Page 204

ME

I need you to put someone else on the next two stops.

When I hit send, I throw my phone across the room, pissed that this is what the fuck it’s come to.

How did we even get here?

Almost immediately, the buzz from my phone lights with a phone call from the corner of my living room. With a huff, I move to pick it up, already knowing it’s my brother on the other end.

“Care to explain what the fuck you’re talking about?” Duke’s voice is quiet, like he’s somewhere secret.

“I need a few more days off. Find someone else to take my spot for the next two stops,” I repeat, not wanting to crack my scarred shell to my big brother.

“You just had almost a month off? Why the hell would you need another couple of days?”

“Duke, I just can’t,” I say after a quiet moment.

There’s nothing but air between us, heaviness overflowing from my end.

“You really don’t think you can do it?”

“Not right now.”

A rough palm falls down my face as I finally sit on the couch, struggling to find comfort anywhere.

“She said you were upset, but I didn’t think meeting him would get to you like this.”

I wince. “It’s not him, it’s me.”

“You’re nothing like him, Jett.”

I settle the phone on my shoulder, preparing for a lecture that will do nothing to unthaw the numbness of my heart.

“What if I’m everything like him?” I challenge.

I realize I’m reacting out of pain, but I can’t help myself. After thirty-one years of abandonment and suppressed emotions, how could it be possible to digest this in one day? On top of that, how is it that I’m supposed to comprehend that who he is not only hurt me but who I love.

I feel fucking awful about it.

“What if you’re running away from the very thing that’ll make you whole?”

I say nothing.

“I’ve had a love you I wanted, but been too afraid to chase after it. For some people, Jett, love isn’t enough. It’s the only commonality, the only thing holding them to their person. You and Fia don’t have that. You don’t lack the friendship, nor the compassion. The life you just found out about has not broken you. The hardest kind of love is the one with no foundation; the one you have to let go of and see if they come back. Your father let you go, and until you found him, had no intention of coming back, but the girl you’re running from ran right into you. You didn’t wait two years just to let her go.”

I take in everything my brother is saying. Acknowledgment seats itself right at the entrance of my heart.

Even knowing he’s probably right, I still can’t see past the pain.

“I’ll take you off the trip, but Jett?”

“What?” I clip, ready to get off the phone and drown myself in a bottle of booze.

“No victory was ever won without a fight.”

CHAPTER 61

FIA