He grits his teeth, his emerald eyes cutting into mine. There’s a hardness there, one I haven’t seen before. One that contains rage and unbridled fury. One that thirsts for blood. “Who the fuck do you think found her on the side of the road, Oak?”
My finger taps against my outer thigh. The haze of red becoming the only thing I see. And I want to kill Stud all over again. Make him suffer longer. Tear him apart piece by piece until all that is left of him is unrecognizable scraps of his flesh.
Because not only did he do what he did, he tossed her aside when he was done. Like she was nothing. Like what he did was nothing.
“Your father did.”
He shakes his head. His eyes then glisten before they harden to stone. But he can’t hide the waver in his voice. “I found her. I found her as I was coming home from my shift. I found her.” His voice breaks and I can’t see shit past the tears in my eyes. I can’t swallow past the lump lodged in my throat. I can’t feel past the splintering of my heart and the ache of my soul. “And it took everything in me not to hunt down the man who did it to her and make him wish that he was never born.”
There’s not enough pain in the world that I could’ve inflicted that would’ve amounted to hers.
And that’s what kills me more than anything.
Nora will forever be healing.
His death wasn’t the cure and it certainly wasn’t enough to be considered justice. It wasn’t even fair.
He got off way too fucking easy in my opinion.
And it kills me how Nora still has days where her suffering cripples her. It kills me how that night changed the course of her life.
“She was hurt, beaten and bruised. Wrecked beyond imagine and you want to know the first thing she said to me when she finally allowed herself to fall in my arms?” I stay silent, the tears in my eyes making their descend as my throat feels as if it’s in a chokehold. “She told me, don’t tell Ethan you found me, don’t tell Ethan about it at all. And I asked her why and you want to know what she said? She said because she knew you would take the blame; she knew me finding her would only bring you more pain and the only thing she wanted was for you to be okay. She wasn’t thinking about her as I took her to the hospital for a rape kit and to bandage her wounds and to take her report. She was worried about you.”
Then the bomb around my heart detonates. I feel it shatter as it shatters every vital organ I have.
“I’m not telling you this to feel guilt, Oak,” Crow says and I see him roughly wipe away a tear of his own. “I’m telling you this because I want you to think about Nora. I want you to think about what this will do to her if you confess. You think about her like she thought about you.”
“What if I deserve it?” My voice sounds like sandpaper.
“We bear the consequences from the actions we have done and can only hope to learn from them and strive to be better.” A forlorn smile crosses his face, pain entering his eyes. “My fatherhad told me that when I resigned from the armed service. And I tell you, Oak, it’s stuck with me every god dammed day. Don’t confuse bearing your consequences with punishment. They’re not the same.”
“And how would you know?”
“Because I too would beat myself up everyday for losing my brothers. I blamed myself for surviving unscathed. I grew to hate myself for saving a brother who didn’t want to be saved. What no one understands is the mental warfare you inflict upon yourself is the greatest pain you will ever feel. But our war is done, Oak. Your war is done,” he stresses. “Allow yourself to feel peace. Allow yourself to enjoy it. And for fucks sake allow yourself to grow and be a better man.”
“He’s right, you know,” Snake says softly. I turn to look at him and the expression upon his face kills me. “Punishing yourself is only killing you, Oak. And if you keep going back to the past you’re killing the future you know you can have. The future you want.”
I nod my head at the both of them, the decision already made. “They can bring me in but I’m not confessing to anything.”
The look of relief upon both of their faces hits me. “And Crow?”
He raises a brow. “Yeah.”
I swallow. “Thank you.”
He nods his head back. “I’ve never been your enemy, Oak.”
“I’m sorry it took me this long to see it.” And I genuinely am. And after everything he’s done to help with the club, knowing he helped my sister. . .
I fucking can’t hate him.
The only reason I ever did is because I saw a man who was better than me. A man who saw combat and chose to betterhimself. A man who stood on the righteous path. And I hated that he did everything right while I did everything wrong.
The only way I can heal is if I forgive myself.
And if forgiveness is what it takes to be the man Grace deserves, if forgiveness is what it takes to have a future with her then forgiving myself might not be as daunting as I thought.
How can it be when at the end I’ll have her.
