“Okay, but you weren’t hired to kill him or his brother. How could I even ask Pax to forgive me?”
We’re all silent for a few heavy moments until Stealth clears his throat.
“If I can say something…?”
I nod, noticing how Shadow immediately focuses all his attention on our brother.
“I know a lot about forgiveness and loss. About letting good things go because it’s the right thing to do. I’m hardly the guy who should give someone else relationship advice, but I can share what I know.”
We’re all silent, waiting.
“Sometimes, we end up hurting ourselves and those we careabout because we never…” He pauses, clearing his throat again. “We never gave people the chance to be there for us. We assumed things or hid them because we thought that was safer or that we were protecting them, but what we were really doing was shutting them out. Listen, Wraith, I don’t know Pax, obviously, but what I hear you saying are a lot of assumptions about what he thinks and feels. We’re not the people you need to ask about this. If I could go back in time and redo anything, it would be the part where I decided to handle things my way without talking to those who mattered. Don’t make that mistake.”
His words hit hard, causing a lump of emotion to form in my throat. “Thanks,bror.”
He nods, staring at the floor. Shadow looks devastated, and the rest of us are equally shell-shocked. There was a lot to unpack in that, but the most important lesson was for me. I have to talk to Pax and not make assumptions about what he’s feeling.
Maybe, in some magical world, there’s a chance he could see beyond what I do, and he could see that my love for him could be good.
I have to at least give it a shot. If he can’t and this ends, at least I’ll know I did everything I could.
I have to try.
