Yeah I was in Juvie. Get over it.

Chapter 12

FOUR MONTHS AGO...

JAY

I hated psychology. Like really hated it. I was supposed to be drafting an essay about how loss and love affect each other, and I had gotten nowhere. Literally, I was staring at a blank piece of paper. 

Note to self: Never go to college for psychology.

I heard the door opening and then it slammed violently almost as soon as it had opened. My head turned to see Gavin standing right after the doorway, his white hair falling into his eyes, and his ice-blue eyes looked like they had shattered.

His jean jacket tried to hide the tattoos that crawled up his arms, but I could just make out the edges of some of the designs peaking out from the sleeves. He tried to hide those from Sammy, kept her from asking questions because damn did she ask questions. The white shirt underneath though, was drenched in sweat. Like he had been running.

"Bro, did you run here from somewhere or some-"

"I did something bad, like really bad, and I don't know if I can get out of it this time."

"What? Gavin, what happened?" I asked, a little concerned.

"The guys that, you know, I work for? They made me do something, something really bad."

Now I was concerned. It was no secret to me that Gavin had been in with some shitty people, and had done some pretty shitty things. But I was the only one who knew he was still doing all that stuff. If anyone else found out, mom would have kicked him out of the house. 

"Okay, how about you sit down, and start from the beginning because you're just repeating yourself, and none of the shit you just said is making sense."

He nodded, shakily sitting down on his bed and I sat on mine so that we were eye level with each other. Not only that, but this was how we sat when we talked about shit, it was a weird tradition, but at this point, it was like muscle memory.

Talking about funny shit, sit on the beds. 

Talking about deep shit, sit on the beds.

Talking about Gavin getting himself into deep shit, sit on the god damn beds.

Gavin ran his hands through his hair.

"Okay, start from the beginning."

"Well, the guys that I'm in with needed to persuade a, um, client, to uphold his end of the bargain. A way of gaining collateral or something, but just uh, a little more high stakes. So, this time, the collateral was uh, the guy's daughter."

What the-

"What? Gavin what are you-"

"Just, listen. We took the kid." 

Kidnapping.

"And kept her in that old building down on 5th street." 

Holding a child hostage.

"Then we got the okay. The guy was gonna come through so that he could get his daughter back, I mean, of course, he would come through, you know, it's his kid. But uh, then things started to go downhill."

Shit, that's not a good sign. 

"The client didn't end up coming through, and we were told to go through with killing the girl. And I was the one who drew the short straw, so I was the one pulling the trigger."

"Oh fuck, that's not good."

"Carmen, calm down, you haven't heard the whole story yet."