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I closed my eyes again, my eyelids suddenly heavy. “It wasn’t her.”
“Then who?”
“Me.” My eyes opened again, and I shifted my body farther up the couch. “It was me…” I’d hated myself a lot over the years, but never at this intensity.
“What did you do?”
“I asked her to give up her dream to be with me—but I wouldn’t do the same for her.” I was such a fucking asshole. All the fight had left my body when she’d said those words…because they were true. I didn’t deserve her. I’d never deserved her. I’d walked into her shop and ruined her goddamn life. What if I had just kept walking? What if I hadn’t tainted her life with my bullshit?
Benton was quiet for a long time.
The words absorbed into my skin—and hurt even more.
“You broke up with her?”
“She left me.” I told him what happened with Silas. “I didn’t protect her, Benton. And she’s right… There’s no guarantee I’ll be able to protect her in the future. She made the right choice. I should have made it for her.”
He was quiet again, processing all of that. “You love this woman, Bartholomew.”
I raised my arm with the IV in my vein. “Clearly.”
“But you’re going to choose this life over her?”
“It’s a life sentence, Benton. You don’t just walk away—”
“That’s a bullshit excuse, and you know it.”
I directed my gaze elsewhere, keeping Benton in my peripheral so I wouldn’t have to see the disappointment on his face.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“Maybe I am.”
“Then fix it before it’s too late.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
I said nothing.
“Why?” he repeated. “You have more money than you know what to do with. Walk away—and be with the woman you love. Enjoy your life.”
I ignored him.
“Bartholomew, help me understand—”
“Because I’m nothing without it.” I looked at him head on. “I’m just a man. That’s it.”
His voice turned quiet, approaching the topic with gentleness. “That’s exactly what she wants, Bartholomew—”
“She wants the man she met. The man who terrifies people. The man who owns these streets and everyone in them. I’ll just be a fucking nobody with a lot of money. Weak. Boring. Forgettable. And then what happens? She leaves me. She leaves me—and I’m left with nothing.” I probably wouldn’t have said any of that if I weren’t still drunk, with painkillers saturating my system. “She’ll leave like everyone else. I’ve built the Chasseurs from nothing. It’s always been there for me, always been the place I belong, my purpose in life. I work nonstop because I enjoy it—”
“Because you’ve never had anything else or anyone else to spend time with. All you have is work because you’ve never slowed down to enjoy life. You’ve never enjoyed life because you don’t know how. You don’t know how to celebrate Christmas. There’s no one in your life who even knows your birthday. Not even me, your closest friend—”
“You want to sing happy birthday to me and watch me blow out some fucking candles? Fuck that.”
Benton hesitated. “It’s what makes your life rich, it fills all the emptiness, it hides the loneliness.”
