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I’d always had a talent for making enemies. I’d always been a fighter, even before I was officially a fighter.
I’m pretty sure it was meant for you.
It was Lex’s car, but I knew someone cut that brake line forme. Deep down, I always fucking knew it.
It was on me.
In that hospital, I was lying in the bed I’d made.
And maybe he was right. I’d gone on blaming myself for the accident, for losing my hockey career, from that day on. I’d had it all. An amazing life. And I’d fucked it all away.
Don’t let her go because of that shit.
Don’t lose her, if she’s what you really want.
That’s what he said to me tonight.
That accident was not your fault. My dad did it to hurt me. To punish me for leaving him and walking away from the Mafia. It’s what they do.
I believed him.
But I still didn’t blame him.
I shouldn’t have been there that night at all, driving up the mountain to visit some buddies at a bar on the ski hill. I shouldn’t have taken Lex’s car without asking. I shouldn’t have been drinking. There were so manyshouldn’ts in my life, somewhere over the years I’d started to thrive on them.
Being an asshole was all gonna come down on me someday, and it did. It caught up with me young. Before I’d had the chance to mature and wise up, grow up. That night, it came down on me with the force of a one-and-a-half-ton car crushing in on me.
Don’t let it ruin your life, Shane.
You didn’t die that night.
You’re still here. You’re still fighting.
He was right. They were all right.
I was still fighting. Always.
I’d never realized before, though, that it was such a fucking problem.
* * *
Late in the night, I remembered something I’d said to Dane, after he’d married Devi and they were having some issues.
He’d accused me of messing with him, back in high school; messing with Devi, to mess with him. Since I was guilty of exactly what he’d accused me of, I admitted it to him. He’d asked me why. Why I would do that to him?
I was pissed that you always got everything you wanted, just handed to you,I’d told him.For once, I wanted to see you fight for something you wanted.
I’d pushed Dane hard on the fact that he’d let Devi go, back in high school, just let her slip through his fingers. And that he was doing it all over again.
That he hadn’t fought for her all along.
Because I was a fighter; that was how I saw myself. Never mind that I’d never fought for any woman in my life.
I fought for everything else.
I created the fight, almost everywhere I went, even when there wasn’t one there.
And I did it with Jolie, seeing her as an opponent when she wasn’t one. When she didn’t call me after that night we spent together, four years ago… I just assumed the worst.
