Page 155 of Devil’s Disciples

I gave him a side-eyed look. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“In that same meeting when you’re saying you said specifically where this chick lives, Baker asked you a question.” He raised his index finger and cleared his throat. “‘A girl sucks a dick like that, and you’re telling me you’re done with her?’ That’s what he asked you. In case you forgot, your answer was ‘yes’. That response made her free game. You’re wrong on this, Cash. Be man enough to admit it.”

I hated being wrong.

The fact that I wasn’t right sank into the pit of my stomach like a hot stone, burning the entire way down. If I was being honest with myself, I had to admit that my response to Baker’s question about Kimberly was inaccurate. I said it because I felt I needed to be done with her. Obviously, I hadn’t walked away from her emotionally, and punching Tito was proof.

I gazed blankly at my two brothers for a moment, and then swallowed heavily. I narrowed my eyes, tightened my jaw, and alternated glances between them.

“Fuck you, and fuck you,” I said.

I turned toward my motorcycle.

“Where are you going, asshole?” Goose asked.

Admitting I was wrong required casting every time I was right aside, and then starting over. From scratch.

I wasn’t opposed to admitting it, but I sure didn’t want to do it any more frequently than I had to.

* * *

Tito, not unlike the rest of us, lived modestly. A true nerd since childhood, he spent what little time he wasn’t riding his motorcycle with his nose buried in a book or against the screen of his computer.

I meandered up the walk and stepped onto the porch. Before I had a chance to raise my fist to knock, the door of the two-bedroom ranch home swung open.

Dressed in a pair of swishy pants and a wife beater, Tito stood in the opening. The wires that held his jaw together left him incapable of speaking. He stepped to the side and gestured toward the living room by tilting his head.

“I’ll make this quick,” I said. “I know right now I’m probably the last motherfucker you want to see.”

He swept his laptop off the end table and sat down on the couch. While I took a seat in the chair across from him, he opened it and then looked up.

I glanced around the sparsely decorated home and wondered how many times a day he cleaned it. Free of all clutter and fitted with three pieces of leather furniture and four end tables, the living room resembled a psychiatrist’s office, or a waiting room in the hospital.

He turned the screen of the laptop to face me and cleared his throat. Four words – large enough for me to read them from across the room – were on the screen.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

“I want to admit I wasn’t right when I hit you.”

He pecked at the keyboard, then flipped the screen so I could see it. The massive font took up the entire screen.

YOU’RE ADMITTING YOU WERE WRONG?

I nodded. “Yep.”

A few strokes of his fingers later, and his next thought was revealed.

SAY IT. SAY YOU WERE WRONG.

“Fine.” I crossed my arms. “You want me to say it?”

He nodded.

Other than when my mother forced me to apologize as a child, I couldn’t recall ever being wrong. Not once. There was nothing I could do, however, to convince myself any aspect of what I’d done was right.

“I’m wrong,” I said.

Surprisingly, the words didn’t get tangled in my throat.