Page 138 of Give Me Redemption

He smirks. “Yeah, that’s your problem. You’re always kidding.”

“You don’t joke enough, and I joke too much. Is that it?”

He shrugs. “You joke enough for the both of us.”

“Touché,” I say, taking a swig of my beer.

The ballgame comes on and we grow quiet for a moment. Damn, my brother is getting married. I don’t know why, but this makes me feel... melancholy.

Life is moving on.Bryce has changed so much since he met Harrison. He’s opened himself up and stopped letting our parents ruin everything.

We’re slipping through time, and things are changing in big ways. I stand up and go for another beer.

“Want one?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he replies.

My phone vibrates on the coffee table, and knowing it has to be Dalton, I twist and snatch it up, noticing Bryce was trying to see who it was.

“Something you don’t want me to see?” he asks suspiciously.

“Nope,” I say, sliding the phone into my pocket as I head for the fridge. I forgot to tell her Bryce was coming over to chat. We’ve been pussyfooting around the point here, which is I messed up, and he’s going to remind me of that.

I open the beers again against the counter, handing him his before I scratch the back of my neck, taking my seat. I taste my beer before resting it on my knee as I pick at the label.

I hate this.

I hate I can’t talk to my brother about Dalton. I love her, and I can’t share that with him because she did something that he might not ever forgive. What will I do if he doesn’t?

Part of me wonders why he’s talking to me. I’m the one who let her in there. I made that choice, and it ruined everything for him.

“Spit it out,” he says before he downs the rest of his beer, switching it out for the new one.

My eyes jump to his before skipping over to the wall. I swallow before clearing my throat. “I’m sorry for what happened. I never should have let her in there. I fucked up.”

“Yeah, you did.”

My eyes go back to him. “Way to kick me when I’m down.”

“That’s not my intention.” He sits up and rests his forearms on his knees. “That club was my life, and your dumbass choices took it away from me. You know how hard I worked. You know I put everything I had into that place, and in a matter of minutes it was gone. All of it.”

I sit up, too. “You think it would have lasted forever? You really think you never would have gotten caught?”

I mean, come on. Yeah, I messed up, but he was running an illegal gambling operation. He would have eventually gotten busted.

He doesn’t respond, and it’s because he knows I’m right.

“Exactly,” I say. “If it wasn’t because of her, it would have been someone else.”

“Yeah, but it was her and it was because of you. You always do this shit. You’re careless and you play around too much. You think that life is one big fun game. That’s why your ass got discharged from the Army. You fucked around and got caught selling cocaine. How could you be so stupid?”

That sends fire throughout my veins, simmering any little bit of guilt I had for all the shit that went down.

I think life is one big fun game?I know all too well that life isn’t a game. He hasn’t been through half the shit I have.

“Oh, I just fuck everything up, don’t I?” I spit, my eyes burning into him.

I can tell he feels bad, but fuck that. He knows what happened to me in the Army. He knows, and yet he says that shit to me?

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