No matter how far we go
I want the whole world to know

Chapter 28 ~ Made in the USA

Trey Carter

"God dammit, Lisa! I thought I told you not to bother me with Clarantino matters. I'm done representing that son of a—" was all I heard when I breezed into the kitchen, hoping to resolve some issues with my mother as well as shed some light on very pressing matters, like being held kidnapped and shooting a major drug lord, but as I should've expected, she was busy. She had only been back for half a day, but her cell phone was already blowing up with calls from work.

As soon as she noticed my presence in the kitchen, she sighed heavily and said, "Tell him I'm booked. He had his chance." With those words, she hung up the phone and placed it on the kitchen island just before brushing a wisp of blonde hair behind her ear. "Hey, baby, how are you?"

I shrugged. "Fine, where's Dad?"

"He should be getting back sometime tonight. He's got a layover in Houston."

I hummed in response, not knowing what else to say.

"So—" Her forest green eyes brimmed with excitement, "—I know I've been gone for a while. How's it been? What have you been doing all this time?"

I shrugged. "I met a pothead who saved me from getting jumped by three racist guys. He then proceeded to kidnap me after finding out that I was rich and held me against my will. Oddly enough, though, I kinda started to like him with the more time we spent together. Then, of course, he played with my feelings like they were nothing—as does every boy that I like—and then he got himself kidnapped too! So me, former kidnapped hostage, had to save a kidnapped hostage from a drug lord whose name oddly resembles the devil." The words flew out of my mouth so quickly and so effortlessly that I had to take a breath so that I wouldn't pass out. "But other than that, it's going great."

My mother cocked her head to the side in confusion as her smile slowly faded away. "Was that necessary?"

"Was what necessary?" I retaliated, matching her confusion.

"The elaborate story." She placed her manicured hands on her hips and gave me one of her famous motherly condescending looks. It was clear that she had already lost interest in the conversation because she snatched her phone from the counter and made her way out of the kitchen. On any given day, I would've let her leave and disappear into the workload that came with being a successful lawyer, but I was tired of hiding. I was tired of not getting their attention. I was tired of my parents not knowing the real me.

"Mom, I'm serious," I called after her, in which she responded by spinning around to face me. "The past couple weeks have been a shithole, a literal shithole. There were times when I thought my life would be over and you know what scared me the most? Knowing that if I died, you guys wouldn't even care."

Her mouth fell agape. "Trey, what kind of absurd accusation are you making?" She folded her arms against her chest and closed the distance between us. Her gaze studied mine for a full moment before she reached out to brush her fingers through my hair. "I care about you honey. Me and your father care about you tremendously. You're our only son."

I smacked her hand away from my face. "How can you care about me when you know nothing about me?"

She stared back at me with disbelief, but her astonishment dwindled away when she let out a harsh laugh, one that suggested I was wrong. "Baby, what's going on with you?"

"What position did I play on the school's football team?"

My mother blinked rapidly. "Wha—Trey..."

"What position, Mom?" I insisted.

She shook her head profusely and blinked several times. It almost look like she was malfunctioning, like she couldn't understand what I was asking of her. "Trey, baby, this is ridiculous. Your father and I are always busy, always on the road. I don't know all the little details of your life, honey. I'm way too busy to recall everything. But I care about you—that's for certain." 

I scoffed. "You don't know me at all, Mom. Remember Alexa? That girl you thought I should date because she's just my type?" My mother shook her head, obviously having forgotten. "Well, yeah, she's not my type. I'm gay."

Her delicate brows furrowed together into a dark line. "Excuse me?"

"I'm gay," I repeated, "a homosexual, a faggot, a queer, or whatever you wanna call it. I've known since eighth grade."

"Eighth grade? How's that possible. You never said..."

"How could I? You're never here. You guys never do anything to show that you care about me. Give me a housekeeper, sure, to tend to my daily needs, but I'm pretty you guys just hired Rita for your own benefit than for mine. You wanted someone to give the same attention that you knew you couldn't give to  your son." The more I spoke, the more confusion morphed onto my mother's face. This was new to her, for sure. Rarely did I comment about my parents' absence in my life because I really didn't care up until now. Up until I had gone through so much shit. I could've died, and they wouldn't have even known.

She was stuck—that was certain, so instead of waiting for her to respond, I continued. "There's a drug lord by the name of a Lucifer, don't know if you heard of him, but he kidnapped my friends. He was going to kill them. He was going to kill the guy that I love, and I ... I saved them. I did something, Mom. I've never done anything that mattered before and now I finally have."

"Lucifer!" she gasped, finally finding the words to say but even that sounded like it took a lot of effort. "My team and I have been trying to get dirt on him for months. How'd you ... oh my god, baby! He's a dangerous man! Why would you even think of getting involved with him before telling me or the police or—" She stopped speaking just so she could close the distance between us and pull me into a tight hug.

Any other teenage boy would've been completely repulsed by this situation, but I wasn't. I had longed for this moment. The moment where my parents would hug me just because they were fueled with so much love for me. It felt nice, I must say.

After a full minute, she placed her hands on my shoulders and gave me a reassuring look. "We have to talk about this. I'm gonna have to bring the police into this. We have to make sure you're safe and that this man can't hurt you or anyone else again."

"Can it wait until after I get back?" I asked her. When she lifted a promoting eyebrow, I proceeded to say, "I'm supposed to be getting lunch with Scar."

My mother's shoulders fell in defeat, but she gave me a short nod after a moment of silence. "Yeah, sure, but know that this is serious stuff. I'm gonna need statements from you and your friends and everyone else involved."

"Okay." I rushed past her to make a straight line for the front door, but before I stepped past the threshold, I looked over my shoulder at her. She had gone back to avidly typing in her phone, probably contacting important people. "And Mom—" She looked up from her phone, "—thank you."

Her lips pulled into a sweet smile that sent chills down my spine. "Of course, sweetie."

*    *    *

"So wait—I gotta make sure I got this right." Scar held up his french fry in the air as though to silence me as he stared into the distance with squinted eyes. "You shot him?"

I leaned over the table separating us and hushed him. "Dude, shut up! I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea and thinking I'm some kind of criminal."

Scar's brows furrowed together. "Why would they think that?" But instead of entertaining that dumb question with a response, I just stared at him. "Okay, yeah, sorry. But whoa, man, that's so badass. Did you kill him?"

I scoffed at that. "Oh, no, God no. Don't know how'd I still be able to live with myself if I had done something like that. It was probably just a flesh wound that knocked him unconscious—hell if I know. We had to bolt outta there before he woke up."

Scar studied me with his intense turquoise eyes. "So, he's still alive? And we're sitting in a public restaurant where he could kill us both no problem?" He glanced out the window beside us and sunk further into his seat as if to avoid being seen. "I'm not ready to die."

Rolling my eyes, I dismissed the thought of Lucifer hunting me down with a wave of my hand. "Calm down. Raven and Jonah already went to the police about this. They're gonna infiltrate his organization and throw him into jail. It all worked out perfectly. Trey saved the day, as I always do."

"Wow," my best friend said, eyes gleaming with excitement. "God, I wish I had crazy stories like that to tell you. Life's pretty boring for me."

"Boring?"

"Yeah, just wake up ... have sex ... eat ... have sex ... play video games ... have sex ... go to sleep ... have sex while I'm sleeping ... and repeat." I was seconds away from throwing my drink in his face for having the need to tell me these explicit details about his sex life, but he broke into a full grin that stopped me in my tracks. "Of course, it's not boring, really. It's just more of a routine. Shooting down a drug lord sounds way cooler."

"Who would've thought that you'd get tired of Jamie?" I remarked, even though I tried to scarf it down behind a bite of my burger.

"I'm not tired of Jamie. I'm just tired of this routine. Ever since graduation, I've been feeling like I'm in a runt, you know? Which is why I can't wait until school starts. College is gonna be so lit, man."

I sat back in my seat and watched as Scar's demeanor seemed to do a one-eighty once the topic of college came up. I had done a lot of thinking about that lately, about what I wanted to do with my higher education, about what was best for me. Both Max and Owen urged me to go to college of my dreams, but I couldn't just leave my best friend behind, especially not when it had been our dream to go to the same school together.

"Close your mouth before someone puts a dick in there," I heard Scar say, successfully snapping me out of my thoughts. He chuckled to himself just before taking another large bite of his burger. He looked so happy, so carefree, so alive. The thought of making him anything but happy pained my heart, but the thought of making myself unhappy because of him hurt more.

"Scar, I'm going to Notre Dame."

"Huh?" he asked with a mouthful of food.

"I'm going to Notre Dame," I reiterated with a little piece of me breaking along with the sparkle in his sea green eyes.

"Wait, what? How?" He blinked multiple times, not comprehending. "We're rooming together at Summer Hill."

I shook my head. "We're not."

"What do you mean we're not? It's been our dream since we were kids."

"It's been our dream to go to Notre Dame, Patterson. You abandoned that dream when you fell in love with Jamie. I'm not going to abandon my dream just to be with you, Scar," I explained. "I think this will be good for me. I think leaving will be a good thing and I need to do myself a good thing instead of following you for once in my life."

Eyebrows drawn together in a line, he shook his head. "But who am I going to room with?"

I shrugged. "I don't know."

He slumped in his seat and folded his arms across his chest. "That sucks, man."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"But..." He heaved a sigh, only to have a small smile form at the corners of his lips, "...I'm happy for you. At least one of us should go, right?"

My heart swelled with relief. "Yeah, right."

"So..." Scar finished off his burger and leaned onto the table with his stare blazing into mine. There was a hint of a teasing smile on his lips, but it was hard to be sure until he said the following words, "...you and that guy, huh? Are you guys a thing?"

Thoughts of Owen tied up in Lucifer's torture room and how I had been so scared to see him in such a weak state flashed through my mind. After all we'd been through, you'd think we would be well on our way to a relationship, but we weren't there. We weren't ever going to get there, and I understood why. Owen had problems, lots of them, and none of that was going to be solved with romance.

"Nah." I shrugged. "We're just friends."

"He kidnapped you."

"He did."

"He held you against your will."

"He did."

"And doesn't he do drugs?"

"He does."

Scar ran a hand through his disheveled brown hair and shook his head in disbelief. "You got a weird taste in guys."

With an accompanying bitter laugh, I said, "Trust me, I know."

"But hey..." he began, laughing along with me, "I wish you all the best, man. You deserve it."

I downed my glass of lemonade to clear my throat and slammed the glass on the table after releasing a satisfying sigh. "Thanks, Patterson."

***

a/n: Back with another update! There are only two chapters left in this book!! Be sure to add The Only Exception into your libraries because that's the next and final book in the series!

As far as the question of the chapter goes ... what do you think will become of Owen and Trey? Will they stay friends? Will they ever be something more? Find out on the next episode of—okay, lemme stop!

If you enjoyed this chapter, be sure to vote and comment because I love reading y'all comments. They make me so happy and warm inside!

Until next time,
Lara <3