He took a step closer, frowning when he saw the fresh tears in my eyes. “You’re doing just fine.”
“No,” I disagreed, sniffing lightly. “You know something, Jem? You were right, you know, that night I asked you for help. You said he’d come back and he wouldn’t be the same, that…the Conor I knew will be dead and gone.”
Jem’s frown deepened. “I was being a fuckhead, Char. I wish I hadn’t said those things.”
“But you were right. I’m trying to bring him back, I am, but…I don’t know if I’m doing it right. Then there you are, doing it effortlessly. He looked so happy today. I wish he was like that all the time, but I see it when he doesn’t think I’m looking. I see him hurting. He’s not the same.”
Jem sighed, mulling my words over with a faraway look. “My dad was in and out of prison. I didn’t have much of a relationship with him. Every time he went away, he’d come back more fucked up than he was before. Conor would say the same about his old man. Prison alters you. Sometimes it even kills you. It’s partly why I walk the line. I can’t imagine being locked up and feeling powerless.”
“I can’t, either.”
“Conor was stronger that way. He seemed adaptable, you know? But he was never put away so long, and I knew this time it would be different.”
“But,” he added, bringing his focus back to me, “the best of Conor is still in him. It really is. I see it, too, when he looks at you and you don’t know it. He reveres you. He wants your love, your acceptance, and he’s scared. I see that, too. I see his fear. He doesn’t want to lose you, even after knowing you waited for him this whole time. He’s vulnerable. Still that lost boy in him shining through.”
“How do I help him?”
“You are helping him. Every day he wakes up to you next to him, he’s winning. You’re extraordinary, Charlotte. I mean that.” Jem looked warmly at me, letting his walls down, showing me how genuine he was. “You see the best in everyone, and that gives people strength.”
In all his greasy state, I went over to him and gave him a big hug. “Thanks, Jem. You have no idea how much I needed to hear that.”
Today had been emotional for me. I didn’t feel like I’d made the most of my day because of the way I behaved. I regretted storming into Locke’s office and putting him on the spot. I hated thinking in that moment he might not think I would be there for him if he needed me. There was nothing extraordinary about the way I conducted myself.
And Conor had needed my patience this morning. I had fled the room the second I saw the old anger inside him creep back. Deep inside me, I knew that was what bothered me the most. I had spent too much time obsessed about keeping the violent parts of him out. It was wrong because he needed to be allowed to be human, and he needed my patience.
“A man doesn’t need his woman the most when he’s great,” Billy whispered as I walked out of the room and down the hallway, his presence following me. “A man needs his woman the most when he’s at his worst.”
I looked over my shoulder at him, smiling kindly at my ghost.
I promised myself I wouldn’t let Conor down again.
Thames
His endorphins hadn’t stopped soaring since he cracked the hood of this car and began tearing it apart. A rush he hadn’t felt in years ran through him, making the tips of his fingers shake – but in a good way, the kind of way that was akin to fucking Charlotte.
His heart was thudding inside his chest as he remembered the process of restoring a car to pristine condition. It was like riding a bike. The second he started, pulling it apart from carb to pan, all of it came back to him and he felt…elated.
Cars weren’t made to last forever. Breathing new life into the vehicle consisted of many steps, and it eased him following every step to a tee. Rebuilding it, one component at a time, required patience and diligence. It needed his complete attention, and being immersed in a project like that meant blocking out the world, and god, there was no better way to do it.