Page 85 of The Dirty Saint

I look up at her. “Don’t you?”

“Of course I do. Why do you think I’m still having nightmares all these years later? Look, you made it out, and Lana didn’t, and you can’t understand why. But making it seem like it was on you is not the answer.”

I rest my chin on the palm of my hand, nodding ever so slightly.

“It isn’t fair,” I say. “None of it is fair.”

Lana shouldn’t have been killed. She didn’t do anything. She was a teenage girl who had her whole life ahead of her.

Similar to Addison.

“I was selfish. And cruel.”

“Yourlifewas on the line.”

“I got herkilled.”

“You had asonto think about.”

“So did she,” I let out. “So did she!”

My head falls into my hands as the realization hits me.

“One night, Lana told me about Joshua. Said that she and the father had been together for a while, and the baby just…happened.

“We spent the night talking about our boys. Apparently, Josh loves trains.

“All she wanted to do was get back to him and Roy. I used to hear her crying and begging for them. When she was being raped or beaten—or both, she would close her eyes and whisper Roy’s name. If she could picture being back in the arms of the man she loved, then I guess she could keep going with what was being done to her.

“She just wanted her family back, and I knew deep down only one of us was going to get that. And I really,reallywanted it to be me.”

Look, I will always be grateful for being spared, but it came at a great cost. For me to win, someone else had to lose. In order for Noah to have his mother, Joshua now has to mourn his.

“How do you do it, Brianne,” I ask, ignoring my tears. “How do you go on?”

My cousin takes a breath.

“You pray to God that when you fall apart, you somehow have the strength to put the pieces back together.

“We’re gonna get through this, Ez, just like everything else.”

I shake my head. “I just feel soweak. All the time. And I can’t help but think that I’ll never get better.”

“Well, as a person once said, ‘maybe life isn’t about avoiding the bruises. Maybe it’s about collecting the scars to prove we showed up for it.’

“Look, Ezra, you won’t survive the rest of your life if every time you feel broken, youpushit to the back of your mind until it comes out and kicks your ass.

“I’m not healed. There is no waytoheal. And I’m not saying this to scare you; I’m saying this because it’s thetruth.You need to stop beating yourself up because of the actions of someone else. You are two seconds away from draining yourself, and it isn’t that easy to fill back up.”

“You speaking from experience,” I ask.

Briggs nods.

“I only ever do.”

During

JOEY

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