I also told her of how my father hated us and my mother abandoned us, and then of how I abandoned Jax and left him with my father when he refused to leave with me.

Tate’s eyes got red and pooled with tears that she tried to hold back.

I released all of the sickness in my head and the crud that had blackened my heart, and I wanted to wipe away the tears that she cried for me.

She’d always cared. She’d always loved me.

I’d treated her worse than a dog for three years, and she still cried for me.

I felt the ache in my throat as I looked at her, her face twisted up in sadness, and I knew she had every right not to forgive me.

But I knew she would.

Maybe that’s the thing I’d been missing about love.

You don’t withhold it or partition it out when it’s deserved. You can’t control it like that.

After I told her the ugly story, I sat there next to her, waiting for her to say something. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but she let me speak, and she listened.

“Have you seen your dad since?” she finally asked.

Your dad. The words were so foreign. I referred to him as my father only to identify the twenty-two year old man that preyed on a seventeen year old girl, and I was the result.

“I saw him today,” I told her. “I see him every weekend.”

Which was true. Even though I technically didn’t get my last visit. “What?” Her blue eyes went wide. “Why?

“Because life’s a bitch, that’s why.” I exhaled a bitter laugh.

After the punch I threw last week, the judge decided I’d fulfilled my commitment and let me off the hook today. I saw my father from a distance this morning, but I hadn’t seen the last of him. I knew that.

Tate looked at me, and drank in everything I said. I told her about the trouble after she left for France

—how I missed her, how Jax got hit by his foster dad, and how the judge cut me a deal.

I got up and walked back over to the French doors, leaving her on the bed to absorb everything. “So that’s where you go,” she finally said. “To Stateville Prison in Crest Hill.”

Crest Hill?

She must’ve seen other stuff in my room when she was snooping the last nightt. My mother had asked me to save receipts for the motels and gas for tax time. Shit was scattered all over my room.

“Yeah, every Saturday,” I said with a nod. “Today was my last visit, though.” “Where is your brother now?”

Safe.

“He’s in Weston. Safe and sound with a good family. I’ve been seeing him on Sundays. But my mom and I are trying to get the state to agree to let him live with us. She’s been sober for a while. He’s almost seventeen, so it’s not like he’s a kid.”

I wanted him to meet her, and if my mother was successful with the lawyer, then he’d be living with us sooner rather than later.

She got off the bed and walked over to me by the French doors. “Why didn’t you tell me all of this years ago?” she asked. “I could’ve been there for you.”

I wish I’d let you.

That was still something I was going to have a hard time with. Tate holding me up—or trying to— made this room feel ten times too small.

Small steps, baby.

I combed my hand through my hair and leaned back on the railing. “When I finally got home that summer, you were my first thought. Well, other than doing what I could to help Jax,” I added. “I had to see you. My mom could go to hell. All I wanted was you. I loved you,” I whispered the last part, my stomach knotted with regret.

I tightened my fists, thinking back to that day when I’d changed everything. “I went to your house, but your grandma said you were out. She tried to get me to stay. I think she saw that I didn’t look right. But I ran off to find you, anyway. After a while, I found myself at the fish pond in the park.” I finally looked at her. “And there you were…with your dad and my mom, playing the little family.”

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 638