It wasn’t far from a truth. But it was the wrong one. “What did you think my secret was?”
Embry shrugged. “I didn’t think about it too hard and that’s why I’m so fucking angry. Because I knew something was drowning you this whole fucking time and I did nothing. Isaidnothing, even when you were disappearing for days at a time to fuck other people.”
“I never fucked anyone else.”
“I know. Iknow. And that’s the point. On a base level, I always fucking knew and Idid nothingabout it. I let you sink and sink and sink untilthishappened, and now everything’s fucked.”
Embry moved suddenly, scrambling to his feet too fast for me to stop him. “Cam told me the Porth Luck girl was gay. That even your magic dick would never have persuaded her otherwise. I was relieved, man. Because I didn’t want you to fuck anyone else, even though at that point I didn’t think I’d ever let you fuck me. Maybe if I’d seen beyond that we wouldn’t be in this fucking quicksand right now.”
I stood slowly, careful not to spook him. “This shit is a decade old, Em. What difference would it have made if you’d found out a few weeks ago?”
None that I could think of, but Embry was already lost to whatever guilt he’d found at the side of the road and claimed as his own.
He shook his head and backed away from me. “It’s not about the girl in Porth Luck. It’s about every time you turned away from me when you needed help. You can stand there and tell me it’s all on you and you’re the worst cunt that ever lived as much as you like, but it’s not going to stop me knowing why you never trusted me with this.”
“Because I fucking couldn’t!”
The shout exploded from me, ringing out over the empty roof.
Embry didn’t blink. “Iknowyou couldn’t. That’s my point. I’m your friend—I’m yourchaplain, Mateo. You could’ve come to me and told me you were struggling. I could’ve helped you without ever knowing the details and I’d have toldno one.Do you know how much of other people’s shit I have in here?”
He thumped his temple with his battered knuckles, hard.
Too hard.
I stepped towards him.
He threw up a hand to hold me back. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” The monster in me began to rise. “Don’t tell the fucking pigeons up here that you take on everyone else’s fuckery to hide from your own?” I closed the distance between us and loomed into his orbit, poaching his oxygen. I’d never lay a hand on him, but anger was a wicked thing. Bitterness. Rage. Embry thought he owned those emotions, but they were all mine. “Or how about that you didn’t know shit because I didn’t want you to? And it wouldn’t have mattered if you’d held my fucking hand every time I screamed into my pillow. That was never gonna change.”
I ran out of steam, breathing hard.
Embry stared into my soul and pressed something into my hand. “You didn’t feel safe with me and I didn’t know. Now you have to go back to your daughter with blood on your face and both of those things are my fault.”
The finality in his words broke me. “Em. Please. I love you.”
“I know.” He kissed my cheek.
Then he gave me his back and jumped off the fucking roof, leaving me with another crack in my heart and Liliana’s favourite hairband in the palm of my hand.
21
EMBRY
I had to walk past the spot where I’d been shanked to get to the back fence, but for once it didn’t derail me. I made straight for the boundary and climbed the fence, knowing my brothers would see me do it and daring them to stop me.
The barbed wire at the top was thick. I scraped my arm and welcomed the stinging pain. Anything to clear the fog from my brain.
I didn’t even know where I was going. Just that I needed to walk and walk and walk until I found it in me to be a good brother again.
Because that’s what I was. To all of them, not just Mateo. And they needed me. Mother of Christ,heneeded me. And I’d be there, just as soon as I could fucking breathe.
Leaving the compound on foot meant my options were limited. Also, I was hungry, which didn’t help my mood. I escaped through the woodland and emerged onto the coastal road in a black mood. I could smell the sea, but though I was Cornish to the bone, it didn’t call to me. I liked the cliff top cave because it was high and wild and I could watch the storms. The crashing waves below were incidental.
And Mateo liked them.
That’s why you took him there.
