“He was,” Conor agreed just then, turning his head in my direction. He still wasn’t meeting my eye, but his hands had dropped from his face and he was showing himself again.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, lips trembling now because I hated seeing him distraught. “I’ll be more mindful –”
“Stop saying sorry.”
“I’ll let you bring it to me when you’re ready, okay? I’ll –”
“They’re just initiation numbers,” he cut in, finally meeting my eye. “I was the 34th man initiated in the crew at the time.”
I went still, digesting that. “Is it a ranking then?”
“Not really, not unless you’re in the single digits, when the crew first began.”
I nodded slowly. “Like that jerk with the number 4?”
“Yeah.”
I frowned, feeling my stomach twist in knots as I reflected on his greasy smile. “He’s a bad guy.”
“He is.”
I nodded back, liking his honesty.
“But so am I,” he added, looking away from me. “I’m going to walk the line because I have you and Penny and I would rather die than be away from either of you for a night. But if I didn’t have you…I might have been like Holden, and that kind of scares me, wondering where my life would have gone not meeting you. Prison is funny. You think the torture is surviving fights or getting knocked about, but it’s not. The torture comes from being locked in your head all day, confronting shit you want buried. The shit you keep locked inside your chest in the dark is the scariest monster you ever have to come up against.”
“Still, Conor, you could have gradually faced it. Instead, you were forced to.” I kept my tone in check adding, “You wouldn’t have killed Billy if I wasn’t in your life. I did that to you, Conor. I brought my drama into your world. You were put away protecting me.”
He shook his head. “But I still got to have you on the other side, dove. Imagine a world where I’d gone to prison and came out with nothing. Or a world where I wouldn’t even know what having you felt like. No, no, that’s a harsher sentence than having served my time for Billy’s death, trauma and all.”
Did he really mean that?
I clasped my hands together tightly, trying to keep my emotions in check. My heart was doing somersaults in my chest. I could never have imagined him saying those words to me, or for even feeling that strongly about it.
He took my hand into his, and I squeezed him tightly. He brought me into his chest, wrapping his arms around my shoulders, pressing me against his warmth.
He held me for a while, kissing me tenderly, and then suddenly everything was alright again. He was holding me, and he wasn’t upset anymore.
It made me feel so vulnerable because there was a lot about our relationship I needed to grow from. I’d been so young when he left, and I hadn’t grown relationship-wise without him. I felt like I was navigating this shit in the dark, and I was anxious making mistakes because I wasn’t used to them. I’d played it safe. Lived a rigid routine day in, day out.
“Did Penny tell you about her day?” he then asked, swiftly steering the conversation away.
“I didn’t pay too much attention,” I admitted.
“How come?”
“Everyone’s curious about you. Had a couple parents asking how you were doing.”
He chuckled, and that beautiful sound broke the tension. “Nosy bastards. Nothing’s changed around here.”
I smiled. “I don’t think you realize the mark you left behind here.”
“It was a grisly crime.”
“Not just the crime. The town remembers who you were, Conor.”
“Ah, right.”
“You were the bad boy.”
“I was an arrogant bully,” he corrected, shaking his head. “I was stupid and young and I thought I knew it all.”
“Sounds like you really sorted some things out.”
He laughed again at my dry tone. “If you couldn’t tell, time was on my side.”
Yeah, I couldn’t take that comment lightly. My heart pinched in sadness. I’d been miserable, but at least I was surrounded by people who cared.
Who did Conor have in there?
No one.
“I was also thinking about Reid,” I blurted out suddenly.
He went still, his smile vanishing into a thin line. “Why?”
With a deep breath, I looked down at his chest, tracing the collar of his shirt as I said, “Because he’s Kane’s stepdad, and he’s trying to make peace for the sake of the kids.”
When I risked a glance at his face, I noticed his confusion clearing. “That’s why