Page 17 of Carter's #Undoing

I’d been okay with giving her some space. However, now that we were approaching lunch and it had been over twenty-four hours, it was a bit unsettling knowing that I was the reason she was so unhinged right now.

“You still there?”

I shook my head to try and focus on what the caller was saying. “Yeah, can you repeat that last part?”

“Where’s your head at, man?”

“You already know where it’s at. I hope bringing her here was the right thing to do.”

“It was,” he said. “You already know how these muthafuckas operate, and you can protect her better than anyone. How is she holding up being there?”

I glanced up my basement stairs as if she was standing at the top versus two levels above me secluded in her bedroom. “Not good. I’m starting to think I should have taken your advice and used a different approach besides the tea to get her here.”

“You couldn’t chance it,” he said. “Based off what you told me after you left your brother’s place, she wouldn’t have gone with you willingly.”

“Nah, she wouldn’t. If we could wrap this shit up sooner than a month, I could get her back to her old life.”

“You sure you want to do that?” he asked. “You just got her back.”

“Not willingly,” I reminded him. “Besides, you know with the kind of shit we do, we can’t afford to have the kind of life we want.”

“I know I can’t, but after this shit goes down, you may see things differently than you have these past few years.”

I listened to my friend’s words, letting them sink in. I’d done so much crap I never thought I would have ever done in this lifetime, I couldn’t imagine going back to my old life. Or even telling Serenity all the foul things I’d been a part of.

“Feels like I’ve waited a lifetime to see her again,” I told him. “But she’s already been through so much in life. What kind of man would I be if I tried to convince her to change everything for me?”

“The kind who goes after what’s in his heart the same way he does our targets. You’ve been out there too long by yourself. You need human interaction.”

“I’m good. And you know the shit we’ve done. Serenity isn’t like that. She’s nothing like us.”

“Then maybe you need to give her a reason to love the new you, not the childhood boyfriend she remembers. Knowing you, you probably ain’t doin’ shit but glaring at her or avoiding any contact with her. The Serenity you told me about wouldn’t react well to that. She’d need answers. She would want to talk.”

I cleared my throat, hating how right I knew he was. “Any additional news on the target?”

“Nah. They got their goons doin’ all their dirty work from some place in Maine I think. It’s hard to tell, but we’re on it.”

“I appreciate it, Scotch. Pass my gratitude to the others, will you?”

“Sure thing. Be good out there and keep your head up. I’ll contact you when I have an update.”

I was still thinking about my talk with Scotch way after we hung up the phone. Throughout the years, he’d been a steady voice for me. Relief from everything I’d seen and experienced, because he understood the scars. His advice salvation for things I’d done willingly and without regret, because he’d been there in the trenches with me.

I knew Serenity deserved more than what I’d been telling her so far, since really, I hadn’t told her shit. Yet, it was one thing to assume after all these years that she couldn’t understand me. It was another thing entirely to actually open up to her and experience the disbelief in person.

Rejection.

I was all too familiar with the word, but not in the way most people were. For me, it held a much more bitter taste because although I felt like I’d been rejected by my family, the truth was, I’d rejected myself because I couldn’t face them without feeling guilty. Without knowing that I’d never be the same son my parents raised or brother my siblings grew up with.

To feel excluded in a way that coursed through my veins each and every time I looked at my last name on a piece of paper was a feeling I was all too familiar with. I didn’t deserve Serenity’s compassion, and a part of me was worried that I would never survive hearing her true feelings about me. How could I when I wasn’t even sure I’d accepted my fate myself?

My thoughts ceased when I heard the slight creak of the wooden floor. The third step of my stairs to be precise. To an untrained ear, they may not have heard it from the basement under thick cement, but I knew it was Serenity, and if I heard that creak of the stairs, it meant she was finally ready to face me again. I only hoped I was ready to face her.

When I opened the basement door and locked it back behind me, she was already sitting in the kitchen with a cup of tea in her hand. Her hair was pulled up into a bun and her eyes were red as if she’d been crying. Heartbreaking as it was, I knew she’d cried hella times because of me over the years. I never intended to be the cause of so much of her pain. Serenity was a survivor of her circumstances, and I’d had a front row seat to the devastation that had swept through her life. Yet, for some reason, I convinced myself that I didn’t have to be honest with her until I was ready.

Looking at her beautiful dark-honey eyes, I caught a glimpse of hope that I hadn’t seen in her eyes since she awakened. She was ready to listen to me. To try and understand what I had to attempt to explain. It baffled me what held us back in our lives sometimes. The shit that we convinced ourselves was right versus wrong. If I waited any longer to talk to Serenity, didn’t that make me just as much of an asshole as the others who’d hurt her in her life?

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