Page 104 of Emmett

And I might even invite all of these people to do so with me.

I find Emmett’s friend seated on one of the stools at the bar, and I carefully approach her, dropping my forearm onto the top of it. “Can I get you something stronger?” I ask, gesturing toward the glass of water in front of her.

“Oh, no, I don’t drink,” she tells me with a shake of her head, tucking her hair behind her ear. “But thank you.” An uncomfortable silence hangs between us while she spins her glass against the bar top, not making eye contact with me. “This is a good start,” she finally says, and I arch a brow in response. “It’s easy to tell people you’re sorry; that’s justwords. The effort to show you mean it is harder. Not many people are willing to do that.”

Dropping onto the stool next to her, I wave a hand at the bartender. “What might the over-under be on forgiveness?”

“Depends on who you want it from,” she shrugs. “Other people, seventy-thirty. Yourself…I think that’s up to you. Do you think what you did was forgivable?”

“No,” I answer with a shake of my head.

“Then try anyway.” As I pull my drink to my lips, she says, “I don’t like people who hurt my boys, and you have, in one way or another, hurtallof my boys. But Emmett seems lighter when you’re around, and so do you. So…” She stands, picking up her glass. “Take that however you will.”

I tap my fingers along the side of my glass as I take another sip of the liquor inside. There have only been a handful of times in my life in which I’ve felt remorse; the first time that I kissed a boy, the one and only time that I tried to force myself to have sex with a woman, the night that I said those things to Emmett, and though I wouldn’t count it as an adult, the time that I called my father a buffoon under my breath was enough to send me into confession.

Being awake for the first time in more than twenty years, finally dropping the all-too-heavy masks that I’ve relied on for too long, I’ve been hit with a barrage of regrets and things that I feel genuine remorse for. I was truthful when I told the girl that I don’t feel the things that I’ve done are forgivable. Fowler didn’t have to instruct me to pay for the counseling of my former employees – after speaking with them, I would have offered to, regardless.

They were right; I’d been a monster.

FORTY-ONE

Emmett

April 12th

My oxygen is nearly cut off when Davis swings his arm around my neck, squeezing me tightly. “Iwasgonna jump on ya,” he drawls, taking a spot next to me at the bar, “thought I might break you, though.”

“You can take a shot with me,” I laugh.

“Oh, hell yeah.” He uses two fingers to flag down the bartender and order a round of shots – tequila, of course – and we clink our glasses together when they arrive. His hand finds the back of my neck and he holds onto it with a firm grip. “Don’t try to skip twenty-seven, ya little shit, you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

We throw our shots back and the liquor burns on the way down. Davis shakes his head with a satisfied exhale while I grimace at the flavor and set my glass down on the bar top. I never have been a big tequila guy, but I don’t mind shooting it when ‘big brother’ Davis is out.

“Can you try? With Nash?” He curls his lip and gives me the same exact look that he used to give me when I was a kid and he’d tell me ‘you’re ridin’ my nerves, Hoss.’ “Your face is so goddamn loud,” I laugh.

“I don’t like him.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I’m nevergonnalike him.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“He fucked with Sophia’s life.”

“He saved mine,” I counter with a shrug, “and he’s still trying to.”

I regret it almost the second that it comes out of my mouth, because Eric Davis is a lot of things, but invincible isn’t one of them. We still haven’t really talked about what I did and we may never. When he called to yell at me for the letter I’d written him, it was also the first time since I’ve known him that he’d ever hung up on me. Davis doesn’t handle heavy things well when it comes to the people he cares about, and he tends to carry guilt for things that aren’t his fault, even if he’ll never admit that. I know that a part of him blames himself for taking me out drinking, and probably for not pushing me harder when I didn’t want to talk, but he doesn’t understand how much he helped me that night.

That wasn’t a fair comment for me to make to him, and I knew that. The way that the muscle rolls across his jaw and he looks away from me makes me wish that I could pull the words back in and swallow them.

Flagging the bartender down, he orders another round of shots, sliding one over to me when they’re poured. I clink my glass against his in a similar fashion as with our last round, and we down the tequila together.

Davis’s fist pounds against the bar top for a few seconds too long before he finally turns to me, his knuckles turning white. “Heeverpulls some shit with you…”

“I know.”