Page 48 of Westward

And the idea that Thatcher and Kellan didn’t believe I was an asshole who slept around as much as the media thought, warmed my heart slightly.

Except for the fact that we were in the fucking clinic, with a hurt kid.

Helpless didn’t even begin to cover what I felt in that moment.

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

“I don’t know everything,” Kellan began. “You’ll have to ask Will and the sheriff. I only know his injuries. Which aren’t as severe as they look, thankfully.”

“They look pretty fucking bad,” I spat.

“You’re a hockey player, you’ve seen worse. You’ve been through worse,” Thatcher said.

“So? That’s an eighteen-year-old kid. He should be thinking about college or a career, or taking a break because school was fucking hard. He shouldn’t be dealing with this.”

“No, he shouldn’t,” Thatcher said softly.

“His foster dad, Dobson, I think,” Kellan began.

I nodded. “Yes, that asshole.”

“Well, he and Jace jumped him and beat shit out of him. They used their fists, steel-toed boots, and I think a bat.”

I blinked. “A bat?”

“Yeah. That’s what broke his radius and ulna.” Kellan began to list the rest of his injuries, and I nearly threw up.

The black eye, which thankfully wasn’t a broken eye socket or cheekbone. A minor concussion. The two broken bones in his right arm that seemed to be clean breaks and would heal. Bruised ribs that were near broken. And that busted lip. His knuckles were also bruised and cut open thanks to fighting back, but he shouldn’t have had to. He should have been with us.

“It’s going to be okay? What about Jace and Dobson?”

“Dobson’s in the wind, Jace is behind bars. Seems the little shit couldn’t run fast enough with all the whiskey in his system. They’re going to get the foster dad. I promise you that,” Thatcher said with a growl. “The fact that Sheriff Grayson’s back in the trailer park tells me that something else happened, and we’re going to be dealing with calls for the rest of the week. You know how it is.”

The thing was, I didn’t. I hadn’t even known there was a trailer park in Ashford Creek. Sure, there had been a couple of small trailers on the east side near the main mountain, but I didn’t realize it’d become an entire area where people lived.

There were so many changes I had missed over the years, and I could have kicked myself.

Ashford Creek had always been my touchstone. That slice of home that I had come to when I needed to breathe and remind myself that I was human. It was a place where I could be with my family and leave everything behind.

But Ashford Creek had changed. And with the secrets of the Ashford family slowly being revealed, as well as the other dark items that had appeared over time, Ashford Creek wasn’t the homey place I had remembered from growing up here.

And I had left Lizzie here.

“He’ll heal. He’s young, healthy. Well, as healthy as you can get by not getting enough sleep or enough protein, but with your brother feeding him and making sure that he has a decent job, he’s doing good.”

“He’s coming back with me,” I stated simply, and both men looked at me with wide eyes.

“Oh?”

“I have a huge fucking house, and the kid needs a place to stay. It’s not like he’s still in high school, or we’re dealing with the foster system. A foster system that dropped him at eighteen, I might add, and didn’t fucking care about him.”

“You don’t have to talk to me about the foster system,” Thatcher said irritably. “There’s only so much we can do, and I hate when people slip through the cracks. So yes, I’m going to beat myself up about this just as much as you are, but you’re leaving soon Atlas. What are you going to do, leave a teen in your house just to watch it? That’s a big fucking responsibility.”

I threw my hands in the air. “I don’t fucking know. But Lizzie isn’t going to let him out of her sight anytime soon, and I’m not letting Lizzie out of my sight.”

“That’s not how life works, Atlas,” Kellan began. “This isn’t a math problem.”

“I know that. I know it’s real life, and I know I’m going to need more answers than he has a place to sleep. But that’s a start, isn’t it? I have more money and more space than I know what to do with. So I’m going to help. Help him, help this,” I waved around the shitty room, “I don’t know. But I don’t like what I’m seeing in this town, and it pisses me off.”