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“He wants to talk to you. But you need to calm down first.”
“It doesn't bother you?” I ask, turning to look at him since he’s now sitting on the stool next to me.
“Which part?”
“That he blames Lilah for me going to prison.”
“No, he doesn’t. If anything, he blames me.”
My brow furrows in confusion.
“Lilah’smydaughter. He said it right. If Lilah wouldn’t have gone to the party, you would have never been there.” He shakes his head, reaching across the bar for a new beer. “Lilah was 15. She should’ve never been allowed to go to the party. I let herknowingthat you and Flame were going to follow her.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “It’s not your fault.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Had I been wrong, and you didn’t go? She would’ve gotten hurt.”
Reaper looks deep into my eyes, and I can see the genuine gratitude in his green eyes. Lilah’s eyes.
“I don’t regret it,” I admit, looking down at my clasped hands on the bar.
“I know. That’s why no matter what anyone in this world says, you deserve her. You both deserve each other. No one will protect her the way you will.”
His words shock me into silence. Never in my life would I ever say that Ideservesomeone as good and pure as Lilah. She deserves way more than someone like me, and I deserve way less than the goddess that she is. But Reaper got one thing right; no one will ever be able to protect her like I can. Like I will. Til the day I die.
twenty-two
Ringer
“I can hearyou breathing out there, Emmett. Come in here,” my brother’s deep voice grumbles from the other side of his door.
After our chat at the bar, Reaper convinced me to try talking with Ghost again.
He’s my brother, after all. I have to try.
I’ve been standing outside his office for probably ten minutes now, staring at the gold plate that hasPresidentengraved into it, right aboveGhost.
I’ve been trying to work myself up to pushing the damn thing open and going to talk to him. I’m not going to yell. I’m going to tell him how I feel. If he wants me to leave so he doesn’t have to look at me, fine. I will.
I’m having a hard time figuring out how I can live in a world where I can have both my wife and my brother. I fucking hate being torn like this.
I push his door open. Ghost is sitting behind the desk with his black, wide-frame glasses pressed to his face.
“You look like a dork,” stumbles out of my mouth to break the ice.
Ghost chuckles, taking the glasses off and dropping them and the papers he was looking at onto his desktop as I take the seat across from him.
“I’m sure one day Mom’s horrible eyesight will catch up to you too.”
“Nah. I have Dad’s 20/20.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself, Em.”
I lean back in the chair and study my brother’s face. He does the same to me.
Even though he visited me in prison often, so it’s like no time went by as far as aging goes. It’s still a different ball game out here in the real world. I’ve been out for months now, and looking at him, it’s like I’ve only been home for a week at the same time.
Reaching forward to a tin on his desk, Ghost pulls out two cigars. He holds one out to me, and a smile pulls at my lips.
