My Father Gave Me a New Big Brother, and the Only Man I Could Run To Was the One Who Put Him There novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: You Were Nineteen

I put the phone down on the quilt, and Mateo turned over and looked at me.

"That was Gorka," I said.

"I got that. He's got a voice that carries through a woodstove."

"He says Aitor spent two hours with the lawyer of a man named Dario Ibarra."

Mateo frowned.

"Who's that?"

I had held it in for five years.

It was fifteen degrees outside the wagon, and there was no one to hear but sheep.

"He's in the state prison in Orofino," I said. "I put him there."

Mateo did not move.

I told him all of it, in the grey light, sitting up in the bed with the quilt around my shoulders.

I told it flat, the way you read a statement back.

"I saw the truck, Mateo. I never saw the driver."

"But you told them you did."

I nodded.

"Gorka was the detective. He found me at the station the next morning with hot chocolate."

I could hear my own voice going flat.

"He sat next to me. He asked me what I saw, and I said the headlights, and he said, but you saw the man, mija, you saw his face, and I said no, and he said think."

"He showed me a photograph of a man with a black Ford, and he said, that's him, that's the man who did it, and you saw him. I said yes."

Mateo's hand tightened on mine.

"Why?"

"Because I was nineteen. Because my mother had been dead three years, and he was the only one who had ever come when I called."

← Chapter 9 · All chapters · Chapter 11 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend