Page 70 of Thunder

"I'd what, Presley." His eyes are blazing. "Say it. What was I gonna do that was so terrible it was worth lyin' to my face for half a year?"

And I open my mouth to tell him.

To finally say all of it, everything that's been building in me for months, every ounce of the anger and the grief and the terrible unfairness of being the one who lost the most and got blamed the worst.

But he doesn't let me.

"No," he says, cutting clean through whatever I was about to become. "No. I don't want to hear it right now, because right now I'm lookin' at my youngest, the one who came to this family late and got hurt worst of all, and I'm realizin' she looked me dead in the eye and decided I was just one more person she couldn't trust. That's what I've got. That's what the both of you left me holdin'."

His voice breaks on the last word, actually breaks, and my father, my hard, deadly, unshakeable father, turns away from me so I won't see his face.

And every word I had lined up dies in my throat.

The heat drains out of me all at once and leaves something hollow and awful behind.

My eyes are burning, spilling over before I can stop them, and there's a pressure building behind my ribs so hard I can barely pull a breath around it.

I came into this braced to fight him, and instead I'm watching the strongest man I know stand in the dirt with his back to me like I put a knife in him.

"Pops." It comes out of me wrecked, barely a sound. "Pops, please, let me just⁠—"

"Not now." He doesn't turn around. "I can't look at either one of you right now."

"But you're not being—if you'd only listen for one second, you'd⁠—"

"I said not now, Presley." And it hits so heavy, so final, that whatever I was building toward collapses in my chest before I can get it out.

My throat closes.

My hands won't stop shaking.

Every argument I've been stacking up for months, every true and furious thing I've been dying to say to him, jams in behind my teeth and won't come, because he won't turn around, and he won't listen, and I'm crying too hard now to force it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Thunder

Every second of my life the club taught me to stand still and take it, and I've been standing still and taking it since the second Phantom came around that corner.

You don't fight your president.

You don't raise a hand to the man who gave you your patch, not when he's in the right, and he's in the right, because I did what he's accusing me of.

I put my hands on his daughter and I kept it from him for a whole season, and by every law I've lived by for fifteen years, whatever he wants to do to me for that, I've got coming.

So, I took the shove.

Took the fist in my cut and the wall against my back and the worst words a brother can say to a brother.

I kept my hands open and my mouth shut, because that's the price and I'll pay it.

Something in me that's been holding still since the spring just quits holding.

Because I'll take a beating.

I'll take his fury and his fists and lose my seat at his table.

I will not stand here and watch her take it for me.