This has gone from a bad decision, to a worse mistake, to a goddamn disaster. I fucked up when I ignored my own rules and my own instincts that first night. There was one right move that night, and I didn’t take it. The part where I zigged when I should have zagged.
The part where I took her instead of putting a bullet in her.
The very idea of that now - after everything that’s happened, and after opening myself up in a way I literally never have - makes my skin crawl and my jaw clench tight with fury, but it doesn’t change where we are now.
Running out of road, and holding onto just enough rope to fucking hang ourselves with.
The car skids to a stop in the sandy lot next to the old lighthouse. The coast guard built a new one twenty miles east of here about thirty years ago, but I used to come to this one when the Gallagher’s brought us out here when we were kids. The parking lot’s barely a parking lot at this point - more sand than cement, and the old wood posts fence that used to line it and lead to the lighthouse are gnarled, weathered stumps - looking like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.
I kick my boots off and roll my jeans up by the car - me shedding my city-boy armor - before I trudge through the dunes towards the old rusted fence that’s supposed to keep people like me out of the general vicinity of the lighthouse.
Except people like me are pretty fucking bad at following the rules.
Clearly.
I’m desperately wishing that I’d had the foresight to bring a bottle of something with me when I stormed out of the house as I slump against the side of the building. My eyes narrow out on the dark crashing of the surf, my feet digging into the sand and my knees bent.
Hell, jeans, a t-shirt, camped out on the dunes next to this old place - this is basically the same image you’d have seen if you’d spotted me here twenty years ago. Fewer tattoos maybe - fewer scars. Less weight hanging off my shoulders.
I’ve been solving problems and fixing shit since even back then, but it’s only gotten harder and more real as I’ve gotten older.
Guess that’s how life is.
Except here I am the professional problem solver - the guy they call the fix-it man, and I can’t fix this. Because somehow, Sierra Hammond’s become an unfixable problem. She’s become a puzzle with no solution, and as I close my eyes and drop my head back against the lighthouse, I know damn well why.
…Because I don’t want to solve her. I don’t want to “fix” her, because the fucked-up truth is, deep down, she might not be a problem at all.
She might be the damn solution.
She might be the missing part of me that I cut out a long, long time ago. When I got hard, and cold, and calculating, because I had to, that part of me went away. When it was up to me to steal, borrow, and fight for food and money for my brothers and me after both our parents dipped out, something inside of me held up its fists. When I had to fight tooth and nail to keep our heads above the waters, I took the punches life had to give and spit back in its face.
When Sheila started to drift away and shut down - never telling me about the abuse and turning instead to the needle, I started to bruise and bleed.
The day when everything fell apart, I broke. The day they came to take my brother Gray to jail, and the same day Sheila died broken and alone on a flophouse mattress with a needle in her arm, a part of me scared over completely, and I’ve been a cold, calculating, machine-version of myself ever since.
Until about five days ago.
Until the too good, too innocent, too pure, too young, too nothing-I-should-have-a-single-thing-to-do with girl walked right up to me and kissed me.
Lips like whiskey and sin.
Eyes like the very ocean I’m looking at right now.
A touch that soothed the scars I’ve kept covered and hidden for fucking years.
I growl, squeezing my eyes shut and shaking my head.
This has to end. Kissing her that night was foolish. Taking her was a mistake. Keeping her was a disaster.
Falling for her was fatal, or at least very well could be.
And this ends right now. No more fucking around with this - no more bullshit, no more secrets and the lies. It’s time to own up to this. Hell, it’s time to get my head out of my ass and start to figure out how I’m going to fix this. And that starts with calling my brother, because family is nothing without openness, especially this one.
I take a deep breath, still wishing for that damn drink as I pull my cell phone out of my pocket.
“How’s the house?”
“Good.”
Liam ignores my sullen tone, or maybe he’s just used to it at this point and doesn’t immediately think something’s wrong when he hears it.
“Damn I miss that place,” he whistles.
“You should take Aela here sometime. She’s been here, what, once? When you two were like eleven?”