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“Adam, that’s not—” I whisper.
“I didn’t stick my neck out for my brother. When my father berated him, belittled him, humiliated him, I said nothing. Isaac was seventeen when he came out.” His voice trembles as he speaks. “He was just a kid, and I was a man. Why didn’t I defend him? I could have helped him. Ishouldhave protected him, but I was too focused on beingthe good son.
“Then, the day before his eighteenth birthday, he just…disappeared. It broke my mother’s heart, and I did nothing.”
These tears sting because these are the ones I don’t want to cry. I don’t like hearing Adam’s pain. I hate knowing that he’s beating himself up for something that is really his father’s fault.
“I’m sorry…”
“I’m afraid I can’t give you what you deserve, Sage.”
I don’t respond as I swallow down what feels like knives in my throat. But just the acknowledgment that Adam thinks about my needs, that we could be an us, stops me from speaking.
He turns toward me with bloodshot eyes.
“It was real, and you deserve a man who can admit that.”
“You just did,” I reply with a teary smile.
I can tell by the look in his eye that it’s not enough for him. That he still doesn’t feel worthy.
Thirty
Adam
The rain drums quietly against the window as I stare at the moon through the drizzle. I can’t sleep. Sage is breathing quietly next to me, cuddled under a heavy blanket, looking peaceful, and all I can think about is every cruel and depraved thing I’ve done to her.
I’m no better than him. And by him, I’m not even sure if I mean Brett or Truett, but it doesn’t matter. Because the three of us are the same.
My entire life, I considered myself agoodman, and now I don’t even know what that means. I followed all the rules. I read the gospel. I lived the life my father and God set out for me to live and everyone I truly cared about ended up hurt. My mother. My brother. And her.
If I ruin my father’s life and go to Brett’s apartment now to beat the ever-loving shit out of him, does that make me the hero?
I won’t. And not because I don’t want to, because I really, really do. But I won’t because the honor and integrity that’s ingrained in my bones won’t let me. The same honor and integrity that has stopped me from every single thing I’ve wanted to do.
Perhaps we can never truly be good and protect the ones we love at the same time. Maybe it takes a bad man to truly keep them safe and happy.
I think about that night Truett hit my brother. The night he laid his hands on a scared seventeen-year-old boy and the way I watched from the hallway. I flinched. I tried to move, but I was a gust of wind against a mountain.
And I thought I was the righteous one.
Everything replays in my head, not just the last night with Isaac but the very minute I met Sage. I actually believed she was different than me as if I was sewn from a different cloth. And she was somehow…less deserving. Who the fuck did I think I was?
She deserves the fucking sun. The moon. The stars.
And the thought actually makes me laugh. Out of every righteous, God-fearing person I know, this girl might be the best one I’ve ever met.
I left her with him. I got in my car and I drove away while she cried in the arms of her abuser. Because I did theright fucking thing.She got hurt because of me, and it could have been so much worse.
I’m no fucking hero.
And I never truly was. So why have I been acting like one?
Before I know what I’m doing, I’m out of bed, slipping on my jeans. Anger boils under the surface, growing hotter and hotter with every step I take, and it feels like I’m breathing life into a part of myself that I’ve been suffocating.
I don’t even fully know what I’m doing. I just let my instincts carry me without thinking about it too much.
Once I’m fully dressed, I glance back at Sage sleeping in her bed. I don’t stop to question if I’m doing the appropriate thing. I’ve done that enough in my life. This is the wrong fucking thing, and it’s the first thing that’s ever felt right.
