Page 43 of Save Me

"Get me the money and I'll cut you the deal," he says.

"I need a couple of days to get it together."

"You'll have it." He pulls his hands out of his pockets, tapping the bar. "Nice doing business with you, Hill."

I grunt instead of responding. It's not like I'm going to return the sentiment because there's nothing nice about this. It's a necessity, that's it. But it's done. All that's left to do now is transfer the money. Bella will be safe. Isla will have peace of mind. And this shit will finally be over.

Christ, I can almost taste the end.

It tastes like Isla.

It tastes like freedom.

When I step outside an hour later and see Isla's text, the taste of freedom turns to ashes in my mouth. I feel her slipping through my fingers.

Isla: You lied to me, Brantley. You've been lying since the very beginning. How am I ever supposed to trust what you tell me now?

I stumble toward my truck, my mind racing. She's right, goddammit. A lie of omission is still a lie. And I knew it when I failed to tell her everything. I purposefully didn't tell her everything because I knew where it might end. Because, even if I didn't know why they were there, I still walked away and left them in that fucking parking garage.

All of this shit happened because of me. They found her sister. Tried to kill her. Their dad sent her to Texas. All because of me.

Even if I tell Isla the full truth, how the fuck is she ever going to look at me the same again? Why should she?

I've been fucking things up for so goddamn long, it's almost a biological imperative at this point. If there's even a remotechance of something going right in my life, I put my hands on it and taint it. I poison it, the same wayhepoisoned everything.

And I tried like hell to tell myself that paying his debts would fix it. But that's a lie. Because it won't fix me. I don't think anything can do that at this point. I'm still trapped in that fucking closet, still broken. I always have been.

And I don't know how to find my way out of the dark.

I don't know how to be worthy of her. Maybe the best thing I can do for her is just…stop fucking trying and admit I never will be. I'll never be good enough for her. I'll never deserve her. All I'm going to do is continue fucking up her life, the same way I fuck up everything.

She doesn't deserve that.

The best thing I can do for her is let her go. That's what she deserves. Before I break her like I break every other goddamn thing I touch.

Me: I'm sorry, little bird. I'm so damn sorry. You deserve better than me.

I toss my phone in the console, my jaw clenched against the fucking agony threatening to rip me apart. Christ, it hurts. And it's precisely what I deserve. Maybe it's what I always deserved. Who fucking knows?

I don't go back to the office.

I head down Broadway, looking for the nearest bar.

I need a fucking drink.

Chapter Ten

Isla

Ihide out at my apartment, curled up in bed with a broken heart. Brantley's voice echoes in my head over and over. I can't shut it out. And that makes me angry. I don't want to hear him right now. I don't want to listen to my world crumbling at the foundations every two seconds.

But I do anyway.

I don't understand how this could happen. He said I didn't know the full story, and I'm sure he's probably right about that. Brantley may be a lot of things, but he isn't someone capable of walking away and allowing a murder to happen. Not even if it was his father. At least, that's what I want to believe.

But the truth is…Brantley's like a wounded animal who has been backed into a corner. I think he's been that way for a long time. He tried to drink it away and that didn't help. So then he tried to hold it together, pretending he was fine. But the whole time he was pretending, he was ripping open new wounds. Working beside his father every single day with all those old wounds still festering…well, it's an ugly business. The infection spread. Every day, it spread a little further.

And he ignored it because he's been trying to hold it together and survive. When you're in survival mode, you don't have time to focus on healing. You're just trying to make it through the day. He's been doing that for a long damn time—just trying to make it through the day.

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