His hands were shaking again. He pressed them flat against the table like he was trying to hold himself together through sheer will.
“I do ugly things so other people get to stay clean,” he continued. “So families don't lose their kids to traffickers. So women don't get sold. So men who think they're untouchable because they're rich or powerful or connected learn that they're not.” He looked up at me. Eyes wet with unshed tears. “That's what I do, Declan. That's who I am. And if you can't handle that, then maybe you should have let me die in that alley.”
The grief in his voice destroyed me.
“Fucking hell, Troy.” My own voice broke. “How did I miss this? How did I not see what was happening to you?”
“Because I didn't let you.” He was crying now. Tears cutting tracks through the blood on his face. “Because every time you tried to get close, I pushed you away. Because I was so fucking angry at you for surviving when she didn't that I made sure you never got the chance to know me.”
I pulled out the chair across from him. Sat down hard. My legs wouldn't hold me anymore.
He grabbed the kit before I could reach for it again. Turned my arm over without asking. The knife cut ran three inches along the inside of my forearm, not deep enough for stitches but ugly, still seeping where I'd stopped pressing it.
“Hold still,” he said.
“I'm fine.”
“You're bleeding.” He poured antiseptic on a gauze pad and pressed it to the cut without particular gentleness, which I probably deserved. “You going to tell me this whole time you were patching me up you were also bleeding?”
“I was getting to it.”
He looked at me.
“I was getting to it,” I said again.
He taped the gauze down without responding, which was its own kind of answer. Then he set the kit aside and sat back in his chair and looked at the table between us, and the kitchen went quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the sound of both of us trying to get our breathing back under control.
I watched him. The blood still drying on his jaw. His hands flat on the table, split knuckles, the particular stillness of a man who'd run out of things to do with his body and had nowhere left to put the energy.
“I need to know,” I said finally. My voice was barely steady. “I need you to tell me why you hated me.”
Troy stared at me.
“You didn't do anything wrong,” he said finally and his voice cracked. “That's what made it worse. You were perfect. You tried so hard. You showed up every single day even when I was treating you like shit. You never gave up on me even when I gave you every reason to walk away.” He wiped at his face with the back of his hand. “I hated you because you stayed. Because you survived. Because you kept trying to love me when I didn't know how to let you. And I punished you for it. I made you pay for herdeath every single day because I didn't know how else to deal with losing her.”
“I tried. I tried so damn hard to reach you. To be what you needed. But you were right. I survived and she didn't. And I never figured out how to make that okay. Never figured out how to earn the right to stay in your life.”
“You didn't have to earn it.” Troy's hands curled into fists on the table. “You just had to be there. And you were. Every time I came home bleeding or broken or too angry to function, you were there. You fed me. You patched me up. You let me hate you without ever walking away.” His voice cracked again. “You stayed. Even when I gave you every reason not to.”
I reached across the table and covered his fist with my hand. His knuckles were split and swollen. Probably broken in places.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “For not seeing. For not pushing harder. For letting you carry this alone.”
“Don't.” Troy pulled his hand away. “Don't apologize for my choices. I'm the one who decided violence was easier than grief. I'm the one who turned into this.”
“You're not just this.”
“Yes I am.” He stood up again. Started pacing with restless energy that had nowhere to go. “This is all I am, Declan. A weapon. A killer. Someone useful for dirty work and nothing else.”
“That's bullshit and you know it.”
“Is it?” He turned to face me. “Because that's exactly what I've become. And the worst part is I'm good at it. Really fucking good. Which makes me exactly the man you should want as far away from you as possible.”
I stood too. “You don't get to decide what I want.”
“Then what do you want?” The question came out desperate and angry. “You want the truth about what I do? Fine. You have it. You want to know why someone's trying to kill me? BecauseI've made enemies. Powerful ones. And they're willing to hurt anyone close to me to get to me. That's the truth. That's the reality of my life. So tell me, Declan. What the fuck do you want from me?”
“I want you to stop lying to me. I want you to stop hiding. I want you to let me help instead of shutting me out every time things get hard.”
