Page 86 of Give Me Redemption

I can’t keep doing this. As much as I care about her, it just doesn’t make any sense for me to keep this up.

She won’t tell me anything. She won’t let me in.

How am I supposed to deal with that?

She’s hurting us both, and for what?

Why?

Snow falls into her hair. Her cheeks are a soft pink as her eyes glisten over. “I would have given you the best of me.” She closes her eyes and a tear falls and it kills me.

I looked ahead, my throat tightening, my jaw about to break. “If you ever decide you want to show me who you really are, you know where to find me,” I tell her.

“I’m sorry, Jace,” she says. “I’m so sorry.” I turn to look at her just before she shuts the door, leaving me alone with nothing but the cold. I watch until she disappears inside.

“I’m sorry, too,” I murmur, and then I put my truck in gear and head to the hospital.

I’m hurt, sad, and this is the last place I want to go, but I need to be there for my brother. I feel physically sick and completely broken.

Moments later, I’m pulling up to the hospital. I hurry inside and head to where Bryce told me he would be, noticing immediately something is up between him and Harrison when I walk in.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“I’m not sure,” Bryce replies, looking like shit. “K was just telling me Mom’s overdose is her fault.”

I look at her. “What? Harrison, that’s ridiculous.”

She shakes her head as tears fall. “No, it’s true. I… I caught her,” she stutters and then looks to the floor. “She was about to use a few weeks ago. She…”

“You caught her, and you didn’t say anything to me?” Bryce turns his full attention toward her, and she shrinks back at his squared shoulders and straight spine. The way he looks at her, it pisses me off. This isn’t her fucking fault.

“Bryce, chill out, man. She didn’t…”

“Fuck you,” Bryce says to me in such a callous way, it causes fire to rush through my blood. The room fills with tense energy. I narrow my eyes, trying to remember he’s hurting. But he doesn’t know what I’ve just been through either. He could stop being a fucking dick.

“You’re mad at the wrong people here, brother.” My voice is oddly calm, because I feel anything but calm right now. This man talks to me as though I’m the one who messed up here, forgetting that the woman he’s defending is the reason why we’re so fucked up in the first place.

“I’m mad at the wrong people?” Bryce laughs coldly. “You wanted this to happen. You were counting on it,” he says bitterly. “As far as you were concerned, she was already dead.” He walks closer to me and I ball my fist. “The woman who brought you into this fucking world deserved more respect than what you gave, you piece of shit.”

I stand taller, trying to act like his words didn’t just crush me even more than I already am right now. “Careful, brother. You’re saying things out of anger that you can’t take back.”

Bryce sneers, “I’m telling the truth.”

“So you think I’m a piece of shit then?” I ask.

There. He said it. I always knew, I always fucking knew he thought that about me, but he’s never admitted it until now. It takes our mom to overdose to get the truth out. But it’s out.

“Don’t make this about you and me,” Bryce says, shaking his head and stepping away from me. “Don’t turn this into whatever fucking grudge you hold against me.”

Of course, I hold a grudge. This boy left me when I needed him the most. We were tossed into a new home with strangers after our father just died right in front of us and our mom gave us up.

I only knew him, and he didn’t care. He went off and did his own thing. He knows what he did. He knows he fucked up.

I laugh bitterly. “Guilty conscience?”

Bryce’s head snaps back to me. “You think I should feel guilty?”

I shrug. “Shouldn’t you?” We both glower at one another, neither of us saying anything farther. I’ve let my emotions go too far. I guess I never get anything right. I’m always pushing too hard at things I can’t win.

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