Tutoring Mr. Bad Boy

Chapter 55 (2/2): Sober Thoughts

55. Sober Thoughts

"What happened?" she asked, her eyes full of concern.

"This guy...he pissed me off so bad I-"

She squeezed my hand for support.

I took in a deep breath and continued. "I beat the living daylights out of him. It was a quite similar situation to today, Liam and Jacob trying to stop me. But I didn't listen. I released everything I had been holding in and poured it onto him all at once. I put him in the hospital Michaels."

"I'm sure it wasn't as bad as you think," she said, probably trying to lie to herself.

"It was bad Michaels," I stated. "Really bad, and I guess almost repeating that today freaked me out a bit. So I bolted. I gave him a concussion, some broken bones. I could have killed that guy if he didn't fight back, or if the guys hadn't managed to pull me off. They went with me to the hospital. I didn't see him. I just stood outside his room and watched the damage I had done to him. I watched him lie on that bed, barely breathing. I don't know what entered me that moment, hell I wasn't even that strong to do such a thing. But I knew something had to be wrong with me if I was able to mess him up that bad."

"So did you do anything about it?" she asked.

I let out a sour laugh. "Therapy, counseling, you name it. None worked though, I hated talking about my issues and being forced to just made me angrier so I stopped going to appointments. Then a few weeks later I got to know that the guy I hurt was the younger brother of a guy named Alonso Vasquez."

"The guy you owed," she said, remebering.

I nodded. "He and his boys cornered the three of us, but he didn't want to beat us up or anything. He wanted to...recruit us. He said we had some sort of potential. I was the only one in the fight, but the guys weren't going to let me go in alone, so he recruited them also. He introduced me to a whole other life, a bad one. That's where I met Zac by the way."

She nodded.

"But the usual gang business wasn't enough for him," I continued. "He wanted to...expand his horizons. He began dealing in drugs. He wanted us and a couple of others to steal money so he could use it for more. Once the three of us found out, we wanted out. It wasn't an easy thing to do though, getting out. The only way out was to pay. So whatever money we got, however we got it, we handed to him."

"That's why you guys were always disappearing for those strange meetings," she said.

"Exactly. And a few weeks ago, I went to pay the last of what we had to. Before I met with them I called the cops. I wanted them to get caught in the act. The police arrived right before I stepped out of their base. Alonso and his boys put two and two together and bingo, they found who tipped them off."

"And so he shot you..." she finished for me.

"Right before the cops invaded the place. I was lucky I got out before he pulled me into his games, else I would have gone down with the rest of them. Liam and Jacob too."

"So he's in jail?" she asked and I nodded.

"That bastard deserves to rot in jail for the rest of his miserable life. All of them. Alonso...he was a bad man." I finished.

The look of disgust and utter repulse was evident on her face.

"You probably think the worst of me," I told her. "Being involved with people like that."

"I don't," she surprised me by saying. "I think...you've had a rough past but you've still managed to come out on top of it all. I think Shawn, that you're probably one of the strongest people I know."