The girl just stood there for a while, staring after Brady before getting back into her car and driving away. Strange. I had never seen her before.

“You might have the best seat in the place.” West Ashby’s voice startled me. “Don’t mind me. I’m just tired of acting like I give a shit out there. I needed to be alone. Since you don’t talk, that makes it better. Someone I can talk to who keeps quiet. Might be fucking perfect.” He took a long drink of his beer then sat down beside me on the truck bed.

Was he drunk? He had to be. Surely, he was aware that I was the last person who wanted to be his company. I wasn’t his friend. I would never be his friend.

“Maybe I should stop talking. Then I wouldn’t have to pretend to give a fucking shit. Bet that’s easy, huh? Not having to react to anything. I envy you.”

Envy me? Seriously? He was going to sit here and make jabs at me when he didn’t even know me. He had no clue why I chose not to speak. To say he envied me made me want to stand up and scream in his face. No one on earth should ever envy me. Ever.

“But I did hear some stuff that, if it’s true, maybe your shit’s worse than mine.” He shook his head and sighed. “Naw, probably ain’t. Gunner’s momma is a gossip. Half the stuff comes out of her mouth is false. God knows she’s talked about my momma enough.”

He looked as if he were talking to himself now. His eyes were focused on something out in the darkness. Pain was etched across his face. He wasn’t trying to hide anything out here, not like he did all the other times I’d been around him. This was the first time I really saw him, the guy he didn’t reveal to anyone. His mask was gone, and there was heaviness in his voice and darkness in his eyes.

“Didn’t come to my game tonight. He couldn’t. Hell, he can’t even go to the damn bathroom without help now. Much less watch me play. First time in my life he hasn’t watched me play. Every touchdown I scored I did it for him. So I’d have something good to tell him tonight. But here I sit like a fucking pussy because going home to see him scares the hell out of me.”

Him who? I wanted to ask but was afraid to. His emotions were too raw. This wasn’t the jerk he showed the world. This was the guy underneath that. He was allowing me to see him. His pain. His fears. But why?

“When I was born, Momma said he brought a football to the hospital for me. Ran right out and bought it when they said it was a boy. He put it in my crib with me from that day on. I loved football, but it was because I loved him. He’s always been my hero. Now he’s gonna fucking leave me. And Momma.” He let out a hard laugh clearly full of agony. “How’s she gonna make it? He’s her world. Always has been. I can’t imagine my momma without my dad. She’ll be so lost. I won’t be enough. I just—” He dropped his head in his hands and let out a groan. “Fuck, I’m scared, Maggie. You know what it’s like, to be scared?” he asked, lifting his head to look at me for the first time.

I knew. I knew all too well. I knew terror and fear. I knew demons that haunted you at night instead of the sweet dreams we believed in as children. I knew more than he could imagine.

I nodded. “Yes,” I whispered hoarsely, desperate to assure him he wasn’t alone. My voice sounded strange yet familiar.

This was the second time I had spoken to him. Once because he infuriated me, and now because I understood he needed to know he wasn’t alone. Pain came to all of us at some time or another. It was how we learned to cope with it that determined our future. In this moment I chose to speak. Silence was normally how I coped, but for the first time since I’d witnessed my father kill my mother, I wanted to speak. I wanted to reassure someone else.

His eyes widened. “You talked,” he said, staring at me intently. “Again.”

I didn’t say anything in response. I had spoken because he needed me to. But to talk, just for conversation? I couldn’t do that. I was still afraid to hear my voice.

“Is it true? About what Gunner told me . . . Did you see your dad . . .” He trailed off. He knew my past. Someone had found out and was spreading it around. I knew it would happen eventually.

I thought about my answer. I didn’t talk about that night with anyone. Remembering was too hard. Too painful for any human to endure. But West was losing a parent too.

So I nodded. I wouldn’t give him any more than that. I couldn’t put into words what I’d seen. Not again.

“Shit. That’s tough,” was all he said.

We sat there in silence for several minutes, staring off into the darkness.

“My dad’s dying. Doctors can’t do anything for him anymore. Sent him home to just . . . die. Every day I watch him fall away a little more. Further from our grasp. Further from us. He’s in so much pain, and there isn’t anything I can do. I’m afraid to go to school because, what if he dies while I’m gone and I never see him again? But then, like right fucking now, I’m afraid to go home because he may have gotten worse and then I’d have to see that. I have to see the man I adore wasting away. Leaving this life. Leaving us.”

My mother’s death had been fast. Immediate. She hadn’t suffered except for that one moment I was screaming at my dad to stop while he pointed a gun at her. I know she suffered then. She suffered for me and what I would see.

But I didn’t know what it felt like to watch a parent die slowly before your eyes. To go to sleep at night and not know if they’d be there the next morning. My heart ached for him. Losing someone you loved was hard. The hardest thing in life. West wasn’t a nice person. He could be downright cruel. But the emotion in his voice was hard to ignore. I didn’t want to feel anything for him, even sorrow, but I did.