Chapter Forty
Killian
“Nice of you to stop by,” Jared said when he opened his apartment door, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“I’ve been busy,” I said, even though I didn’t feel I owed him an explanation. “Someone had to clean out my father’s house. I summoned the housecleaning fairies, but they didn’t come.”
He scowled at me. “Me and Ava have been taking care of him. He’s on a liquid diet. But maybe you already know that.”
I knew because Ava had told me. She’d laid into me for not ‘giving a shit about my own brother.’ So much for hating him. Ava had been by his side since she’d arrived at the hospital. Every time I saw her now, she burst into tears. Jared glanced at the suit bag I was carrying before he brushed past me. “He can text if he needs me. His sponsor, Tate, will be stopping by in an hour to check on him.” I was about to close the door when Jared turned and faced me. “What’s the deal, man? He needs you.”
I closed the door and locked the deadbolt, shutting out his face and his words. The deal was I hadn’t trusted myself to be alone with Connor. My moods had run the gamut this week. Angry. Hurt. Sad. Part of me wanted to rip him from limb to limb and vent my rage at his carelessness. His total disregard for anyone except himself. The other part of me wanted to make this better for him, protect him, help him heal. I’d been at war with myself and I still wasn’t sure which side was winning.
Taking a few deep breaths, my ribs screaming in protest, I climbed the stairs. I’d never been in Jared’s apartment. It was bigger than I’d expected, open and airy with dark hardwood floors and white walls. I laid the suit bag on the dark blue velvet sofa next to Connor and took a seat on a leather chair across from him. His face was swollen, mottled with greenish yellow bruises, his eyes bloodshot with dark circles underneath like he hadn’t slept all week. I averted my gaze. I couldn’t bear to see him like this. He pointed the remote at the TV and turned it off, plunging the room into silence.
“I brought you a suit, shirt, tie…for the funeral tomorrow.” I gestured to the bag next to him as if he couldn’t figure that out for himself. I glanced at the whiteboard and marker on the coffee table. “Can you talk?”
“Hurts,” he said, his voice raspier than usual. He wrote something on the whiteboard and held it up for me to see. I’m sorry.
Sorry wasn’t good enough. Not this time. “You lied to me. You put Eden in danger…” I stopped talking and tried to contain my anger. Tried to shove the memories of that night to the back of my head. But they kept replaying, like a movie on an endless loop. I could still smell the metallic tang of blood. Hear the bullets exploding. See the life drain out of that man’s eyes when I shot him. I killed a man. I watched my father die.
I wrapped an arm around my ribs to protect them. Breathing hurt. Thinking too much hurt even more.
“I need you to tell me what happened in Miami. No bullshitting me.”
He wrote something on the board and held it up. Got busted for weed and ecstasy. Cut a deal with the cops.
It didn’t surprise me, but I was disappointed my assumption had been correct. “You told me you were clean. You told me you hadn’t touched drugs since you left rehab. Talk to me. With words.”
“I didn’t do drugs,” he said, forcing the words out. He winced, and I knew it was painful for him, but right now, I didn’t give a shit. Because of his actions, too many people had suffered.
“How can you look me in the eye and continue lying to me?” I asked. “After everything that happened, you’re still fucking lying.”
He shook his head. “Not lying.”
Yeah, right, okay. He bought drugs, got busted, and they confiscated the drugs. But weed and ecstasy? Those weren’t even his drugs of choice. Maybe that was his idea of getting clean. Fuck if I knew. “Who were those guys who came to the house?”
“Don’t know. Never saw them.” He erased the board and wrote another note. I took it from him and read. The cops killed the drug dealer in Miami. Confiscated enough coke and weapons to grant me freedom. Told me I’d be safe. Nobody would come after me.
“Informants always pay the price. You should have known better. If you had told me the truth, I would have tried to help you. And I never would have let Eden stay in that house had I’d known. All of this, everything that happened, was because of your addiction. You didn’t give a fuck about anyone else. All you cared about was yourself. And scoring drugs.”
“No. You’ve got it wrong.”
“Tell me how I’ve got it wrong. Give me something. Anything,” I pleaded. I wanted him to make this better. Somehow. Some way. I needed him to redeem himself.
He swallowed, not meeting my eyes. He couldn’t give me what I so desperately wanted—a reason to believe in him. “You just need to trust me. I never meant to…hurt anyone. Or get you involved…”
“Trust you? I can’t trust you. And you did hurt people.”
I forced myself to look at him. Behind the bruises, I saw the little boy who’d tended to my wounds, tagged behind me everywhere I went. The sweet, innocent boy who I would have done anything to protect. Chased away the monsters when he’d had bad dreams. Relegated him to the closet to keep him out of harm’s way. I saw Connor at sixteen, so grateful I’d moved him out of our father’s house. He used to clean the apartment and cook our dinner because I was training six hours a day and bartending at nights to pay the bills. He’d gotten a part-time job at the grocery store, stocking shelves so he could help with expenses. In the winter, Connor would buy scarves and blankets for the homeless people because he couldn’t bear to see anyone suffer. He’d filled the pages of his sketchbooks with their faces. Where was that boy? The artist who portrayed human suffering and turned the ugly into something beautiful and dignified? The dreamer who wanted to make the world a better place?
Across from me sat a man I barely recognized. A liar. An addict. A person whose actions had caused so much damage I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. I had never been a saint, but I would never look my brother in the eye and feed him lies. He was asking for my blind faith, but I couldn’t give it to him. For the first time in my life, I needed to turn my back on him. Maybe all these years I’d been enabling him. Cleaning up his messes. Making his bad choices go away.
“You’re on your own, Connor. You’ll have plenty of money in your account. Seamus left us everything.” I wrote the dollar amount on the whiteboard and tossed it on the coffee table. He didn’t even glance at it. He’d never cared about money, only the drugs he could buy with it. “You can take off and go wherever the hell you want. I’m done cleaning up your messes. Straighten out your own fucking life.”
I walked away, that vice on my heart squeezing and twisting. It hurt so fucking much I could barely breathe. Why, Connor? Why did you ruin us? Growing up, all we’d had was each other and I’d always thought if we stuck together through thick and thin, we’d come out on the other side okay. I’d been wrong.
I’d lost everything and everyone I had ever loved. My mother. My career. Johnny. My brother. And I was losing Eden. Jack Madley had been right. I needed to get my shit together. I needed to let her go. It was the best thing I could do for her. I had nothing to offer her except a shitload of baggage. I felt like I was sinking under the weight of it all.
* * *
I pointed to my empty glass. Keep ‘em coming, mate. The bartender poured me another whiskey. He should save himself the trouble and just leave the bottle. We’d bonded. His name was Ian. Or Liam. Or Craig. Whatever. The bar was dark. The customers were scarce. And the whiskey was flowing. I had everything I needed. The door opened, and Louis walked in.
He pulled up a stool next to me. “Drowning your sorrows at an Irish pub?”
“They’ve got whiskey. And Flogging Molly,” I pointed out. “Gotta love Flogging Molly.”
“You about to break into an Irish jig? Going back to your roots?”
I snorted and took a swig of my drink. “I’m a tree without roots. What does that make me?”
“A dead log,” Louis said. I laughed so hard my eyes watered. That was the beauty of alcohol. I was too numb to feel the pain in my ribs. Louis shook his head. “I came to haul your ass home.”
I didn’t have a home. “It’s early. Drink with me.”
“It’s two-thirty in the morning and you’ve got a funeral tomorrow.”
“Don’t piss on my parade.” I flagged down my buddy. Ian-Liam-Craig. Louis ordered a beer. “Make it two beers and two more whiskeys,” I told the bartender.
Louis muttered something under his breath. I might have caught the word asshole, but it didn’t stop him from drinking the beer and the whiskey when it was served. I hoisted my glass in the air and sang the final chorus of ‘The Cradle of Humankind.’ Two guys at the end of the bar lifted their beers and toasted me. I clinked my glass against Louis’s glass. “Bottoms up.” I knocked back my whiskey and slammed the empty glass on the bar. I made a twirling motion with my hand. Ian-Liam-Craig got what I was saying. Refills at the ready. This man would be getting a big-ass tip.
“Eden’s worried about you,” Louis said. Why was he always bursting my little happy bubble? Couldn’t he see I was a man on a mission? The goal: get so shit-faced I wouldn’t remember Eden’s name. Her voice. Her smile. Her…everything. “She said you didn’t answer her calls today.”
I guzzled some beer. “Better this way. I’m no good for her.”
“Wallowing in self-pity too. You’re going all out tonight.”
“Go big or go home. Have some peanuts.” I pushed the bowl in front of him. Normally I wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole. All those germy hands digging in there. But tonight, the peanuts had been my dinner and they’d tasted just fine.
Louis and I ate peanuts and chased our beer with whiskey. Thankfully, he did more drinking than talking, which I appreciated. At four in the morning, they turned on the lights in the bar and kicked us out. We stumbled back to Louis’s place and I crashed on his sofa. I slept with one foot on the floor to stop the room from spinning.
This was going to be my life now. A life without sunshine.