“I don’t agree that what happened was just, or that your sentence was even in the realm of fair. You broke the law, but so did they, and you were the one punished. It was a disgustingcorruption, but that doesn’t mean that the law always gets it wrong.” Her hand sweeps over my hair, back to my jaw, and she tilts my face so that I look up into her shining eyes. They’re overflowing with emotion. “Whatever you’re feeling, it’s valid. Don’t give up. I know what it’s like to have years taken away from you. There’s still time. If I didn’t believe that, then life would be unbearable.”
I know what she means, but I can’t help but spitting out the rest of the angry words churning inside of me. “They deserve to pay. The whole criminal organization should be brought down. Istillwant to go after them.”
My arms are wrapped around her, but even so, my hands tighten to fists. “I want to destroy their lives the way they destroyed mine and so many others. And that… thatfuckingbastard. I want to kill him for what he did to you.” She gasps and goes rigid. I loosen my fists and cling tightly to her. “I know that’s why you didn’t want to tell me and why you won’t give me his name and why you made me promise I wouldn’t find out. I respect that, I truly do. But I still feel helpless that I can’t doanything. I might as well have betrayed my mom and the promise I made her.”
“Don’t,” Loreena chokes. “She didn’t mean it like that.”
“Iknowthat. I know all of it.” I bow my head, bringing our foreheads to rest together. “You know, it would be perfect for you. You found someone with the means to not only find the man who hurt you, but to destroy him.”
Her face is so pained that I can barely look at her. I’m the one that put that hurt there. I’m the one who twisted her gorgeous features into a mask of horror. I’m the one who wanted to protect her and am doing the exact opposite because I can’tpull my head out of my ass cheeks and stop being a bastard for five seconds.
“It’snotperfect. Freeing me and damning yourself isn’t going to help anyone. And even if you found him and we enacted some kind of justice, I’m never going to be free. Hurting him won’t give that to me. Jailing him won’t enable me to step outside the house again. Maybe I wanted him to pay at first, but I’ve let that thirst for retribution go.”
“I’m not free, though. Just because I left that prison behind, doesn’t mean that I’ll ever be free again.”
“If you could put every single one of those men behind bars, it wouldn’t change anything.”
“But it would for the people they’ve ruined. The families they’ve broken.” She chews her bottom lip, and I can see her considering that. “That’s what I wanted in the first place. To stop them. I wasoneperson, but I thought I could make a difference. I thought it would be one less gang spreading their poison into the world.”
She clasps my face between her palms and wriggles against me so hard that it’s a miracle that other things don’t get hard. Under any other circumstances, they probably would, but I’ve been sitting up too long, and I’m lost in the ghosts and demons of the past.
“It’s a miracle that you’re even alive and that they’ve forgotten,” Loreena hisses. “You might not feel that you’re free, but you’rehere. You’re right here with me and for that, I’m so thankful. I don’t want to give up, and I don’t want you to give up either. If you’re having a hard time, then please, talk to Lockwood. Talk to Scythe. Talk to me. Talk to any of the guysat the club. If none of that works, then we’ll find someone who hears you the way you need to be heard.”
“You hear me. You see me.” Why can’t that be enough for me?Right. because it’s not her job to listen to my whining and help me feel better. It’s my job to scrape myself up and get my shit together. It doesn’t matter that I can’t fix myself. It only matters that she’s here with me, and I want her to know that. “Thank you for allowing me to get this out and for listening and not judging the fuck out of me. Thank you for not telling me that I’m a dumb, ungrateful fucking idiot.”
“You’re none of those things.”
My shoulders hunch forward as I sigh and she wraps herself around me, squeezing her thighs against mine. She hugs me in a tight, strong bear hug, until as much of me as she can reach is enveloped.
I get to lean forward and smell the sweet scent of her hair, drink in the delicious, sweet juncture of her neck. I haven’t been hugged like this, or held like this, since I was a kid, and a very small one at that.
There’s still that kid in me, still the man that I was before I went to prison. If only it were as easy as reaching down inside of me and pulling it all back up to the surface. If only I didn’t feel so fucking lost all the damn time. It was like that in there, and just because I’m on the outside, breathing in fresh air, free to go where I please, doesn’t mean that all those feelings are just going to evaporate.
It doesn’t matter who says that I need time and grace. I fucking know that. I just can’t figure out how to grant it to myself.
“I’ve always thought that there was going to be a before and an after,” Loreena whispers against my ear. “I thought I could cure myself. I’ve been trying to get better,bebetter, and get myself into thatafter. LockwoodknewI was wrong, but he wanted me to figure it out for myself. He didn’t want to just tell me because I wouldn’t understand the way I do right now. Maybe there is no fixing. It’s just learning to live with it.” She threads her fingers through my hair, stroking my scalp, comforting both of us. “Just like someone with an incurable disease that’s not terminal. You adapt. You live the best way you can with what you’ve been given. I’m the one who needs to relearn how to live, in here, and out there.” She sighs so hard that her shoulders rise and fall back down. “It’s easier said than done, but you know what?” Her head snaps up and she studies me with eyes full of heartache, but they’re so gentle despite all of it. “I know that I don’t have to do it all at once. What if who we are in this moment is exactly right? It seems like there are so many rules. What if we just let ourselves be and gave ourselves grace?”
I don’t mean to snort, honestly, I don’t. Not when her eyes are sparkling and prettier than any night sky I can ever remember seeing, and when I was locked up, all I wanted to do was look at the sky.
“Who I am isn’t fit for purpose.”
Her nose wrinkles and she takes my hand. She rubs hers over my mine like she’s trying to get the warmth back into me. How fitting. “Say it with me, Maverick. ‘Who I am right now is exactly right.’”
It’s not exactly right though. It’s so fucking far from it.
“Nothing will ever be right if we can’t accept ourselves for who we are,” she insists.
The new age bullshit has never worked for me, and it sounds so dumb when I echo it in my own head. That might work for her, but it’s not going to do anything for me. “That’s just stagnating. It’s being afraid of change or growth.”
She bites down on her lip and manages not to look hurt. Mostly.
Fucking piece of shit. She’s just trying to help you, and this is your way of thanking her? Not just tonight, but for years, she’s kept you going.
“I’m not talking about never changing or never moving forward.” She tries to get through to me another way. “We reached each other through letters. Reading. Music. Art. Dance. All of it is writing, in a way. It’s one soul speaking to another and that soul hearing it when it thinks that no one else could possibly understand. That’s the one thing that ties us and binds us together and keeps us from falling apart. We’re all a mess of contradictions, every single one of us. We’re all lost. It often feels like our memories happen to another person.”
“Some of us are just a mess,” I grunt.
She laughs, even though it wasn’t supposed to be a joke.
