Hate to Love You novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Dad's Garage

Saturday morning, Dad sent me to the garage for a can of primer.

"Second shelf, behind the snow tires," he called from the porch. "If you can't find it, yell."

I found the primer.

I also found boxes labeled MASON in my father's square handwriting.

I opened the top one, because I am a person who opens boxes.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

It was Shay.

Still angry? he'd written.

Yes, I typed.

Good. I'd worry if you weren't. I'm here when you're done.

I read it twice and put the phone away, and my chest felt lighter than it had a right to.

Under a layer of old report cards in the box, flat against the bottom, lay a newspaper page.

It was the sports section of the Garnet Falls Gazette, folded in quarters and gone soft at the creases.

The headline said BADGERS FALL IN QUARTERFINAL, and under it ran a photograph the width of three columns.

I smoothed it out against the lid of a paint can.

The picture showed the lane under the basket.

My brother was on the floor, one leg bent the wrong way, his mouth open.

And standing above him, six inches away, was a tall boy in a blue Eastlake uniform.

Shay's hands were up.

They were open, palms out, fingers spread, at the level of his shoulders.

He was looking down at Mason with a face I knew.

It was the face he'd had when I told him my mother died.

He was not shoving anyone.

He looked like a boy who had just seen something terrible happen and hadn't yet understood that he would be blamed for it.

"Found it?"

Dad stood in the garage doorway with his reading glasses on his head.

"I found something," I said.

He crossed the oil-stained floor and looked over my shoulder.

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