meant.
Mutt scampered along at my heels and I helped Chase back into bed as we returned to his room.
"Rick's right to hate us, isn't he?" he murmured as I headed to his nightstand to get his pain pills from the drawer, knowing he wouldn't have taken them without me here.
"Maybe," I said in a low tone, a frown pinching my brow as I held the pills out for Chase and his lips parted obligingly. "Or maybe I'm the one you should all hate after all. It all comes back to me in the end, doesn't it? Rick went down for killing Axel, you were all forced into the Crew for helping me cover it up. Whatever way you look at it, without me in the picture, things could have been a lot better for all of you."
Chase frowned as I held the glass of water to his lips, swallowing the pills for me before I placed the glass back on his nightstand.
"Without you in the picture, I don't think any of us ever would have gotten a taste of happiness, little one," Chase said, taking hold of my wrist to keep me there beside him.
I sighed, leaning in to place a kiss on his cheek and lingering with my lips against his skin for a moment as my eyes fell closed and I breathed him in.
"Even poison can taste sweet at first," I said in a low voice. "But it will still kill you in the end."
I pushed upright again and backed away from him, trying not to feel the slice of pain in my heart as he looked at me like he wanted me to stay. Because he was better off without me. They all were.
The problem was, I was too selfish to let them go.
I rode in the truck beside my dad, feeling like a sixteen-year-old who’d just been grounded. Luther was quiet, I was quiet. And I could feel our shared pain rolling between us in the silence. I didn’t want to acknowledge it and clearly he didn’t either, but something had to be said. It had to be. Because now I knew what had happened to my brother in prison, I felt like I was gonna throw up or destroy something.
“He thought I did that to him.” Luther punctured the quiet at last and my chest twisted sharply. For all the things I’d thought Maverick hated our dad for, it wasn’t this. I’d never even considered that he’d been harbouring something like that. Sure, I figured prison had been bad for him, had changed him. But this? Never…
I ran a palm over my face and tried to contain the raging beast rising to the edges of my flesh.
“No wonder he hates you,” I muttered.
Luther’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, the trident he had inked along his thumb turning nearly white with how hard he was gripping it. “I should never have sent him down for Axel. It was only meant to be a couple of years in juvie to straighten him out, show him the consequences of him going against my word when he tried to find Rogue, but then he wouldn’t respond when I tried to get him to file an appeal, let himself be packed off to state prison out of sheer stubbornness.”
“Maybe if you didn’t treat us like members of your Crew and send your goddamn son to prison, this wouldn’t have happened,” I snapped, the rage in me boiling over.
“But you were my Crew after that night. You initiated, wet your hands in blood for the Harlequins,” he barked back. “If I’d showed lenience to him, my men would have lost faith in me, you must know that more than anyone now that you’re in a position of power yourself, kid.”
“Don’t call me kid,” I snarled. “And maybe I have done things your way for a long time when it comes to my family, but maybe I’m starting to see that your way just pushes them further and further away from me. You know what JJ said to me the other day? That I’m like you. And that’s the last thing I ever wanted to be.”
“All I ever tried to do was protect you,” he snapped.
“If you think sending Maverick to prison was protecting him then you’ve got a twisted idea of what being a father looks like.”
“And what would you know about that, huh?” he growled. “It ain’t easy ruling the Harlequins and raising two boys with equally rebellious souls.