“You’re here?”
Those dark eyes rolled in dramatic fashion. Yeah, Jac always had a larger-than-life edge to him. Strange, that Esh had forgotten. “She’s my sister. You think I’ll ever truly leave? Will you?”
“Fuck no,” came the immediate reply, and Jac nodded in ready approval.
Jac was relaxed in the chair, the lines and tenseness that had been constant on the man the last months of his life gone. He looked good, like he did before being Esh’s friend wasn’t enough, before he had to prove he was somehow better than the Cage King.
“I didn’t think you’d die.” The words released on quick breath, the utterance not planned yet inevitable. “I thought they’d hurt you, and I wanted them to.”
And maybe that was why he’d let Nalah go, why he didn’t run after her, because how could he love her, make love to her, create a family with her, when deep in his heart, he’d wanted her brother hurt. Hurt bad enough, become scarred enough, that Jac wouldn’t put them through any more shit.
Forget not interfering. That was why he hadn’t taken Jac’s place, and even as he said the bullshit excuse to Nalah, he’d known.
Jac laughed, and the sound was clean without any bitter taint. “That sounds like my son-of-a-bitch best friend.”
Esh gave a half laugh in response, not as unencumbered, but less pain than he was used to. “What the fuck else could I do? I had to get it through your fucking head to not start shit anymore. If I thought for one moment they’d kill you, I’d of been there. I’d of taken the spot.”
Jac shook his head. “Nah. Wasn’t your place, and I was wrong to put it on you. Everything that happened that night was on me, so don’t live with it anymore.”
“Kind of hard not to.”
Jac threw the chair pillow at his head. “My sister knows. She’s just stubborn about shit. Lucky you always could outwait her. How many damn times did I catch you here watching her and waiting for her to finish? Well, you waited until she looked up from her book, and after that you hustled her ass out in seconds flat.” The smile that followed had a hurt edge, the first showing of pain since he arrived. “Always hated that look. Do you know what it told me?”
“No.”
“Told me I was going to lose my sister and my best friend and be all alone. And it was right.” Jac rose and went to the astronomy section, the only section he ever looked at. It didn’t surprise Esh the first time Jac did it, not with the hours upon hours Jac spent looking at the stars. He’d read the titles, studied the pictures displayed on the covers that faced outward. Yet in all the years they went to the library, not once did Esh ever see Jac pull a book from the case.
“You always had us. No way we would have left you.”
“Wish I’d been strong enough to find something I could have given that look to.” His hand ghosted over a spine, but he didn’t grab the thick textbook. Instead he turned away. “You take care of my sister. That’s all I want now, and if you think you owe me anything, do that and we’re good.”
The walls rattled, and outside dogs barked. Jac’s voice became urgent. “Do what you came here to. Get her out of this.”
There was no time to speak the other thoughts that lay uneasy on his tongue. There was now only movement, the library falling apart and a graveyard, dark and dank with a sliver of moon for light and a lone headstone in jagged silhouette.
Nalah stood over it, her face tear-stained but no active tears. “It’s my fault.”
He came to stand beside her, and the fraction she shifted away cooled the fire inside him by several degrees. “It wasn’t.”
Her body was bent, sagging under imagined weight. “I keep thinking about all the decisions I made that led to this. I should have done so many things different.”
The inches between them might as well been miles. He was lost now, in a way he hadn’t been since she came back into his life. He didn’t know how to make things right, not with his own decisions mocking him. But that guilt was on him, not her. She’d always been the glue, strong and holding them together. She’d always fought to do things right. She didn’t deserve to take any of this weight. “You always did your best, Nalah. Jac and I, we saw that. It made our lives easy, cause we could trust you. Any decisions you made wrong, they were made by a kid. How the fuck can you blame a kid for not knowing what they were doing?”
She shook her head, her expression saying You just don’t get it. “Being a kid wasn’t an excuse. I’d have made all those same decisions if I was an adult. I’d probably make them now.”