I’m about to choke myself to make this conversation end. Maybe run into a wall head-first. Anything to make it stop.
“Noel, look, I want us to move on from that woman. Brothers shouldn’t fight over a girl. We both got burned. Let’s start over. If I get out of here, I want things to go back to the way they were.”
He hesitates, as if fighting demons hedoesn’t want freed.
“I guess.” His head painfully nods in agreement, like he’s maturing before my eyes. “You mean we’re both done with her, huh?”
It’s more of a statement than a question.
I’m about to say, ‘yeah, dummy,’ but I control myself.
“Brothers first. Mom and Dad would want that.”
“They would,” he whispers.
It’s a small victory in this hellhole. It’s the closest I’ve had to ending his toxic obsession with Morgan. Unfortunately, the price was me in jail.
“Maybe you should pray?” Noel says. His expression is cautious. “I pray you’ll win this case.”
“Still believe that shit? Even though I’m in here?”
He sighs and his voice drops, losing some of its flair. “Yeah, it’s dumb.”
I don’t want to be a dick and destroy his faith just because my life sucks.
“Never mind,” I mumble. “Forget it. Pray all you want.”
The guard calls and our time is over.
That night, I lie on a metal slab that passes for a bed, staring at a ceiling that never goes dark enough.
I count sounds. Keys, footsteps, men coughing through walls. I count time in headcounts and nights that bleed together. This place doesn’t care who you were outside. It slowly gnaws you down to the bone.
I think of Noel. Tommy. My parents.
And Morgan.
That’s the part that frustrates me.
Not that I miss her, but that even now, in here, she still has a way of pulling my attention. I can’t afford that anymore.
If I get out of here, I need a life that doesn’t end with handcuffs and visiting hours. I can’t be without my brothers.
Fuck, I’ll never take Tommy for granted again. I’ll never feel sorry for myself for having to care for him.
And Morgan, whether she meant to or not, belongs to the part of me that landed in this cage. The idiot who wanted to be some kind of hero. Save the girl, even though she wasn’t mine.
To this day, I still don’t understand what I was thinking.
I wasn’t.
Oil popping and the carnage of skin blistering flashes in my mind.
Cars. Think of cars.
A diamond ring sparkles.
Chapter 34
