Page 336 of Lodestar

"After you killed Michael, I realized what part the First Lady played in everything and I knew I had an in. Your father was collateral damage, I guess.

“I didn’t like him, didn’t like what he did to you, didn’t even approve of how he treated your brothers, so I guess I just reasoned it in my head that none of you would care that much.” She swallowed. “Then I saw you in the graveyard.”

I tensed. “You were still watching?”

“Cin tried to get me to leave, but… I just couldn’t.” She closed her eyes. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again and I couldn’t go, not when…”

I thought back to that day and the memory alone was enough to make me lock down.

I’d been the one to alert my brothers to a meeting between the First Lady and our da in Green-Wood Cemetery. I’d been in Jersey, West Orange to be precise, trying to find more intel on Star’s disappearance, but even though I’d raced to Brooklyn, I’d been too late.

He’d died with my brothers around him, butIhad been too fucking late.

“I’ll never understand why you do the things you do,” I rasped. “But I got an insight into it today because of Troy.”

After what her soldier buddy had shared, I believed I knew her better. Understood her more than ever before.

Her jaw worked. “If you rely on yourself, the only person who can let you down is you, and the only person to blame is you. I prefer…” She paused. “Preferredthat.”

“Nice catch,” I praised, which made her shoot me an apologetic smile.

“Old habits die hard but you’re right, Conor. There’s no point in doing this if I act as if I’m on my own still.” She sucked in a breath. “Do you want to know something terrible?”

“Hit me with it.” Then I braced myself for what she considered terrible…

“When I saw how I’d hurt you, that was when I knew how much I loved you because I hurtwithyou. I was the reason for the pain, and…” Misery flashed over her expression. “It was another reason to cut myself out of your life.

“I’m cancer, Conor. I wanted to save you from that. Spare you from me. Maybe Kat too. By that point, I didn’t even know if I’d make it back alive, and a part of me hoped that for your sakes, I didn’t.”

“Do you want to know why I don’t hate you?”

Her brow furrowed but her answer was simple. “Yes.”

“Because I couldn’t hate you any more than you hate yourself.”

A sharp breath escaped her, one that was so raw, so deep, so filled with agony that I knew it came from her soul—not her lungs. Her very soul.

Tears flooded her eyes and as she closed them, shielding those beautiful crystalline orbs from me, they dripped tracks down her cheeks.

“My relationship with my father was unusual. My grief for him was too. Does it hurt that you were behind his death? Yes. But it took me a while to realize that he’s been trying to die fora while.” My gaze was unfocused as my thumb slipped along the tear track on her silken skin. “When they set fire to the cathedral two Christmases ago, he and Ma tried to kill themselves.”

“What?!”

“They’d just found out what happened to me. I didn’t uncover this until later when I overheard a conversation between Aidan and Da.” My thumb continued its soft movements along the arc of her cheek. “They’d tortured the archbishop and his ultimate punishment was being burned to death in his own parish.” My mouth twisted. “They were going to end it too, though.”

“Hardened Catholics willing to kill themselves?”

“Easier to end it than deal with me, I guess.”

She shoved my shoulder. “Don’t you dare say that.”

“What am I supposed to think? Aidan and Finn had to drag them out of the cathedral, Star. Physically lift them out. Aidan’s knee was fucked back then too. I’m not sure how all their asses weren’t cremated.” I shook my head. “I should have known that I…”

“That you, what?” she whispered.

“It wouldn’t just be guilt over what happened to me that’d be the reason he wanted to end things. It made sense once I found out he had ALS.” I tucked my chin into my chest. “It’s not that I wanted him to feel so devastated over what happened to me that he’d kill himself, but I just… I knew it’d be about him. It always was.

“He wasn’t a normal father, and we weren’t normal sons. At the graveyard, the son in me mourned the loss of his father, but then I remembered what he was.”

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