Page 36 of Last Chance Love

“Haven’t heard of you getting into trouble. And outside whatever you did to get locked up in the first place, I can’t imagine there was too much to make you look like a problem case.”

I didn’t know why, but that made him laugh. “You’ve given this much more thought than I ever have.”

Which inexplicably made me self-conscious. It probably had to do with the fact that I’d never really spoken of the program or my feelings about it to anyone, not at any length. Most guys, when they came here, would come with the belief that it was a better place than prison, which was true, and that it was a fast track to get through their sentence, which was also true.

At some point, though, most of them came to see there was a lot more to the program than just those things. It was genuinely a chance for them to get their lives back on track or onto an entirely different track than before. They were being given the opportunity to make something of themselves eventually. Not always, of course. Some coasted right up to Tier One and into graduation just on good behavior alone.

Sometimes, I wondered what happened to those who graduated. Not just immediately after they got out but in the weeks and months afterward. How many of them continued to try to improve their lives? How many of them found themselves falling back into old habits? How many would end up in prison again after a year, two, or three?

“Maybe it’s a mentor thing,” I said, then snorted, rubbing my neck nervously. “Or maybe it’s like you always used to say, and I’m just taking things too seriously again.”

He smiled, and I thought I detected some fondness in it. “Eh, I don’t think you’re taking it too seriously. I mean, being a mentor is a pretty big deal, isn’t it?”

“Why do you say that like a question?”

“Because if you think it’s a big deal, it’s probably a big deal.”

“Aren’t you the one who always said I gave too much thought to the wrong things?”

He grinned. “Sometimes, you do. Sometimes, you don’t. It’s hard to say with the version of Leon I know now.”

It was the first time since I’d run into him in this very clinic that either of us had admitted what different people we were and just how little we knew about one another now. It had been around five years since I’d last seen him when I’d come into the clinic for a pain reliever, and who knew what had happened to either of us in that time? For that matter, we had started to drift for a few years before that, learning less and less about one another’s lives as the months ticked by with growing distance.

Now I wondered what had happened to that guy he’d been dating the last time we’d spoken. Had it simply fizzled out? Had someone cheated or got bored, did their lives go in different directions that couldn’t be reconciled? Just how were his mother’s breathing problems doing? Or did he even talk to them anymore, or had they distanced themselves after he’d been arrested?

Jesus, we really were strangers who also somehow weren’t.

“Fuck,” I muttered, shaking my head. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” he asked, frowning in confusion.

“I just…I realized how much of a gap there is between us,” I admitted with a grimace. “We used to be so close and know so much about one another. And now we just…don’t. We could practically be different people and not even know it.”

He gave me a bemused look. “Youjustfigured that out?”

I scowled. “I’ve been distracted.”

“You mean you’ve been avoiding facing it because you felt bad about it, and I let it happen.”

“I mean, yeah, I guess.”

“Which makes us both equally responsible, and there’s no point in beating yourself up.”

I rolled my eyes. “You don’t take shit seriously, you know that? No wonder Elliot likes you.”

He smirked. “I take a lot of things seriously. I took my studies seriously and I took my job before I got locked up seriously. I take my job here seriously and what I did to get locked up seriously. I took our friendship seriously and our relationship seriously, for as long as they lasted.”

I looked away at that last bit, guilt and shame building inside me. “For the record, I’m still sorry that we couldn’t…that we didn’t?—”

“Leon,” Reed said softly, laying a hand on my forearm and squeezing gently. “You couldn’t follow me, I get it, okay? You had to stay behind to ensure Ray and Ian had someone there to take care of them.”

That had been true. Ray had just entered junior high, and Ian had been entering his freshman year of high school. Ian had insisted on taking a summer job and wanting to try to find odd jobs while he was in school despite my protest that he should do fun shit, like join a club, hang out with friends, and keep up his classes. If I had left, no matter how much money I could make somewhere else, my brother would inevitably have followed in my footsteps and tried taking care of Ray in my stead.

“And you couldn’t have stayed,” I said, now knowing what I knew. “You had a whole future ahead of you, with a plan. I would have never demanded that you stay behind and languish. You needed to get out and do great things.”

Reed grinned, though there wasn’t as much humor in it as usual. “Yeah, I’ve done a lot of great things. Just look at the progress I’ve made. A pioneer.”

His sarcasm was scathing, and I winced. “I guess we can’t always account for when we screw up, huh?”

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