Chapter 25

“He went away to college.”

“Did he know about what your father was doing to you? Well duh, he must have.”

Terry smiled dryly. “Yeah. It was hard to hide it. He got pissed but I told him it was my problem and he should stay out of it. That if my dad found out about us things might go from just bad to ugly.”

“Damn.” Rudy hugged him hard. “I don’t know how you survived.”

“I could say determination, but it wasn’t. Not really. I was the only one standing between the bastard and Kel so there wasn’t much choice. I’d planned on our getting out of there. We just needed to wait it out until Kel was sixteen, like I said. The last beating just made it a now-or-never situation, so we ran.”

“Guys,” Snap called out, “you might want to stop messing around. Our bus is almost here.”

Rudy shook his head as he released his hold on Terry, saying as they joined the others, “We were just talking.”

“Uh-huh. Two more seconds and you’d have been kissing.”