Page 83 of Threaded Lies

“Looks like you’ve been doing some good work,” I say. The grass has been edged and there is new bark in the planters. All things I approved Audrey to get him the supplies for.

“Thanks,” he says, and looks over his shoulder yet again.

“You good, man?” I ask.

He puffs his chest out in a way I used to know all too well—false bravado at its finest—before smiling. “Yeah. I’m good. It’s just—”

A backfire sounds off somewhere down the block and we both jump at the sound, but Leo is visibly shaken.

“Hop in? Go for a ride?”

He hesitates. “My mom. She says I can’t go with anyone. She has rules.”

“Those aren’t the rules.”

“But Mom’s not here, right?” He makes a show of looking around. “It’s not like she’d ever know if I went outside by myself for a few minutes.”

The memory hits me out of nowhere. Mason. Me. My throat burns with the clarity with which I hear Mason’s voice when it’s seemed so dim for so long.

“You should obey your mom’s rules,” I say.

“You okay?” he asks, his eyes narrowing.

“Fine.” I glance around, knowing there are always eyes on you in this town and right now is no different. “You want to climb in here, sit, and just talk?”

“I don’t know if that’s smart either.”

“Because people will think…”

“You’re my drug supplier. You’re my pimp. You’re a gang leader. You fucking name it, Three-Piece,” he says, his voice sounding tougher with each and every word.

Something is going on here.

“We’ll do whatever you want.”

“Meet me at the baseball field in five?”

“Okay.”

I pull away from the curb and hate that he’s going to walk the distance himself. Don’t look now, Holden, but your God complex is showing. Leo walks these streets every day just like Mason and I used to. My being here isn’t going to save him from shit.

Clearly my presence didn’t help my brother at all.

And yet while I drive to the field, as I sit in the dugout, I look around every few seconds in the hopes that I see him.

When I do finally spot him, I hate how relieved I am. He glances around before he ducks into the cinder-block dugout that has as many layers of paint on it as I have years since I left this fucking place.

For the briefest of moments, I wonder if I’ve been set up. If Leo asked me here so we were out of sight, so that I could be jumped.

It’s a fuck-all feeling that has me looking over my shoulder and asking why the hell did I allow myself to be in this situation. I know better than this.

The streets may have hardened me but the fucking eight-hundred-thread-count sheets I sleep on every night have clearly dulled those edges.

“You setting me up, Leo?” I ask the minute he’s within earshot.

His expression—shock, disbelief, hurt—tells me what I need to know. He isn’t.

“What the fuck, man? Now why’d I go and do that when you’re the only fucker in this whole town who thinks I could be more than this shit?”