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“We can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.”
I shake my head
I’d help it if I could…
And that’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it?
How can I prove them wrong…
If they’re right about me?
CHAPTERSIX
NOW
NOLAN
I’m an asshole.
It’s not news to me.
I’ve always been prickly and often too quick to judge. Quick to shut people down.
A therapist once told me it’s a defense mechanism from growing up the way I did, watching my old man struggle week to week to keep us afloat after Mom died.
That’s the kind of shit that sticks with you. It sours your perspective of the world, of people. Hardens you.
Seeing the way Pops poured his blood, sweat, and tears into his construction business, only for good ol’ gentrification to steal all his customers, stealing their homes, and filling it with wealthy, modern well-to-do’s who didn’t give a rat’s ass about hard working, blue-collared family men like my dad…
Yeah, it’s fucked.
How I ended up marrying into the kind of family that wouldn't have hesitated to put my dad out of a job beats the hell out of me.
Then again, Mel was always a different breed of rich. The kind that doesn’t hesitate to hand over a crisp one-hundred dollar bill to a homeless man, regardless of what he’d do with it. Hell, she’d give up her inheritance in a heartbeat if it meant solving world hunger.
She’s just that kind of person. One untainted by the poison of money. Something that’s harder and harder to come by these days, it would seem.
And my Pops loved her.
Still, I’m not too far up my own ass to overlook when I fucked up. And this afternoon, in group…
Well, I fucked up big time. I see that now.
Hell, I saw it the second Kevin halted my tirade and I came back to myself—back to this reality.
Whatever Skyler’s reasons are for being here are frankly none of my business. And therefore not up to me to judge.
I don’t even know what came over me. One second, we’re getting along and I’m sharing like we’re supposed to, and then the next I just…
Snapped.
All I could think was,How fucking dare this kid?
It was like the room faded, Skyler disappeared, and in his place was a culmination of all my deepest insecurities, twisted into something ugly.
Hell, he couldn’t even take a single damn iota of accountability when I pointed out his track marks.
The proof is in the pudding, kid.
