Chapter Thirty-Six Tyler #2
“Let me go,” I croak, no longer able to maintain enough to explain myself or my exit, as fear begins to rattle off him.
“I see it, Tyler. I see your pain, and I heard every word between you that day.” The need to get to her besieges me as he continues uttering assurances. “I swear to you we will find a way to get you to her safely, we will,” he vows. “But at least talk it out with me. What is your plan?”
“By suggesting that there’s a plan, it’s clear you don’t understand shit. Hear me, I’m done with battle plans, maps, agendas, and people altogether. I’m fucking done.”
“Going to her without one is fucking suicide!” he shouts, his rattle expanding.
“I’m dead already,” I counter. “And have been since I buried her. But I’m not going to her with the intent to die.”
“But it will kill you, and you fucking know it! Let me help!”
“You make that call, T, you kill me!”
“Goddamnit, Tyler!”
“That’s exactly what I am, damned. It’s all I am now!” As he squares off with me, I decide to use what I can to manipulate him. It’s my fucking gift, knowing exactly how to destroy everyone in my life. “Why did I pick up my sword all those years ago for you?”
“We’ve already had this fucking fight,” he counters.
“Maybe, but it’s time you know that I regret it because the only thing I’ve ever gained from this worthless crusade is weight. The weight of your pathetic mistakes. Not to mention the cost of your ambition to save a world that, news flash, no longer wants to be saved.”
“Stop,” he shouts.
“Do you know why Dom was so fucked-up before he died?”
“Stop!” he roars, his paling complexion the reason I’ve never picked this fight.
“It’s because he knew our world was too infested with sickness to ever heal.
There is no peace, Tobias, or good against evil; there’s only evil now, and ignorance of it.
I’ve already wasted most of my life as Delphine’s soldier and my father’s Marine in a battle we can’t win.
I don’t owe you anything else. With the way things are now, we probably have a handful of years left before we fucking self-destruct. ”
He gapes at me, confounded by my admission. “You believe some of that. I’m terrified to know how much … You truly think we’re fighting a lost cause?”
“I don’t fucking know anymore,” I retort honestly, “but I don’t have much fight left.”
“I thought you wanted this, I—” he utters incredulously. “I didn’t know you were still in so much pain.”
“Yes, you did,” I scoff. “But like everyone else, after you decided the appropriate time had passed for concern, you clouded your eyes to spare yourself the guilt. I can’t and won’t blame you for that, but I just lost what was left of my fight, my fucking soul, when I hurt her. So, for the last time, let me go, T.”
“Please don’t ask this of me. I’m not like you, I have limits, Tyler! I’m not capable—”
“I’m not capable!” I shout. “I’m not fucking capable anymore since I sold my soul to protect you!”
He grips my collar with his fists as he presses in.
“The fucking strongest wing of the goddamned mob comes knocking literally at your fucking door, looking like Larissa did or not, feeling as good as she did or not, and tells you they’ve been watching you for close to a decade after you kill one of theirs, you do not and cannot fucking trust them! Stop blaming yourself!”
“I should have known!”
“Yeah, well, even the most infallible of men falter. You got this one wrong, but we were all convinced.”
“Because I convinced you!”
“Don’t give yourself so much credit, brother. Your Freudian shit doesn’t work on me, and we’re not idiot fucking savants you can manipulate on a whim,” he dismisses. “No one can blame you for—”
“She can!”
“She loves you!” He tightens his grip, his knuckles pressing into my jaw. “She’ll forgive you!”
“You don’t know what you’re saying!” I shout. “Do you have any idea what I did to her to protect you!?” I jerk my chin. “No, you don’t, because you want the result of the war, but you don’t want to know how your soldier got you that victory!”
Guilt ripples over his features as I sink between his fists. “I’m so sorry, Tyler,” he croaks. “Please, tell me how to help.”
“Let me go to her,” I rasp out. “She deserves to hear the truth from me.”
“You don’t get to die to give it to her!”
“That’s not your call. Get the fuck out of my way, T!”
“You’re asking me to stand back and watch you die! I’m not the man you are! No one is! Not even Dominic. But even he had the good sense to be selfish once in a while, and he did fucking die a martyr!”
He stares back at me, shocked by his own admission as it echoes through the garage and between us.
“And there it is,” I utter, “that’s all this is about, and has been since Dom died.
Our collective fear of that same pain, which, ironically, is a consequence of our chosen fucking life path.
” I lift my chin. “And do you know who I’ve become because of that fear?
A hypocrite and coward,” I grind out. “I hurt her for fear of feeling anything close to what I did for Delphine. And now? I have no fucking idea what I feel because I stopped myself from allowing it. Truth be told, that resilience you all found—have—isn’t there. I’m broken, T.”
“You’re feeling for the first time in years,” he argues. “Please … just let yourself level out a little longer.”
When he reads my reply, he releases me abruptly.
I see it the second his anger takes over as he rushes me but stops himself, instead driving his fist into the back window of my SUV.
Seizing the opportunity, I instantly grip his injured hand and squeeze, using the seconds it buys to slip behind the wheel.
Seeing his fuckup after I lock myself inside, he recovers by pounding the glass opposite me, roaring my name as I turn the ignition.
Forcing him back while I peel out, as I cut the wheel, I catch sight of him doubling over in my rearview.
Throat burning at the state of him, I floor the gas, refusing the inclination to double back and protect him, sealing that door behind me.
No longer Delphine’s bred soldier nor my father’s Marine, nor servant to the ink.
As I speed into the other side, I’m nothing more than a man who wants one thing—a moment of honesty beyond the secrets that have weighed him down.
Secrets that have barricaded him from the most basic version of himself.
A man who’ll trade all he’s sacrificed for a genuine moment with the woman who deserves it—with the man she unearthed.
Just fucking one.