Chapter 12 #2
Westin’s covering her left hand with her right, but after a second, she separates them, and that’s when I see the ring. It’s not a diamond. It’s blue, so that’s, what? Sapphire?
It’s pretty, and the cut makes it very obvious what kind of ring it is. I have no idea how I feel about that. Westin thinks I don’t like her boyfriend, and that’s the furthest thing from the truth.
It’s just hard to live with the constant reminder about how I fucking failed him.
“So. This happened today?” I ask.
She swallows heavily, and then the two of them walk over and drop down on the couch, leaving me with the recliner that has the busted springs.
I sit on the edge and wait as they have a full conversation with just their facial expressions.
“Guys?”
Westin turns to me. “He proposed a couple weeks ago.”
I blink for several seconds. “And you’re just telling me now? Who else knows?” I brace myself for her to say everyone. For her to crush me by telling me I wasn’t worth the same as everyone else was.
“This guy at the coffee shop,” she says. “My new best friend.”
My brow furrows. “Your…new best friend?”
“Never mind. It’s not important.” She waves me off with an impatient hand. “We haven’t told anyone. Henry wanted to make sure you knew first, since you don’t really love the idea that we’re together, and—”
“Can I have a moment?” I blurt.
Westin startles, then nods. “Yeah. Come on, babe, we can—”
“With Henry.”
They both freeze. Westin looks at her boyfriend—no, her fiancé—in slight panic. “Um…”
He reaches for her hand and squeezes it. “It’s fine.”
“But—”
“It’s fine,” I repeat. I meet her gaze, then his. “I promise. It’s fine.”
She hesitates, then pulls her phone out of her pocket. “I’m going to call Starr and Meadow. They’re next on the list.” Her tone tells me not to fuck this up, and I hope I won’t.
I just need to clear the air because I’m tired of them walking on eggshells around me.
Henry and I watch her leave, and when the door shuts, I stand up and take the cushion on the very edge of the couch, leaving Henry enough space to get up and walk off if he hates what I have to say.
His right leg starts to spasm, and he presses down on it hard until it stops.
“I don’t dislike you,” I say when I have his attention again. Might as well jump in because the bush to beat around has been burned to ashes by this point. “I hate myself for fucking things up with Jimmy, and I totally understand that you blame me for it.”
He winces at my stepdad’s name, and I get it because sometimes, so do I. But his expression gives way to something like confusion. “Wait. How did you fuck up?”
“I should have moved faster. I should have gone out there sooner. Maybe if I had, you wouldn’t—”
“No. Don’t.” He sounds a little angry, and he puffs out a hard sigh. “You were what, seventeen?”
“Almost a grown man—”
“A fucking teenager,” he snaps. “It wasn’t your job to stop him. He was twice your size and high as fuck on uppers. What did you think you were going to do?”
I swallow heavily. “I don’t know, but—”
“Is this why you’ve hated me for all these years? For being in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
I want the earth to swallow me up because this is my fault. My inability to meet his gaze has given him and Westin all the wrong ideas. “I never hated you.”
He scoffs. “Look. You’ve made it pretty obvious how you feel. You never come to our house. You never agree to hang out if I’m going to be there. I can learn to live with it, you know? But I don’t want West to lose you if she chooses to marry me.”
“Fuck,” I breathe out, shaking my head. I force myself to look into his eyes. “I swear to god I don’t hate you. I have tormented myself with guilt since all of that happened, and…I don’t know. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to handle you blaming me for what happened.”
He stares for a moment, then snorts. “I don’t blame you.
I never did. I fucking hate his guts, and sometimes I wish I could win the lottery so I could pay someone in prison to beat the fuck out of him until he can’t see straight…
” He trails off, his voice shaking, but there’s a tiny smile playing at the left side of his mouth.
“But I fantasize about that a lot less now that West and I are building a life together.” He stops and takes a breath.
“But I never blamed you. Or anyone in your family. That fucker made his choices, and now he’s paying for them. ”
My brow furrows. “If you didn’t blame any of us, why did you stop West from spending time with you in rehab?”
Henry’s eyes go heavy-lidded. “I didn’t want her to see me like that.
I was so pissed off—and so much worse off than I am now.
And she was so young, and her heart was broken.
I think she knew her dad wasn’t a good guy, but I have a feeling that because of you—because of the way you protected her—she had no idea what he was capable of until he went after me.
I didn’t want to be the reason she was in more pain. ”
God, this man is too good for any of us, and he probably knows that. But if anyone deserves his love, it’s my sister.
I take in a deep breath and let it out. “I’m happy for you two. And I couldn’t ask for a better brother-in-law.”
When I meet his gaze, he looks lighter. He’s smiling, his eyes bright with his joy, which dims after a second.
“I thought you blamed me,” he says. “I thought you blamed me because I got involved. I told him to stop screaming at your mom and threatened to call the cops, and that was when he lost it. And when I was in the hospital, I heard he was going to jail, and the girls got sent away, and your mom disappeared. That was all my fault too, all because I thought I was a big man at fifteen and wanted to run my mouth.”
I burst into laughter. I can’t help it. “Henry, fuck’s sake. You stood up to a fucking sociopath who was hurting his wife when no one else did, and—Christ, you were a kid too!”
He huffs and shrugs. “I guess we’ve both been wrong for a long time.”