Page 156 of The Spider & the Storm

So, we were talking about me. I should've picked up on that, but hadn't. But at least he wasn't threatening me. That was something.

Soldier turned down one row of markers, and I followed.

“We're a lot alike, I think,” he said. “I'm an orphan too. My dad was killed in a car accident before I knew who he was, and my mom was murdered by the piece of shit who tried really fuckin' hard to kill me.”

My head whipped to the side to stare at him. “Holy shit.”

One side of his mouth tipped upward in a smile that didn't touch his eyes. He patted his thigh. “Shot me here and”—he laid his hand over his stomach—“here.”

“Damn.” My mouth went dry as I thought about the scar near my groin. “I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, well, it's fine. I'm still here, and he never got his hands on Noah or Ray. That's all that matters.Theyare all that matters. And that’s why, when they asked me why I'd been in prison, I told them. They wanted to know my story, and I didn'thide it. I was scared shitless of what they'd think of me, yeah, but I wanted them to know. It wasn't a secret to be kept because, when I really think about it, it's not a secret at all. A quick Google search of my name will tell you everything that happened. But I told them anyway because they mattered to me and I wanted them to know.”

We came to a stop, and Soldier gestured toward a bench, wordlessly telling me to take a seat. I listened, and he sat beside me.

“I can’t tell you what to do, Charlie. But if I'm guessing correctly, Stormy matters a lot to you, like Ray matters to me. And I think she deserves to hear it from you before she Googles your name ‘cause I'm willing to bet it's all there, if she digs deep enough.”

Actually, she wouldn't have to dig very deep at all, but I didn't say that. He was too busy making a point, a good one, and I was going to let him finish.

“We're a lot alike,” he said again. “I blamed myself for a long time for what had happened. But it took telling my friend Harry and Ray and accepting their acceptance to make me realize that itwasn'tentirely my fault. I did my time for the part of it that was, but I hadn’t made Billy take that fucking pill. That was all on him. That washisfault, and he's been paying the ultimate price for that for almost twenty years.”

Billy.

I followed Soldier's gaze to the gravestone across the way to seeWILLIAM “BILLY” PORTERcarved into the granite. The year he was born would've made him the same age as Stormy. He had died of a drug overdose, from what Soldier was saying, and so had Stormy's Billy, her old friend who'd gotten her into drugs.The old friend who had fucked her and gotten himself killed by taking drugs given to him by his drug-dealer friend.

Holy shit. Soldier was that drug dealer.

“I did some shit I'm not proud of,” he said quietly, as if reading my mind. “I had my reasons, and they made sense at the time, but I was a stupid, desperate kid. I know better now, and I wouldn't make the same decisions if I could do it all over again. That's where we're different, Charlie. Everything that happened to you …none of itwas your fault. You have blood on your hands, just like me, but there isn't even a shred of blame on you for what happened. She isn't going to judge you for that.”

“Ijudge me for it!” I exclaimed, my voice ringing out to disturb the peace. “I wasn’t supposed to meet someone. I wasn’t supposed to grow attached. I wasn’t supposed to behappy. I wasn’t supposed to do anything but live my miserable life and feel sorry for what I had done. This”—I thrust my hand in what I thought was the direction of Chris and Barbara’s house—“was nevereversupposed to happen.”

Soldier hadn’t so much as flinched in reaction to my abrupt outburst. But he turned then and leveled me with a gaze full of empathy and understanding. “Yet here you are.”

I slammed my back against the bench, the cool stone bleeding through my jacket to my spine. “I don’t want to tell her,” I confessed aloud for the first time.

“I know. But if I can be honest with you, I think you’re more afraid of reliving it than you are of her reaction. I think that’s really what you’re running from, Charlie. Not what she might think, but what youalreadythink. And let me tell you something—you’re never going to heal until you face this shit head-on. You’re never going to find peace—nobody will. Lukewill never find peace, the dude who attacked you won’t either, and if you can’t move forward for yourself, then do it for them. Tell her that part of your story because whether you like it or not, itisa part of who you are. You can’t take it back, you can’t erase it, but you can learn to accept it, and I’m telling you this from experience—she can help you do that, if you just give her the chance to try.”

***

What kept me awake that night wasn’t the conversation in the graveyard or the unsettling truth that Stormy’s sister’s husband was the same man to end the life of her friend, Billy—

Thank God, I thought, then quickly scolded myself for even allowing such a horrible thing to pass through my mind.

It was a dirty little silver lining, wasn’t it? Had he not swallowed that poisoned pill, Stormy might’ve met the same fate with him later—or instead of. It was unlikely I’d have ever met her, and that deserved its ownthank God.

But, no, what kept me from finding enough peace to sleep beside her was the awful betrayal of my damn brother spilling my darkest secret to men I didn’t know. How many of them had there been? Soldier alone was one too many. And never mind that anyone could pull up an internet search on Connecticut’s Corbin brothers and find anything they wanted to know. Soldier hadn’t learned of either incident from a fucking Google search; he’d heard from my brother. Mybrother!

“Some secrets … they gotta come out, man,”I could still hear Soldier saying.

And, sure, I saw his point in regard to spilling the ugly details to Stormy—I had nevernotplanned to tell her, for the record, but that didn’t mean I wanted to, and it didn’t make it easy.

But what the hell business had my brother had to talk about me to his prison buddies without my consent, like some gossiping girl in the retail break room?

Maybe he was looking for advice or … or … or … help.

Stop making excuses for him.

They’re not excuses though. Right? They’re valid reasons. Maybe he just didn’t want to carry the weight of it alone. Maybe … maybe …

---