Page 60 of Texas Hold Em'
“You watch too many movies if you seriously think this is the solution to the Bates problem.”
I moved toward her. Carrie let me put my hands on her shoulders, and I bent down a little to be level with her gaze. “Carrie, I know you feel responsible for all of this, but the weight of that responsibility is no longer on your shoulders. All of us have weighed our options. We could have walked away and made a different choice, but we’re choosing to go ahead with this, and it has nothing to do with you. Do you believe me?”
“No.” Carrie shook her head vehemently. “No, I don’t believe you for a second.”
How could I make her understand?
I put two fingertips to my temple. “Fucking woman. You’re more stubborn than I am.”
“That’s rich.”
“It’s a fact.”
“Look, I have every right to be terrified. If you die, that’s it for you. None of this will be your problem anymore. But me? I’m going to be stuck in it. I have to keep living it. I have to wake up every day after and remember that my actions led to your death.”
I grabbed her again and shook her. “Carrie, for fuck’s sakes, how do you not see how irrational this is?”
“I’mthe one being irrational?” she asked almost hysterically as she tried to break free of me.
I held fast. “Yes, you are. Answer me this. If the plan works and everything goes exactly as we want it to and we bring Bates and Caroline down and not one of us is harmed, do you take all the credit?”
She blinked up at me. “What are you talking about? Let me go. I don’t want to play hypothetical games with you right now.”
“Answer the fucking question, Carrie. Would you get all the credit? Would our success be solely because of you and your actions?”
She searched my eyes with hers. They were a darker blue under the night sky, and they reflected the stars. “No.”
“And why not?”
“I don’t know.” She shoved my hands away and stepped back. “Because it would be a team effort?”
“Exactly. Failure would be a team effort, too.”
Her posture stiffened.
“I know you want to believe that everything is on your shoulders,” I said more softly now, “but it just isn’t true. We get to make our own choices, Carrie. Just because we’re running through a door you opened does not mean that whatever happens to us on the other side of it is your doing. If I die, it will because of my own choices, not yours. You’re not responsible for my life. This is a decision I would make a hundred times over if it meant getting a shot at saving my friends—no, my family—from the hellfire Bates will continue to rain down on them if he’s allowed to continue operating in Reno unchecked. It’s just that simple for me. I need you to let this go.”
“What if I can’t?” she whispered.
“Try.”
CHAPTER 26
CARRIE
Ihovered around Tex like a lost puppy dog the whole evening after going to Grant’s and for the entirety of the next day. If it bothered him, he didn’t say a word about it. When he got up from the sofa on Wednesday night where we were watching a movie—his rather desperate attempt to distract me from my dark thoughts—I looked up at him and blurted out that he couldn’t leave. He’d smiled almost fondly at me, which seemed strange at the time because there was no way my clingy behavior wasn’t annoying. He’d cupped my cheek and told me he was just going down the hall to the bathroom, which he did.
In his absence, I tried to focus on the movie, but my eyes glazed over, and a different movie scene played over and over again in my mind.
Tex lying on a cold tile floor, bleeding out.
Tex with white skin and blue lips.
Brody screaming at me that we hadn’t done enough.
Jackson falling to his knees when he’d found out what happened.
The others calling me a monster.
