Page 277 of Chaos has a Name
He wiped his eyes.
“You didn’t fight for yourself and instead quit, Wyler. Would you win? We don’t know, but on the day you take your last breath, we won’t think about how you didn’t try. We’ll be able to say goodbye with no moments of wondering if you could have lived longer. We’ll know you chose to give up and steal those last few moments with us out of cowardice. If you think we wouldn’t want you to fight…you’d be wrong.”
She was crying now.
Because she had enough.
She uprooted everyone, and she was tired.
God.
She was so tired.
Every single death, every single loss…it had taken a lot out of her. There were days she felt like a shit human being because she couldn’t give any more.
That day was today.
“Timothy pulled this shit too. He kept quiet and let it blindside us. Sometimes, Wyler, you have to do what’s best for others. While this is your choice, just once, it would have been nice for your children to know you put them first. Every single day of the last fifteen years, I have gotten up and fought for this family. It has been beyond exhausting, but I still did it because when you’re a parent, and an adult, you do the hard things, Wyler. You do the things that cause the most pain and you shoulder that so everyone else can have a break. All we wanted was for you to fight and carry that burden for us. You think it’s easy for us to know that you’re going to die? It’s not. At least with chemo, we’d all have hope, and see that you did too. Running…there’s no goddamn hope left for us now, Wyler. None.”
Wyler stood there.
Elizabeth felt her heart breaking in her chest, but she softened that anger as much as she could.
“I’ve only ever had one father. It was always Charlie, until there was you. I’ve had more moms than I needed, but you became my father when I married your sons. Cancer sucks, but we have enough money to get you into trials. We have the resources to fight, but not the man who wants to live to see CJ graduate in four years or EJ in five. I know what it feels like to be tired. But I also know what’s on the line. I wish you did.”
With that, she turned, and started going down the ladder rungs to leave him up there. As she started walking back to the house, she didn’t want to deal with it anymore tonight.
Wyler had made his choice.
And she made hers.
Oh, she’d carry the burden, but she’d protect anyone she could in the process—meaning the children who were going to hurt.
When this case was over, they were going home.
Period.
Elizabeth wouldn’t put her children through the pain of watching Wyler give up. There was no way she could do that to them. They were innocent in all of this, and she would shield them, and Callen and Ethan.
The.
Best.
She.
Could.
Wyler could make them do this, but she had control of their life for now. They wouldn’t eat, breathe, and live it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Instead, she’d give him what he wanted.
His choice to die.
And their choice to live.
Chapter Seventeen
The Woods
