Page 60 of Plain Sight

15

JAMESON

I’m done.

I’m done.

I can’t do this anymore.

I can’t argue with Lily. I can’t look at the fear in her eyes. I can’t keep trying—fuck, trying, failing—to make anything right for anybody. I can’t keep getting to the brink of changing everything and then backing off because I’m scared of⁠—

What? I’m scared of nightmares? I’m scared of my siblings being dead? I’m scared of Lily being dead? And somehow that means I can’t take out somebody who almost made that happen? Who almost fucked us over forever?

Who did fuck us over forever? Mason and Gabriel made it out, but I’m never going to⁠—

I’m never⁠—

Other people can be killers. Walsh killed our parents. He tried to kill Lily. Other people can commit to being crime scenes. Other people can do things they’ll never be able to take back.

Why am I the only one who’s a fucking coward about it? My dad pushed Mason out of a window to save him. My mom keeps showing up in my head. Why can’t I love Lily like my dad loved my mom? Why wasn’t I willing to kill for her?

Why am I so fucking worried about what it means to kill people? Why am I worried at all about the worth of a criminal asshole’s life?

Maybe because I am a criminal asshole. Maybe because everything I’ve ever done hasn’t tipped the scales.

No. Fuck it. I would kill for her. I would. I would have killed all those cops if they tried to touch her. I would have killed Malcolm Walsh, if I’d found him trying to kidnap Lily.

You don’t have to do that, Jamie, my mom says. Is it me, or does she sound tired? Is she at her limit for having such a disappointing waste of a son? I didn’t raise you to be violent. You’re a gentle man. It’s okay to be gentle.

“I don’t want to be gentle.”

Yes, you do.

The kitchen shudders and warps. I don’t know that I’m at a cabinet until it’s inches from my face. It doesn’t look like any cabinet I’ve seen before. Then it looks like the cabinets at our old house, before we got kicked out so that a corrupt, evil consortium could put more money in its members’ pockets. Then it’s Mason’s cabinet again.

Why couldn’t I be better?

Mason taught himself to walk again for us. Gabriel—Gabriel did unspeakable things for us. And what did I do? I sat there smiling at Remy, pretending I wasn’t a wreck.

And it didn’t change anything.

All the crime I’ve done, including tonight, won’t change anything. One house will be burned to the ground, and that wasn’t even because of me. My brothers did that. For me. Because they thought it was what I wanted.

It was what I wanted. But it didn’t change anything.

I am such a fucking coward.

You’re not, Jamie, my mother says. She sounds like she used to when I was sick, and she’d sit on the edge of my bed and run her fingers through my hair.

I open the cupboard.

There’s a stack of plates inside.

“You should go.” I look over my shoulder, and there’s Lily, standing in the doorway with Gabriel, Mason edging past them to come into the kitchen, as calm as I’ve ever seen him. “You really should, Lily. Leave, and don’t bring the baby back when it’s born. I’m a coward and I’m a criminal and I couldn’t kill anyone for you. The farther you are away from me, the better. Don’t give me your address. Just give me a bank account, and I’ll pay for everything you need. You’ll have all the money you need, even when I go to prison. I probably will. Anyone in their right mind would send me to prison.”

“Jameson,” she says.

Charlotte’s there with her. They’re all there. Charlotte takes Robin from Lily, and then she’s doing something—saying something?—to Elise and Nate and Lydia.