific people—had trashed Wren’s truck.

I got out, numb, wide-eyed, and moved to stand next to Wren. He had his hands on his hips as he glared at the busted windows, slashed tires, and the dicks spray-painted all over the ancient thing. Brotherfuckers was scratched into the paint and painted in several places.

Winnie was on the phone, and Dad went to her side.

“I’m sorry, Wren,” I said. “About your truck.”

“You know, I think I’ve hit my limit,” he breathed.

“What do you mean?”

“I just can’t, Tate. I can’t anything. I can’t think. I can’t react. I don’t have answers or know the questions. I’m just numb. Shocked.” Not once did he look at me when he said any of that.

“Tate.” I turned as Dad came closer. “Come on, I’ll take you home. Wren and Winnie are staying to file the police report.”

I nodded but stared at Wren’s profile for as long as I could. A muscle ticked in his jaw, and he breathed slow and deep. I didn’t know what he needed or how to help or if me helping would make anything worse, so I left.

Dad waited at his truck, and when I got into the passenger side, I glanced back at Wren.

He stared at me. As if he couldn’t until I had moved far enough away. Was this us now? Had too much pulled us apart until we didn’t know how to be together any longer?

Dad left me at home and went back to the school. Everyone’s day was now as fucked as Wren’s truck. No doubt the Wolf Pack had done the deed; maybe Alex helped them. I didn’t hold my breath that the local law would care much or do anything.

I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. Percy texted me that all four of the Wolf Pack had also been suspended for what they did to him and for the fight yesterday. That was some kind of justice, I supposed.

Now, I needed justice for me, for Wren. With nothing much else to do, I sat at my desk and wrote a list of all the things I needed to say to him, to Winnie, and to Dad. From apologies to confessions.