Roz narrowed his eyes.
“I always got my targets,” he said. “You know this.”
“Okay,” Roz murmured. “I’ll give you that.”
“You can’t think you were protecting him that good?” Scar frowned. “Back then, I knew where he lived, where his parents’ church was. I knew his whole fuckin’ weekly schedule.”
Roz clenched and unclenched his fists.
“If I had wanted him, I would’ve got him. You too, for that matter.”
Roz held his stare.
“But I didn’t.”
“Why?” Roz asked. “You sure as hell gave him enough shit.”
Scar swallowed. His truth was always complicated and too pride-swallowing to share.
“Because I never wanted to hurt him and hurting you would’ve hurt him too. I gave him shit because I couldn’t have him. Not for myself. And you did.”
The silence after his confession was too thick.
Roz didn’t move for a long moment, but something in his glare softened. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and grating.
“You know how I met Gage?” Roz asked.
Scar shook his head, but he damn sure always wondered.
“I met a girl named Shannon,” Roz said. “She used to come around my block with her church group to do outreach.”
Roz’s gaze shifted—unseeing—as if he was mentally going back to that time.
“She passed out boxed lunches, clothes vouchers, comforted families who were down on their luck. Praying for ’em and shit.”
Scar could already see where this was going.
“She was gorgeous,” Roz whispered. “And she was a Christian. Off limits to a thug like me.”
Scar could relate.
“Some guys on the block rolled up on her and her friends once and started giving her a hard time. I walked over.” Roz growled. “Didn’t say shit, just started beating them motherfuckers down.”
He said it with his chest—no apology or regret in his tone.
“I thought she’d get scared and haul ass, or call the police,” His throat worked once. “But she didn’t. She sat beside me on the curb, pulled out a little kit from her bag, and cleaned the blood and skin off my knuckles.”
Scar could only imagine what that’d felt like.
“Her touch was…” He paused as if searching for a word that wouldn’t make him sound weak. “She told her friends to go on. And she stayed right there with me, talking about…”
Roz laughed, but it held no humor.
“You won’t believe this shit, bro.” Roz glanced at him. “She talked about God. And that no matter what I’d done in the past, I wasn’t too fucked-up to be loved. Shorty had me believing it too.”
Scar nodded. “She made it sound good, huh?”
“Yeah. She did.” Roz’s mouth twitched. “But honestly, I could’ve listened to her talk about anything…tax law, or the history of drywall, whatever, and I would’ve paid full attention.”
