“Baby girl, this pains me. I feel guilty as shit right now. You might be able to forget, or try to, but I can’t. I know what last night has cost you and I can’t sit back knowing you are in pain.” He shakes his head, his blue eyes losing that bright shine. “I should have known, but . . . fuck, Iz, I didn’t ever know him as Axel.” He pauses again. Whether he is going for dramatic flair or just trying to figure out the best way to piss me off, I don’t know, but right when I get ready to freak the fuck out on him, he continues. “I have only ever known him as Reid. When we met at basic, he was H. Reid, and from then on, we only ever called him Reid, Axel . . . Fuck, baby girl, but he was never Axel. When we first got out and he started up his security gig, that was the only other time I have ever heard him refer to himself as anything other than Reid, and I promise you this—it was not Axel.”
Why is this so important? If I didn’t care so much about my friendship with Greg, I would fucking kill him. Go all crazy white girl on his ass. “Holt, right?” I laugh without humor. “He always hated that name. Said it reminded him of his old man,” I mumble, back to picking at the invisible lint. “Greg, can we please, please not do this right now?”
He looks at me, assessing for a while, taking me in, and once again trying to figure out how to weigh his words. “Iz, we are fucking doing this. I won’t let you sit here and fester in your hurt. Not when I can fix it. Not when I have the power to do something this time.” Hard and spitting. No argument. His tone leaves no room for wiggling. He’s settled in and ready to go at it.
Stubborn fucking ass. We really are too much alike sometimes.
“I’m fine, really. I just need to process,” I lie. He knows I’m lying; I can see it in his face. He might have come in ready to play, but he didn’t have this hardness about his eyes at first. My lying just confirmed his thoughts that I’m not handling this well.
“You aren’t fine, baby girl. Far from it, and if you expect me to sit here and buy that plate of shit you are insisting on dishing up, you’re out of your fucking mind. You forget I know you. That play won’t work with me.”
“Greg, seriously?” I screech. “Are you fucking serious right now? I am not trying to serve you some shit. I just don’t want to go there. It really is just as simple as that. I have no hidden motive here. Just give me a goddamn break. You know . . . You fucking know what he meant to me. Could you just give me a minute to, I don’t know, process this shit? Dead, G. He has been dead for twelve years and all of a sudden he isn’t. That isn’t something I can just wake up and deal with.” I can tell I struck a nerve and I might feel bad if I wasn’t so pissed off. He isn’t letting me figure this out. He isn’t letting me think. I just want a second, just a fucking second to wrap my head around this colossal mindfuck.
He looks a little more understanding after my outburst—not by much—but I can see that he is trying hard to see this from my shoes. “I’ll give you today, Izzy, but hear me this. We will be talking about this. No pushing it away, no locking this in tight. The can has been opened, and try as you might, there is no way you’re getting those worms back in.” He squeezes my leg and stands, leveling me with one more serious look before he turns to stomp heavily out of my room, firmly snapping the door shut behind him.
Well, that went well.
I know he is right. I do. I have to deal with this. I might not want to, and it isn’t going to be pretty, but I have to face this. With everything else going on, it isn’t something I even want on my radar, but it’s there. I’ll deal with it, but on my terms, and it will not be today.
I lie back down and roll onto my side facing the big picture window, looking up into the bright, cloudless Georgia sky. What a fucked-up mess. I still have to deal with Brandon, the divorce—or actually the lack of one—and his continued reminders that he is in my life and knows how to reach me . . . how to hurt me. Now I have to deal with Axel and a past I have been struggling to forget and move on from for almost half of my life. Oh how cruel fate is.
It really is funny sometimes how everything comes full circle. Just when you think your life is headed in one clear-cut direction, the light turns red and the turn signal comes on. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish my parents were still here, happily residing a few counties over in our old small three-bedroom ranch. If I hadn’t lost them, I never would have had Dee come into my life, and even though it doesn’t take away the pain of their loss, I have to consider myself lucky on some counts. Even through the dark times of my marriage, when our contact was few and far between, I always knew she was there and always would be.