Page 50 of The Wrecked One

He tightened the belt of his plain black robe and remarked, “Of losing you for good, the way I lost his mother.”

18

OLIVER

The birds were chirping. Non-fucking-stop. And the sun, fuck the sun. Let it implode. Or explode. Or whatever needed to happen to end all that damn light pouring down over me.

Tearing my hands through my hair, I stared at the cabin, knowing where I needed to go and what I needed to do.

Unfuck my bad mood and apologize.

Even for me, I was swearing too much. Inside my head or not, I knew that meant I wasn’t quite ready to face Mya. To say the words I wasn’t sure how to articulate. Did I start with a sorry for what she’d witnessed last night, or for the ugliness that had come from my mouth afterward? Or hell, what about an, I’m sorry for leaving without a word back in Singapore? Had I apologized for that yet?

I checked my watch. 0730. She was probably sleeping. And I was still in a shit place in my head, so knocking on her door could wait a bit longer.

Doing my best not to wake her or my old man, I snuck into the cabin through the side door, in need of a caffeine fix.

Damn my dad for already being in the kitchen, sitting at the table drinking coffee, looking entirely too pleased with himself the moment our eyes connected. But at least there was hot water ready and I could make a quick exit.

“What are you so smug about?” I stepped around him to get a cup from the cabinet.

“Months of me trying to help you remove your head from your ass, and who knew all it’d take is a feisty brunette to?—”

“Don’t finish that sentence.” My hands went to the counter by the stove and my muscles locked up. “You don’t want to do this with me, trust me.”

He was shockingly quiet. He always followed up with three hits to my one. It was our thing. We sparred, more often with our words than our fists. And no, I didn’t make it a habit of hitting my father. Well, not on purpose. There were those few times when he’d woken me mid-nightmare, and I’d mistaken him for that Interpol agent. I wouldn’t take responsibility for that. He should have known better after the first time.

“Tell her.” His words came a cup-of-coffee-poured-later.

I’d thought I’d dodged his counter left hook. Nope. He just went there. All the way to the depths of hell with that one. “That’s not my story to tell.”

He pushed away from the table and got to his feet. “I give you permission. She needs to know. It’ll help her understand.”

There was nothing to understand, dammit. Abandoning my coffee, I faced off with my father. He had about an inch on me at six-one, a fact I was pretty sure made him feel better. “The only person who can give me permission is dead.” Did he really need that reminder? “She made us promise to take the story to our graves.”

“And she shouldn’t have been embarrassed, or felt the shame that brought on that promise.” He set his hand on my bare shoulder. At least it was my good arm. “I wish I could’ve helped her understand that, but I was too busy with my guilt and self-loathing to help her get through what happened.”

“And revenge.” An important detail to skip. “You had that on your plate, too.”

He let go of me, tilting his head toward the doorway. “Tell her what happened. It may help her.”

Chills ran up and down my back at his words. “How?” I snapped out. “How could that possibly help her? So she knows she’s not alone? That the world is full of sick fucks?” My hands instinctively curled into fists at my sides, ready to fight every last one of those fucks. Put them in one long line, and I’d handle each and every piece of shit. “She knows, Dad. I think of all people, she knows.”

He shook his head, waving a hand at me. His white flag of surrender. “I’m going to my girlfriend’s place tonight. Taking Scrappy with me,” he said as if just making up his mind about this. “You two need space. A chance to hash things out.”

No, I needed him there as a barrier. I didn’t trust myself to be around Mya and not cave. To not give in and do whatever the hell that woman told me to do.

I may have been as damaged as they come, but at the end of the day, Mya was Mya. Still and forever, so clearly, everything to me. Time hadn’t weakened the hold she had on me. No, it’d made it stronger.

“I’m not taking the truck. Walking to the main road and Cindy’s picking me up. So, maybe you can take Mya out for a drive. Or to the lake for that conversation you need to have.” The traitor left before I could protest, and a new problem wound up in the kitchen doorway not even two minutes later.

Mya folded her arms and leaned into the interior doorframe, her eyes flying up and down my body as if “seeing was believing,” and she was still struggling with the second part.

Me, too, buttercup. Me, too. Because are you really here?

She kept quiet. So I did the same.

With my back to the counter, one ankle crossed over the other, I sipped my coffee, trying to pull off casual. Meanwhile, my heart was two beats away from breaking free from its cage, abandoning its home in my chest, clawing its way back to her.

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