Page 41 of Bully's Second Chance
I scooped up my towel. “Stay out here as long as you’d like. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I wrapped the towel around my shoulders and headed straight for the back patio doors. I didn’t look back, not once, and I was honestly proud of myself. But, when I stepped up onto my back patio and stared at the pool’s reflection in the glass of the sliding doors, I saw Lily still standing there. Almost as if she were waiting for me to come back.
And seeing her standing there so alone and so helpless made me peer over my shoulder at her. We stared at one another for a little while as the night grew darker still. I watched as she wiped at her cheeks, not even trying to hide the fact that she was crying because of me. I felt the pieces that were left over from my heart shatter and fall to the floor. I had made the most beautiful woman in the world cry with nothing but my words, and I sure as hell didn’t deserve her. She deserved better than me, and I knew that by pushing her away, I had done her a very serious favor.
I don’t deserve anyone like her, anyway.
I pulled my gaze away from Lily and stepped inside, rolling the door closed behind me. I heard people rushing around upstairs as the faint sounds of droning machines caught my ear. I stepped away from the glass door and pressed my back against the wall as my eyes squeezed shut. I murmured a soft prayer up to heaven, praying that it was my father’s time. Praying that this was the moment where he’d be put out of his misery. But, when I heard the beeping of the machines start back up, anger flooded my body again, along with guilt at the idea that I could even pray for something like my father’s death. I knew he’d never be at peace so long as he was alive, though, which angered me even more. And I didn’t know what to do with all of it.
“Dammit,” I growled.
Why I destroyed everything that was good for me, I’d never know. Why I prioritized my business over everything else, I’d never understand. But, I knew that I was like that, and I knew it wasn’t changing, and Lily needed to understand that. If she wanted to keep pushing through my barriers, I’d keep throwing them up. Anything to hold her at bay. Anything to keep her away from the pain I always brought into people’s lives. Like the pain, I had already brought into hers.
“She deserves better,” I murmured to myself.
And when I finally mustered the courage to walk out of the kitchen, I ran into Adelaide.
“Oh, my God. I’m glad I found you. You need to come. Your father is lucid enough to be talking about a DNR, Mr. Jackson. I need you to try to—”
I paused. “A DNR?”
She sighed. “Yes, and it’s not natural. He’s come so far and fought for so long. He can’t just give up.”
I gazed down into her eyes. “You love him, don’t you?”
She sniffled. “That’s not the point. The point is—”
I placed my hands on her shoulders. “Do you love my father, Adelaide?”
Her lower lip trembled. “Yeah. I do.”
I nodded softly. “Then, love him enough to allow him to make this decision because it’s not just about his life. It’s about hisqualityof life. His dignity. It’s about taking control of the one thing he can control, and after fighting day in and day out for years now, he deserves at least that. Right?”
Tears spilled down her face. “Mr. Jackson, he can’t go out like this. He has to get better.”
I pulled her in for a hug. “But, he isn’t going to. We all have to face that fact.”
And as she cried against my chest, I peered over my shoulder to take one last look at Lily.
Only to find that the pool—and my hot tub—were unoccupied.
16
Lily
When Jax looked back at me, I had hope that my words had struck him in the heart. That finally, I had unlocked some secret combination of sentences that finally slapped some sense into the man. I mean, I knew he had a good and caring side to him. I saw it whenever he took care of his father. I saw it in the small ways he glanced at me whenever he thought I wasn’t looking.
But I couldn’t make him want to see it.
I couldn’t make him want to enjoy it and indulge it. I couldn’t make him replace his anger with literally any other productive emotion. That was a choice he had to make on his own, and as our fleeting moments grew shorter and shorter, I began losing hope that he’d ever see it.
That he’d ever see himself as the man I knew existed.
Personally? I knew how hard it was to let go of anger. I knew how hard it was not to let anger consume the soul, and to be honest, he had probably been using his work to bury his anger for so long that he didn’t understand how to live any other way. He probably didn’t even know he had an option for reprieve out there. Or, maybe he knew it but didn’t feel like he deserved it.
Either way, I couldn’t make the decision for him. I couldn’t makeanydecision for him, for that matter. If he weren’t willing to learn new things or open up to someone attempting to help him take care of one of the reasons he was so angry in the first place, then there was nothing I could do.
And that reality sent me running into the woods.
