Page 49 of For Wrath and Redemption
“I gave you something I haven’t even given my therapist, Claire. Give me something back.”
I frown. He’s right. If this is going to work, he has to trust me.
“Okay. ‘Landslide’ triggered me because Fleetwood Mac was my best friend’s favorite band.”
“She dead?”
I fold my lips between my teeth while blinking away tears. “Might as well be. We don’t talk anymore.”
“Why?”
I stare at him and breathe slowly. His expression gives me pause. Curious and interested. I can’t tell if he’s looking at me like a person or a research subject. I think it’s a little of both.
“That’s more than I’m willing to tell.”
“You still owe me more to make it even.”
“This isn’t the trauma Olympics, Jonah. It shouldn’t be a quid pro quo.”
“So it was traumatic?”
“Wasn’t yours?”
He pauses, considering my question, and then he nods. “It shouldn’t be quid pro quo, but it is. You owe me more. I don’t want to tell my secrets to someone I don’t know.”
I turn my head away and grind my teeth. Nausea climbs up my throat. My forehead and upper lip dot with sweat. Then his index finger hooks softly under my chin, and he coaxes me to face him again. It’s the concern flickering in his eyes that loosens my jaw and my tongue.
“The men who messed with the women I loved were also people I loved,” I confess.
His eyes widen with surprise, and I grimace.
“My dad and my brother. My mom and my best friend. My dad wasjust a selfish, cheating asshole, but my brother struggled with addiction.”
Now that I’m talking, I can’t stop. It’s falling from my lips like rushing rapids. Crashing through my throat and over my tongue like they’re jagged rocks, relieving pressure yet causing pain just as strong. I close my eyes against the sting of tears.
I clench my fists in my lap.
“I was so tied up in my own mess...I was trying and failing to keep my own shit together, keep my mom from having a nervous breakdown, keep myself from self-destructing, that I ended up blaming him for everything. My dad wasn’t there, but my brother was. He became my scapegoat, I guess. But my best friend...the only person I had... She loved him. She chose him, and it broke her, and I wasjealous. Jealous and hurt and so fucking angry at them both.”
His hands wrap around my fists. My attention falls to the contact, my eyes opening and releasing the flood of tears. The cuticle on his thumb is picked red, dried blood specked on the bottom corner of his nail. He hurts himself when he can’t handle his emotions. I relate to that, too. I close my eyes again and force that realization to the back of my mind.
“I watched my best friend change. She started to act like him—careless and angry. And then...”
I breathe through my panic as memories flood my head. My brother and best friend, broken and bleeding in different ways. When I speak again, there’s no hiding the waver in my voice. The weakness. The regret.
“I thought they were bad for each other. I thought if I could separate them, just for a little while, they’d see it, too.” I lift my gaze back to his face. “I had an opportunity, and I took it, and I failed them both.”
His eyes are narrowed, almost angry, and a chill skates over my skin. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was protectiveness I see in his expression. But then he speaks, and it’s toneless. Sterile. I’m a lab rat, and he sounds just like his fucking father.
“Neither of them has forgiven you?”
I shrug. “I don’t blame them.”
Sav’s words from days ago come back in a rush.You have to forgiveyourself, even if they can’t.It makes me want to laugh. She’s giving me too much credit.
“Where are they now?”
I give him a sad smile. “Together and thriving. They have a son. My nephew. Gabriel Christopher. I never see him.”
