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“I want to ask you something,” he says with a soft reverence that still holds conviction. “If that’s okay?”
My breath catches in my throat, but I nod my head and force it down. We’ve never been afraid to tell each other anything—except for the fact that I had feelings for him and that he was dating my brother.
Oh, and the secret assault. Nothing big.
Water under the bridge and all that.
“Blair said you were in the trailer park.” Atty’s words are soft like he’s trying not to spook me, but I’ve already prepared for this line of questioning. “What were you doing?”
He thinks I went looking for trouble. To get drunk or high or anything else to fuck me up and numb me down.
And he’s right.
“I went to see my dad.”
Saying it out loud hurts like being wrapped in a thorn bush. I wish I could have gotten some sort of closure or any small victory from that interaction to make the hell that followed worth it, but it all exists as one big fucked up mistake forever branded to my history.
“Loh.”
I can’t bear to see the disappointment that’s already evident in his voice. But Atty has been my best friend since we were five, and he has no intention of letting me wallow.
He wraps a thick arm around my shoulder and pulls me into his broad chest. A few months ago, he would have second guessed a touch like that.
“Are you okay?”
I tuck my head into the crook of his arm and raise my brow. “With my dad or what happened after?”
Those hazel eyes soften but chastise me at the same time. “With your dad.”
I didn’t realize how tightly the anxiety had wrapped around my heart until his words loosen the spool. Relief courses through me that I don’t have to talk about it. Not the way every resource, therapy, and rehab has said I need to do to process and move on.
“He’s a fucking asshole, and I hate him.” Should I feel bad that knowing he’s going to die sad and alone doesn’t bother me in the slightest? That there’s no penultimate moment of forgiveness that frees me from all the pain he’s caused?
I don’t know. It’s like a door I keep shutting but it has a broken lock. Sometime soon that door will turn to dust, and I won’t have a way back through it.
That is when I can move on. When I don’t have to constantly question whether I’m right or wrong for not accepting his intolerance.
“Blair hasn’t seen him since you woke up in the hospital.”
Since my medically induced coma because I was so fucked up from my own bad choices at the end of last semester.
But this is Blair.
I swallow roughly and wrap an arm around Atty’s torso. He matches me and practically pulls me into his lap with both arms holding me tight. Tears spring to my eyes from the sheer intimacy of the contact—one I never thought we’d share again—and bury my face in his shoulder.
“The asshole is dying.”
Atlas strokes a hand through my hair and rests his cheek on the top of my head. “Are you telling me so I’ll tell your brother?”
I shake my head. “I’m telling you so you’ll convince me it’s wrong to keep it from him.”
He hums and rubs over my back in circular motions. “You aren’t wrong. Besides, he already knows.”
I jerk my head up, but he lays it back down as if nearly whacking into his chin didn’t phase him at all.
“What do you mean ‘he knows’?”
“Your brother had himself removed as your dad’s emergency contact, but some wires must have still been crossed because he got a letter meant for your dad about some test results. He followed up but couldn’t bring himself to face him or you about it. Life has been a lot for all of you lately.”
