“No,” she says. “You don’t.”
“I can’t help you if ye aren’t honest with me. If ye don’t trust me.”
“It’s not about trust,” she says. “I’ve sown these seeds, and you can be damn sure that I’m the one who’s going to reap them.”
“Do ye have any idea what it’s like to hurt someone you didn’t mean to?” I ask.
“No,” she bites back. “Every person I ever hurt was because I wanted to.”
I sigh, and it only incites her further.
“I know you think you’re going to save my soul, or whatever. You Irish boys are big on that. But you can’t save what isn’t there, Rory. You think I’m going to regret it, but I won’t.”
“You can’t know that,” I argue. “And I won’t stand for ye to do this.”
“You don’t have to allow me anything,” she says. “I’ll do what I want. With or without you.”
I grab her by the waist and hoist her up onto the bench, pressing my body between her legs as I cup her face in my hand. I don’t know what to say to her to make her understand. It’s the same argument we’ve been having for months.
She’s still throwing a tantrum because I wouldn’t let her kill the butcher.
For all of Scarlett’s strength and stubborn will, she can’t see what lies beneath. Her fragile heart. The one beating in her chest right now, beneath my other palm.
“You kill people all the time,” she whispers to me. “And you’re still good.”
“It’s not that simple,” I tell her. “You didn’t know me before.”
“Before what?” she asks.
“Before my father. He was my first. The first kill.”
She’s quiet, her eyes moving about my face, and some of her walls crumble under the weight of my admission. So I tell her the thing I haven’t said aloud to anyone, even my brothers in the syndicate. I confess my sins to make her understand.
“He had a heavy hand. Sometimes with me. But especially my mammy.”
“You shouldn’t be telling me this,” Scarlett whispers.
There’s worry in her eyes. Worry that this thing between us- this constant push and pull- is getting stronger. Bigger. And she can’t stop it.
I don’t want her to stop it.
“He was a drunk and a slob and a leach who couldn’t hold down a job. And he’d come home and take it out on her. He did it for years. I’d hear her crying in the bedroom at night. She told me not to concern myself with it, for her sake.”
“So I didn’t. I stuffed it down and took what he doled out to us, provoking him so he’d give it to me the worst. I thought if he went after me, it would stop him from going after her. But it didn’t.”
“Rory…” Scarlett’s clinging to me, begging me not to continue.
“I was thirteen. And I was so fucking angry. Full of rage and hatred. For him and for everything. And one night he came home, started having at it. I was tired. And I was bigger by then. Stronger too. I listened to him slap her around for five minutes before I just snapped.”
I look right into Scarlett’s eyes and admit the truth.
“I beat him with my bare hands. And when I finished, there wasn’t a thing left of his face.”
“You’re good,” she insists. “You are, Rory.”
“It never goes away,” I tell her. “I’ll never get that image out of my head. The blood off my hands. My mammy has never looked at me the same way since. I had to leave.”
She isn’t telling me I’m good anymore.
