“Just listen,” Cole said.
Steele glared at Cole and back at me. He extended his hand out, palm raised up, as if to say, “By all means, continue.”
“Steele, all those late-night conversations I had with her, all those times we talked… I never, ever made a move. Do you believe me on that?”
Steele looked over his shoulder.
“Steele.”
“I do,” he said with a groan, as if admitting such a thing meant admitting he had no grounds to have anger.
“I respected what you had way too much. But I had a feeling.”
And yet, you push her away now. You tell her you need to protect the town and not her.
Why not both? Why? Do you really have an appropriate answer?
“Fuck, man,” Steele said. “No one ever made me feel the way Tara did. It’s fucking bullshit—”
“I know what it’s like.”
We both turned to Cole.
“I’m thrilled with my girlfriend now. I wouldn’t trade her or my son in for anyone or anything in this world. But before her? I knew all too well what it was like to yearn for someone, only for them to choose someone else very, very close to you. And trust me, it fucking sucks.”
I have a lot to learn about Cole. If he will ever let us learn.
“But you know what sucks more? If you let it become an issue. That girl’s name was Shannon. And she’s dead. And her murder made my brother and I not talk to each other for a year.”
Oh, fuck…
Neither one of us said a word. What could you say to that?
What would happen if Tara died?
The very thought sickened me and infuriated me. It both poisoned me and ignited a fire in me. I didn’t want to just protect Tara; I wanted to hunt down every Bandit in this town who had so much as looked at her. I wanted to fucking strangle them. I wanted to give her peace.
And I wanted her for myself.
Yes, yes, I did.
“So can you two work together? To make sure that no one has to die unnecessarily?”
Steele and I locked eyes. When we did so, I didn’t feel like I was looking at Steele Harrison, the childhood friend that I’d grown up with on the same street. I felt like I was looking at a grown man who was coming to grips with the fact that sometimes, failure was not something you could get out of.
And sometimes, that was OK.
“Don’t expect me to get past this so easily,” Steele said. “It’s not like we have this conversation and we just go back to the way things were.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” I said. “But don’t expect me to apologize for whatever happens between me and Tara. We’re adults, all of us. It sucks, but she made the choice to have an interest in me. I respected your relationship. I need you to respect mine.”
Steele grimaced.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “But I’ll respect it.”
I held out my hand. He held out his. We shook with the tightest, most bone-crunching grip we’d ever had.
No, this handshake did not make some blood oath in which we would now die for each other. It was symbolic. There would be moments in which Steele would talk to Tara privately or where Steele would see her and I kissing—if we get back to that, which seems…it seems like I want to—and neither would be fun for us. There’d probably even be moments of us cussing each other out and fighting each other.
