Chapter Twenty-Two #3
That hazel stare was like a lifeboat in a sea of drowning swimmers, and this was the way it had always been between them.
For some reason, this former human, this half-breed cousin of Wrath’s, this Dhestroyer prophecy realized, had the ability to see through him in ways that nobody else did. Even his shellan.
Or maybe Jane saw the same things, but didn’t push in the same way.
“How long until you were back in the war camp,” the cop repeated. “Reliving what you saw… what you did. You might as well talk it out. Better than friggin’ crying, right?”
“I was not crying.”
“Tearing up, then. And if you want to keep debating what happened in front of everybody else, fine, but it’s a weak deflection and you know it.”
“Fuck you.” V closed his eyes. “And how did you know.”
“It’s the nature of being a parent. You put yourself where they are, so you can do better by them. And sometimes, when that happens, the past ends up eating you alive.”
Popping his lids back open, V had to clear his throat. “Yeah, that’s about right.”
Well, check him out. He’d spent the first part of knowing Al pretending it was all about the job, and harnessing the kid’s incredible intelligence and facility with programming for the better of the species.
And then the second half had been about studiously not acknowledging that he and Jane had taken the male in—and not just in a housing, roof-over-the-head sense.
And now he was here. Admitting a truth that terrified him.
Allhan was his son. Even if that sphinx of a male didn’t think of V as his father.
“Look, all that matters is that I’m going to do right by him.
” V turned his hand-rolled around and stared at the unlit tip.
“He’s not going to have to go through the horror of war alone.
And if I occasionally stroll down memory lane myself, who cares?
It’s not like I haven’t thought about my résumé from time to time. ”
When Butch didn’t respond, he cocked a brow. “So now that we’ve had that breakthrough, can we go back to the meeting? Yay, for profound shit—”
“There’s another part of it, V.”
Taking his Bic out, he impatiently flicked the wheel over and over again, the spark flaring and dying on repeat. “No, there is not.”
“Yes, there is.” Butch put a hand on V’s shoulder. “Don’t you wish someone had been there for you.”
V felt a sheen of sweat break out across his brow. It was like the cop had peeled all of his skin off on a oner, and then promptly gone to work filleting his muscles off his bones.
That Boston-accented voice was relentless: “Don’t you wish someone older, and stronger, and harder, had protected you. Taken care of you. Let you rest as you recovered, knowing that you were safe and not alone.”
A sensation like a car had been parked on his chest made breathing impossible.
“Fuck you,” V whispered in what sounded like, even to his own ears, a young’s voice.
As everything went blurry, Butch took the Bic out of V’s hand, struck the wheel, and held up a flame at the hand-rolled. “We can’t go back, but fuck. Our kids can make us see shit all over again, until it feels like history’s nightmare is real.”
The only reason V didn’t walk out was because he knew the cop had suffered like this, too. Had been scarred. Had been alone with his own torturous thoughts of the past.
Butch had been the last to see his sister Janie, through the back window of a car, as those boys had driven her off to be gang-raped and murdered.
Lowering his eyes, V tilted his head and brought the cigarette to the flame. It was nearly impossible to draw in a sufficient inhale to make the lighting happen. When he exhaled because there was no more room in his lungs, he was surprised to see a plume of smoke come out.
Killing the flame, Butch put the lighter back in V’s hand. “We see too much of our younger selves in the lives of our children. And yes, it makes us do better if we aren’t pieces of shit. But, God, it fucking hurts.”
Later, V would try to piece out what happened next. Who stepped into who. What else was said—was there anything? Did he speak? Did Butch?
All he knew was that his best friend was holding him.
As he started to weep.
For the young he had once been… and what had been done to him.
Also for a truth that he had refused to think about, and certainly would not be sharing with anybody, ever. Not Butch, not Jane. Because it was too terrifying to contemplate.
Who was he to try to take care of any young male? He’d had no fucking example about how to be a father.
Especially to someone who’d already been deserted in this cold, cruel world.
“I got you,” Butch said roughly. “Just let it out and we never have to speak about this again.”
All V could do was shake his head. The cop knew exactly what he had to hear, and through his swirling sadness, he thought of that first night they’d met, back at Darius’s.
There were strangers you were supposed to have in your life. The way you tripped over them was always coincidental, and the years they stayed proved that family wasn’t about the blood. It was about the bond.
The shit was written in the stars, really.