Sorrow snorts before slipping off her jacket, showing matching rings of bruises around her forearms.
“Jesus, did Denny do this?” Wade curses, but I stare at the bruises, swallowing bile as I look at marks I know were caused by my hands.
She shrugs her jacket back on. Even out of sight, I can’t unsee them. I can’t take back what I did. Holy crap, when did I turn into a monster?
“I’ve gotta go,” I mumble before stumbling away. I hear Marcus call my name, but I pick up speed and hurry out through the glass doors. I break out into a run and don’t stop until my lungs feel like they’re on fire.
I sit my ass on the curb and suck in lungful’s of air as I try to get my thoughts in gear. But every time I think I have a handle on them, I picture those bruises. I grab a fistful of my hair and stare at my feet until I hear a car honk its horn. I look up and see Marcus pull over. He stops the engine and climbs out, walking around to sit down next to me.
He doesn’t say anything. He waits me out.
“The bruises are from me,” I croak out, ashamed.
“You mean to hurt her?”
I shake my head vehemently. “No, I didn’t know I’d grabbed her that hard. She fell, I caught her, but she scared the shit out of me, and everything just came crashing down on me. Her, my sister, my parents, Alec. I was trying to shake some sense into her. Jesus, what was I thinking?”
“Clearly, you weren’t. But you can’t do that again. You have shit to say, use your fucking words, not your hands.”
“I know. I?—”
“Shit happens. You fucked up, big. But I don’t think you’ll ever do something like that again, even by accident. Andhonestly, she’s pretty fucking fair-skinned. Not justifying shit because I’m on her side with this, but I’m willing to bet she bruises like a peach, which doesn’t help you any.”
“I need to go apologize.”
“Maybe you should just leave her the fuck alone. She has enough going on.”
I lean back and look up at the sky. “She was this scraped-kneed, hollow-eyed waif of a girl until one day, I realized she’d turned into a woman right under my nose. She was too damn young for me. But fuck me, I wanted her, so I left. I enlisted as soon as I was old enough, much to my parents’ disgust. I figured I’d come back when she was older and wiser, and I’d shoot my shot. But when I came home, she was with Alec. She dated the one guy that meant she could never be mine.”
“You were in love with her?”
“Head over fucking heels. But to her, I was just her boyfriend’s older brother.”
“And then he died, and that made her untouchable.”
I look at him sharply because that’s not what I was getting at at all.
“Alec died, but you didn’t, Banner. She was a kid. The likelihood of that relationship developing into something more than high school sweethearts was low. This town plays it up like they had a great love that she destroyed, but who knows what love is at seventeen? Love and loss go hand in hand. Sometimes, you have to experience loss to truly appreciate the flip side.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m just saying things are different now. You’re different, and so is she. You might never get this shot again.”
“She’s my dead brother’s ex. That’s about as off-limits as it gets.”
“Says who? Your parents? I doubt they’ll be happy with anyone you date unless it’s someone of their choosing.”
“If that were true, they wouldn’t have let Alec date Sorrow to begin with.”
“They knew the likelihood of them staying together was slim, too. Maybe down the line, they’d have had an opinion, but Alec was heading off to college. They likely assumed things would fade out.”
I look away. “Doesn’t matter now. Too much has happened. A million things have changed.”
“And yet one thing’s stayed the same. You’re still in love with her.”
Chapter Eleven
SORROW
