Page 124 of Caution to the Wind
“Even if the people you wronged don’t want you to be sorry any longer?”
I paused, breath shivering in my lungs. “Maybe especially then.”
“For what it’s worth, I forgive you. In my mind, there wasn’t even anythingtoforgive. You and Dad made your choices that night, and even though neither of you told me exactly what went down, I know you both well enough to know your motivations were always pure.”
I snorted. “Pure stupidity, maybe.”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “I know a little something about making dumb choices. I think I’ll hate myself for being so stupid for the rest of my life, but do you want to know the little truth that makes it possible for me to live with myself every day? I know I’m a good person. I know I might have acted foolishly, but my reasons for doing so came from a good place. A loving place. S-Seth Linley tried to take my goodness from me, but I know…” She sucked in a wavering breath, and I squeezed her hand tightly. “I know he could never do that. He took a lot from me, but he can’t have that. So I might be scarred and broken and so fucking scared, Rocky, all the time, but I refuse to believe that I’m not worthy of love and happiness. It’s hard to believe sometimes, but even on days when I want to die, I cling to that knowledge. I deserve happiness, no matter what’s happened to me. No matter the choices I made. And so do you.”
“Glory,” I whispered through my too-tight throat. “You can hardly equate our circumstances.”
“No,” she agreed. “But I can equate our hearts. I know you, and I see you, and I love you, okay? I needed you here with me because I’ve never had to hide from you. Not the good, the bad, or the ugly, and it’s because I know you’d rather die than see me unhappy for even a second. It’s because I know even when I’m at my worst, you think it’s some kind of privilege I’ve shared that with you.”
I couldn’t breathe, so I tucked my nose into her hair and held her closer. “Yeah.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Well, I feel the same way about you. So try, for me, to connect a little? To open your heart and see what you could build here if you gave it a real chance. The people here are more like you than you realize. All these characters society has deemed mad, bad, and dangerous to know? Well, they’d all die for each other, too.”
“What does that say about us, huh? That we measure love by our willingness to die for each other?” I teased.
Cleo blinked those huge green-grey eyes solemnly. “I think it means we’ve been through hell, and we know what it’s like to die inside, so we know exactly what price we’d pay for the people we care about.”
“Damn, you’re wise,” I said, half joking and half in awe.
She wrinkled her nose, her freckles stark against her pallour. “I think I’ve spent too much time with the Garros. Seriously, they have crazy biker wisdom.”
We giggled.
“You know, I never wonder about who my bio dad was,” Cleo mused as she traced the Chinesefung wongphoenix tattoo on my forearm. “Mum never spoke about him, and I was pretty young when Henning entered the picture and completely changed our lives. I couldn’t imagine––wouldn’t want to imagine––my life without him.
“Dad’s given me a good life,” she admitted. “Sometimes, I wish he could see that. He takes everything on his shoulders, and he’s a man, not a titan. He deserves some peace and happiness of his own. A-and, well, he was always more settled when you were around back in the day.”
My laughter burst out of me unbidden. “You’re kidding, right? I think I only ever heard him raise his voice around me, even back then.”
“Yeah, but he usually keeps everything inside. It’s good for him to get it out, you know? Even now, I think he was slowly driving himself mad with guilt over what happened to me. You’ve been a good distraction.” When I snorted, she tugged at my hand until I looked at her. “I think he’s being mean to you as some kind of test. Like if he can drive you away, it means he was right, and you were never worth the trouble. But if you stay…if you stay, Mei, I think we could all be happy again. I think you could make a home here with us.”
She hesitated, biting her plump lower lip, her gaze falling to my throat. Though my bruises had basically faded and the pain in my ribs was only a dull throb if I moved too fast the wrong way, I knew she imagined the dark marks I’d had there. There had been hickeys from Axe-Man’s savage mouth, but they’d been kind of disguised by the ring of finger mark bruises around my throat, too. Or so I’d thought. By the way Cleo was staring at me now with those sad, astute eyes, I wondered if I was only fooling myself.
My heart started hammering into my rib cage, rattling the breath in my lungs. Cleo had never known how I felt about her dad. It had never been an appropriate crush, let alone a realistic one, so I hadn’t wanted to burden our relationship with it. Now, I wondered if I hadn’t been wrong to talk about my feelings with her. She’d always been so much smarter than me in the ways of the heart.
“I think you could make each other happy,” she finished with a little shrug like she was frustrated by her own words. “I’ve thought so for a long time.”
“Glory…”
“No, let’s not get into it. I don’t know what’s between you, what was or what is now, but I know what Isee. And you don’t hurt the way you and Dad have been hurting for eight years without a whole lot of love missing from your life. I just wanted to mention it because, well, because if he ever forgives you, forgives himself, then nothing would make me happier, you understand?”
I could feel my blood rushing hot and hard through my veins, frenzied by the hope her words had stirred in the bottom of my gut where I thought I’d lain those childish fantasies to rest. Even though I didn’t respond, not with a word or a nod, Cleo seemed satisfied by my paralysis as if it was answer enough. She settled against the cushions again and sighed with a little smile as she closed her eyes.
Well, it was nice she could be so fucking Zen about the whole thing.
I guess she didn’t understand that, to me, the idea that Axe-Man might actually forgive me was even more detrimental to my mental health than maintaining the status quo of his hatred. Because if I actually had a shot at meaning something to him, I didn’t think I could survive ever losing it again. And given my history of unluckiness in love, I thought it might be easier not to try.
After the last episode finished,I helped a very sleepy Cleo to her room, staying long enough to stroke her hair back and watch as she immediately fell into a deep sleep. Later, I might wake up to the sound of horrific screaming and sobs, Cleo woken by the past staking her through nightmares. I’d lie awake and listen to Axe-Man’s feet thump softly across the second-story hallway and down the stairs. Sometimes I went to the top of the case so I could listen to the low murmur of his voice as he soothed his daughter by choice back to sleep.
Tonight, I thought she might sleep through, though. She’d actually eaten most of the dinner Lin made and enough snacks to put a grown man into a deep coma. I’d noticed too she seemed to sleep better when Kodiak took her for their “nature adventures.” She told me they didn’t speak much on those outings, but she always returned with actual colour in her cheeks, and her manic movements were usually more subdued.
So I wasn’t expecting any drama for the evening. Not with Cleo asleep and Axe-Man out at The Fallen owned strip club, The Wet Lotus. I was planning to try my hand at drawing a new storyboard for the next novel I was writing and turning in only when exhaustion forced me under.
But when I opened the door to the guest room, Axe-Man was sitting on the edge of the bed with my handpainted Chinese jewellery box open on the floor beside him, the contents spilled across the carpet, and one held in his four-fingered left hand.