out of Atlantic City,” I said. “I was his only witness, so he dumped me in a place where I knew no one and where no one knew us. If he could have gotten me to drop out of high school, he would have. But graduating was my only stipulation. Everything else he wanted from me, I would do.”
I ended by telling Garin about the financials and how I cleaned Anthony’s money and all the assets he had paid for over the years, including my business, both houses, and the cars. And about the safe that was in my closet, only a few feet from us.
“I don’t know how much is in there,” I said, grinding my toes into the carpet. “I don’t have the code, and I’ve never seen inside. He doesn’t allow me to, and honestly, I don’t want to.”
He hadn’t said a word since I’d mentioned Anthony’s name. He hadn’t moved. The silence should have worried me, and it did, but there was so much relief, too. The anxiety and dread and guilt I had been holding in for twelve years had spilled out of me. Garin now knew it all—the reason I had treated him so badly in that alley, why things had ended between us before they ever really began, why I had left Atlantic City.
“I’m not trying to justify any of this,” I added, squeezing my knees into my chest, tucking my chin between them. “I should have told you; there’s no excuse for that. All I can say is, he’s my brother. I’ll never be able to fully explain the kind of loyalty I felt to him. You know I wasn’t close to my mom, and he was the only other family I had, despite how he treated me. All the threats and the intimidation.”
Still, he said nothing.
“I know what happened to Billy was because of me. My silence is the reason he’s dead. That’s something I have to live with for the rest of my life—however short my life is going to be now. But there are no more secrets. I’ve told you everything.”
Several seconds passed before he said, “You didn’t kill Paulie; Anthony did. And he killed Billy, too.” His tone was deep, but he didn’t snap at me. If anything, he sounded sympathetic.
“But, Garin—”
“Don’t put that on yourself.”
He stood from the bed and walked over to the corner. My eyes followed him the entire way. They didn’t warn me; they didn’t make me fear the closeness between us. When he reached me, he put his hand out for me to grab.
“Come here,” he said.
I clasped my fingers around his and followed him to the bed where I sat next to him. My mind quickly brought me back to that night in his room when he had done almost the same thing. But, here, Garin didn’t say another word.
The desire to touch him was unbearable, so I placed my fingers on his shoulder, and I waited for him to push them off. When he didn’t, I slowly moved up to his face and ran my fingers over his cheek. If this was going to be the last time, I wanted to memorize the feel of his skin—the soft areas and the ones that were rough.
“Garin,” I whispered, my palms now cupping his cheeks, “I’ve loved you my entire life. Leaving you was torture. I wanted to be with you. I wanted to give myself to you. I wanted to move to Vegas with you and never let you go. Getting in Anthony’s car to drive to Florida…”
I remembered the tears I had cried the whole way. I remembered the verbal abuse and the threats Anthony had spewed at me.
“It was just awful.” The pain was coming through in my voice. “I never stopped thinking about you. I looked you up on social media. I followed your life as much as I could from a distance. And then seeing you again at Billy’s funeral, those feelings resurfaced. They never went away. Never. But there was so much guilt. I knew when we were kissing at the bar that I could never be what you wanted while I held in this secret and lied to you. I didn’t deserve you. But that didn’t stop me from wanting more from you.”
I suddenly felt how clammy my hands were. “I know there are consequences to what I did. I’ve known that all along. If I worked for the bosses, they would kill me for lying