Twenty-seven

Twenty-seven

Jude

Dom and Brigid don’t leave for their honeymoon until the Wednesday after the wedding. So Dom and Row both come with me to the police station. In a rare turn of events, Dom hasn’t pressured me to talk anymore about Grant.

“You should be with Brigid,” I say as he sits quietly next to me while we wait for someone to come in and talk to us.

“You and Max shouldn’t be giving each other so much tongue in public, but you don’t hear me telling you not to do it.”

Rowan snorts.

I roll my eyes. “I’m serious, Dom.”

“I want to be here with you,” he replies, his voice full of sincerity. “You shouldn’t be doing this alone.”

I stare down at my fingers, knotted nervously in my lap. “I thought maybe you guys were here to make sure I didn’t back out.”

His lips pull up in a smile. “Well, that too.”

Silence fills the room again, and I try to focus on my breathing. Talking to Max helped a lot. Telling Rowan and Dom the truth helped a lot. But I’m not sure that talking to the police is going to help the same way.

“I don’t know about this.” The words are out of me before I can stop them. I expect Dom to get angry, especially since he’s the one who pushed me for years to tell the truth, but he surprises me.

“The choice is yours,” he says. “I think there’s a reason you came here today. I think you’re starting to accept that what happened is wrong, and that Grant should be held accountable for it. But if you’re not ready, you’re not ready.”

“Who are you? Where’s my brother?”

He cuts me a look before his eyes soften. “The stuff you told us the other night…it made me realize I should’ve let you come to me on your own instead of pushing. I didn’t understand how bad things really were. And I’m sorry for the times when I said something that made you think you couldn’t talk to me about it.”

“You didn’t.” It’s not strictly the truth because he said a lot of shit. But it never made me feel like I couldn’t tell him. “I wasn’t ready to tell anyone. What Rowan said, about me not realizing that Grant and I didn’t actually have a relationship… No one ever made that clear. I know it seems like it should be a given, but it wasn’t. Not to me.”

“But you know it now, right?” Rowan asks. “You know that what went down between you and Grant, that’s on him.”

“I’m trying to believe that.” It’s the most honest thing I can say. It’s not like I can force myself to suddenly look at what Grant did as bad. On some level, I could recognize that it was awful, but I still have a hard time even thinking of it as assault. We all did what we had to in order to survive, or to keep each other alive. Like Dom taking Dad’s rage on himself. Like Rowan beating Grant almost to death. It’s our job to protect each other, and that’s what my time with Grant felt like.

Dom nudges my knee with his. “Whatever happens, it’ll be okay. You have us, all right?”

I nod. I don’t want to depend on them like that, but maybe that’s what they’re supposed to be there for.

***

When we’re done at the police station, I go see Max. He’s waiting outside his apartment building for me, and his eyes light up when he sees me.

“Hey.” He slides his arms around my waist and pulls me in for a kiss. “I missed you.”

“I saw you less than twenty-four hours ago.”

“I know. But it feels like a lot longer.” He steps away and takes my hand. “You want to talk about it?”

I shrug as we start down the busy sidewalk. “They think there’s a good chance we have a case. The footage from the security videos from the elevator and the alley were really good. I don’t know. It’s all kind of strange.”

He squeezes my hand. “I’m proud of you for going to the police. I can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been.”

“It helped to have Dom and Rowan there.” It’s weird how much I felt like a teen again around them. Even when we were fighting, even when Dom was pissed at me for not talking about Grant, I always knew they were safe. They’d never hurt me, no matter what I did. Being around them again, it’s felt like that. And I haven’t felt that kind of safety in a long time.

Max nods and allows silence to lapse between us when I don’t speak again. I don’t have anything else to say. A lot happened, and I talked about some really dark shit, and I want to leave it at the police station for now.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Max finally asks when we reach a black gate.

“Yeah, of course.” I’m grateful I met Max and that we have a bond and a relationship now, but I hate that he had to suffer through losing the first love of his life.

He leads me through the cemetery and stops at a beautiful marble headstone. It’s elegant and understated and makes it obvious how much Patrick was loved when he was here on earth.

Max kisses the tips of his fingers before pressing them to the headstone. “Patrick would’ve liked you.”

“Yeah?” I stare down at the headstone, at the young age Patrick was when he died. “I’m sorry he’s not here.”

“Yeah, me too.” His smile is sad, darkened by the years he spent without the man he loved. I don’t know how you come back from that.

Max squeezes my hand again, a little tighter this time. “Promise you won’t make fun?”

“I swear.”

He reaches up and runs a hand through my hair before kissing my forehead. “I feel like Patrick can hear me. And I just want him to know that I’m okay. I felt bad when we first met because I liked you so much. It almost scared me how quickly I wanted to be with you. I’ve never had that before. And part of me felt like maybe I was betraying Patrick by doing that.”

I stay silent but rub my thumb across the back of his hand. His eyes are open and filled with the kind of vulnerability I’m not sure I could ever show in public.

“Then I thought maybe it was okay since everything was just physical, and you made it clear that it would stay that way. And then you were so charming and funny, and you made me feel so good. Being with you made me realize that Patrick wouldn’t want me to be so fucking miserable. He’d be pissed if he knew what I’d been doing these last two years. If he knew I almost pushed you away because of the memory of him.”

“He sounds incredible,” I say softly.

“He was.” He smiles fondly at the name engraved on the headstone before looking at me. “You are too.”

I disagree, but I don’t say it.

“I want to be with you,” Max says. “But I can’t promise that I’ll stop missing him.”

“I would never ask you to.” I lift his hand and kiss his knuckles. “I would never expect you to either.”

“I know you wouldn’t. And I love you already for it.”

I flick my gaze up to meet his eyes. “We’re using that word already?”

He blushes. “Well, I mean, there are a lot of things I love about you. And with Patrick… Well, I just don’t want to miss the opportunity to tell you that.”

My skin warms. “There are a lot of things I love about you too. Some of them I feel like I shouldn’t say in a cemetery.”

He laughs, his eyes lighting up. Then he says, “I want a couple minutes alone with Patrick. If that’s okay.”

“Sure. I’ll wait by the gate.”

He gives me a soft smile and kisses my forehead again before letting me go.

I turn and head for the gate, giving Max as much space as possible. But I still turn to watch him. He looks even more beautiful in the light of the setting sun. I feel like I could watch him forever and still never be bored.

I’m too far away to hear what he’s saying, but I watch his lips move quickly. The bond they had when Patrick was alive is so obvious on Max’s face in that moment. And I wish I could’ve been there for him when all of that happened. But I love the man he is today, and I want to spend the foreseeable future showing him that.