Lucky Break by Kelley Vitollo Page B

could tell she was crying. The last thing he wanted her to do was cry for them. He tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let him.
    “You do everything you can.”
    But that wasn’t true, was it? He should be able to stop this—to stop his dad. And… “Sometimes, I just want to get away from them, too, and then I feel guilty for it. I shouldn’t want to run. If she has to deal with it, I should, too.” He knew he should feel bad admitting that, but he couldn’t. Not with Sidney.
    “You can’t always be there,” she said against him. “You do your best.”
    “I want to forget about it—what I hear, what he does. I want to block out the yelling. Every time I step in it gets worse. ‘It’s for her own good, Kade. Step back before I have to hit her again because she can’t control you.’ Do you know what it feels like to hear him say that? There’s nothing I can do so I have to sit there and listen to it. Hear her cry and hurt.”
    Sidney let him go and stepped in front of him. This time when she wrapped her arms around him, her face buried into his chest. It made him feel invincible, having her hold him, but how could he be invincible if he couldn’t even keep his own mom safe?
    “You can’t protect the world.”
    “I want to.”
    “But you can’t… I could tell Aunt Mae—”
    “No!” He tried to pull back, but again she didn’t let him. “We can’t, Peaches. He’ll kill her. You don’t know him like I do. How evil he is… He’ll kill her.” Kade choked on the words.
    It took Sidney a few minutes to reply. She wasn’t only crying now, but bawling against him. His shirt was wet with her tears. “I won’t tell, but you call me, okay? If you need to get away, or if you can’t leave and you don’t want to hear them, you call me and I’ll talk to you till they stop. I’ll do whatever I can. I’ll sneak out and come to you, if I have to. I know it’s not that much, but—”
    He exhaled a breath. “It’s a lot.” It was everything.
    After that day, he called her when the fighting was too much. Sometimes they did sneak out and come to the cabin, while other times they just talked.
    Her voice was always louder than the yelling. She always silenced the pain for him.
    Kade groaned, hating that he’d brought up that old memory.
    One look at Sidney, the way her eyes creased and her lips turned down made him wonder if she were thinking of the same thing as him. And she felt sorry for him. He still didn’t do well with that.
    “I need to get something from the car. I’ll be right back.”
    He went straight for his truck and climbed in. Kade gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. He still got upset when he thought about his dad and all the things he hadn’t been able to put a stop to.
    People knew stories. It was impossible not to in a town as small as Shamrock Falls, but no one besides him and his mom knew as much as Sidney.
    Which was exactly why it didn’t surprise him when she climbed into the passenger seat. “Hey.” She turned sideways and looked at him.
    “You didn’t have to follow me.”
    “Yes, I did.”
    Kade shook his head. “Not a kid anymore. You don’t have to talk to me until I calm down. It’s about time I got over it.”
    “It’s not always that easy.”
    He wondered if she was talking about her mom, but the slight shake of her head told him not to ask. He both hated and loved the fact that he could read her so well. That yesterday he couldn’t look at her without going crazy, yet today it was almost as if no time had passed at all. Who knew if that was a good or bad thing.
    Probably closer to the latter.
    “What are you doin’ here, Sidney? I told you I’d be back.”
    It took her a few seconds to answer. Instead she sat there, picking at her blue nail polish. “We’re friends again, right? I want to make sure you’re okay.”
    Sitting there, he realized he was. He no longer had a death-grip on the wheel. No longer flashed back to that