He Called Me Dramatic, So I Took the Club novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Not Alone

Mace's POV

Nineteen years I had waited for somebody to ask me that question out loud.

I had always thought I would be ready.

Thirty faces turned to me, and Ray stood at the head of the table with his hand on the gavel and a look on his face that said he already knew my answer.

He had known it since I was sixteen.

He had told me what to say that night, and I had said it for nineteen years, because he was the only father who had ever offered me a job.

Mallory's shoulder touched mine.

She didn't look at me, and she didn't tell me what to do.

She just stayed there, solid, with the sparrow lying on the wood in front of her.

I took my hand off the back of the chair.

"Tom wasn't alone," I said.

My voice came out rough, and I tried again.

"Tom wasn't alone."

"Careful, son," Ray said.

"I was sixteen," I said to the room, not to him. "I followed the two of them up the mountain on a dirt bike I wasn't allowed to ride."

"Ray rode in front. Tom's bike went down at the guardrail, on the turn above the creek."

"Did Ray's bike touch Tom's?" the man with the braid asked.

"I didn't see it touch." I made myself keep going. "I saw Ray stop. I saw Tom on the gravel with his leg bent wrong, and I saw Ray get off and stand over him."

"And?"

"He had his phone in his hand. He looked at it and put it back in his vest."

A low sound went through the room.

"I started toward them," I said. "Tom saw me. He lifted his hand."

Mallory's fingers closed around my wrist under the table's edge.

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