“Spoke to your dad lately?”Max asked as he pulled off the main road toward the station.
“A couple of days ago.” To say things were strained between us was an understatement. I found it hard to look at him and not show the resentment I hadn’t managed to shake.
My feelings where my dad were concerned were…complicated. Part of me struggled to accept that he’d done what Xen accused him of.
There was just no way he’d do that to someone.
But the anniversary of my mum’s death had an effect on him that I couldn’t ignore. Usually he drank a little, allowed himself to wallow in the misery of having lost her, but then shoved all that pain away and got on with his life.
Maybe this year it had been that little bit too hard and it had pushed him over the edge?
Why would Xen lie about something like that?
And more importantly, Xen was my alpha. Why did I have any doubt at all that he was telling the truth?
I also felt guilt. So much fucking guilt it was hard to keep a lid on it some days. I should’ve been with him, not left him alone on a day I knew would hit him hard. Maybe then he wouldn’t have drunk himself into oblivion and ripped someone’s throat out.
And then there was the resentment.
He’d killed someone. And as a direct result of his actions, the life I’d been looking forward to had been ripped away while his carried on as though nothing had happened.
I’d told him I didn’t blame him for it, but we both knew I was lying. And the guilt I felt overthatkept me up at night.
“Jake?” Max’s tone told me it probably wasn’t the first time he’d said my name.
I shook off the feelings I tried hard not to dwell on and looked over at him. “Sorry. Zoned out for a minute.”
“I noticed.” His fingers flexed, hand lifting off the steering wheel as though he was going to reach for me, but then he obviously caught himself and gripped the wheel again so hard it creaked. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
He gave me thatlook, and I grumbled but answered him anyway. “It was…fuck.” I scrubbed both hands over my face, wanting to wipe away the feeling of wrongness I got when I thought about my dad now. “It’s hard. He asks how I am and I can’t answer honestly without making him feel guilty. And part of me wants him to feel guilty. So I tell him the truth and then I feel like shit for putting that look in his eyes.”
He reached over and squeezed my thigh.
I put my hand over his, greedy for the comfort touching him brought me. Something we were supposed to be easing back on but weren’t doing a very good job of. “I don’t want it to be like this between us.” Tipping my head back against the seat, I turned to look out the window. “He told me again that I should refuse to marry Myla. That he’d rather die than see me suffer a broken heart because of him.”
It wasn’t the first or second time he’d told me to let him face the consequences of his own actions. Begged me once. And I knew he’d gone to Xen about it, too. Thankfully Xen had ignored him because there was no good outcome here. If I did as my dad asked and Frost took his life as payment, then my heart would still be broken because no matter what issues we struggled with now, I still loved him as much as ever.
Losing him would crush me.
Max sighed. “I don’t believe he did this.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d said that either, and I wanted to believe him. So badly. But that would mean Xen was a liar, and if that was true, then where the fuck did that leave us?
We were no closer to finding out exactly what happened that night. Xen refused to discuss it further, and we hadn’t had time to look into it at work.
Hopefully with Melhak dead and all the tail ends of that investigation being wrapped up now, that might change. I fucking hoped so because we were running out of time.
“What’re you up to today?” I asked as we turned into the station car park.
Max pulled into a space and switched off the engine. “I’ve got to finish up the transfer papers for the witches we’re sending to the fae prison. Then I want to check in with Blake Tehlin, see how he’s doing after everything that happened.”
Made sense.
Being held hostage in your own home after only just recovering from being poisoned couldn’t have been easy to get over.
Max tapped the steering wheel. “I also thought we could pay a visit to the bar when I get back.”
