Page 26 of Glass Wings

He flinches a little. “Can I sit before you start hitting me with it?”

“You’re already sitting.”

Gray huffs out a breath that isn’t a laugh. He looks older in all the same ways I do; the years have etched in, sleep rubbing out of the corners of his eyes with sandpaper.

“You look the same,” he says softly, like he was speaking to someone who has died. “Stubborn.”

“I look the same in cuffs?” I ask. “That the picture you wanted?”

“I didn’t—” He stops, jaw working. He sets his elbows on the ledge beneath the glass like he’s bracing for something. “I heard. About the festival. About Harley. About the baby.” The last word softens him in a way that makes me want to break something. “I had to come.”

“You ‘had to’ come?” I use the glass like a wall, leaning back so I won’t put my fist through it and lose the tiny thing resembling privilege I have. “Gray, the last time you had to do something, I did five years for it.”

He doesn’t look away. Points for that, I guess.

“I know what I did.”

“Do you?” My voice goes low in the way that always meant danger when I was young. “You set me up to take the fall. You lied about needing to get home early. You framed me!” The memory hurts like a bruise you’ve forgotten about until you lean on it. “You didn’t visit. You didn’t call. You didn’t write. You ghosted me like you were never my brother.”

“I was eighteen,” he says. “I was stupid. Scared. It doesn’t change anything, but, East, I⁠—”

“Don’t,” I snap. The word fogs the glass and disappear. “Don’t shorten my name like you have the right.”

He swallows and nods like he deserves the cut. “All right. Easton.”

The name sounds strange coming out of his mouth. I stare at the faint scar on his eyebrow and wonder when he got it, and whether it hurt. And why any part of me still cares.

He rubs his lip with his knuckle the way he’s always done when he was trying not to say the wrong thing. “I came because I can help.”

I laugh. It came out sharp and ugly. “You’re going to break me out? Dig a tunnel with a spoon like we used to joke? Or are you going to smuggle a new life into my pocket like the last time?”

A muscle jumps in Gray’s cheek. “I deserve that.”

“You deserve worse.”

“I know. And if you want to spit in my face when we’re not separated by bulletproof glass, I’ll let you. But I came to tell you something about the guy pressing charges.”

The humor drains out of me like a plug pulled. I don’t move, but everything in me tilts toward him. “What about him?”

Gray looks at the camera again. He keeps his voice low. “He’s not the kind of guy who keeps his mouth shut. He’s been out at a bar downtown, bragging. Festival story’s his new favorite party trick. Says he shoved you to ‘teach you a lesson’ before you ‘lost your mind.’ He’s still denying the drink thing, but he’s sloppy, Easton. He’s the type that wants to be seen.”

“Where?”

Gray names a place I know by reputation, the kind of spot where the floor is always sticky and the shots are called “ladder falls.” He adds a night, a time, like he’s been watching.

“How do you know this?” I ask.

“I work a real job now,” he says with a half-smile that doesn’t stick. “It puts me around people that talk too loudly when they shouldn’t. I needed a real job after the baby was born and I didn’t have a degree, so the owner of the bar hired me. I’ve been bartending ever since Layla was born.” He shrugs. “I happened to be working the bar when he came in the other night. He ran his mouth. I listened.”

I frown. “That’s not enough.”

“It’s not nothing either. And I didn’t only come with bar gossip.” He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a folded sheet of paper, holding it up to the glass like it’s a church offering. “I wrote down names. People I heard laughing at his story like they were with him that night. One of them said he saw him ‘messing with a drink just to freak a girl out.’” He taps the paper. “That’s a quote.”

Heat rises in my chest. It’s not anger this time. It feels like something old and sharp is being sanded by hope. “You wrote this … for me?”

“For Harley,” he says without hesitation. “And for the baby.” His mouth presses into a line. “I don’t get a lot of chances at doing the right thing where it counts. This seemed like one.”

I take a breath so deep it hurts. “You think you can patch a hole you blew through my life with a list of barflies?”