go there and figure it out yourself. You’re unpredictable, and while I love you like a brother and missed the fucking shit out of you, I’m also operating very strategically with my life. I can’t have bad attention, or broken bones in my business. Nothing that’ll get the cops sniffing around.”
Thames took the paper from him, pocketing it straight away. “There’ll be no broken bones, Jem.” It came out like an oath. A promise that held weight somehow even though Conor Thames was the last person you would ever believe to keep his hands to himself in a fit of rage.
Jem didn’t look sceptical. He stared hard at Thames for a long moment, assessing him like he couldn’t figure him out. “What the fuck happened in there, Thames? You’re all wrong.”
He didn’t look away. He let Jem in, let him see the human wreckage staring back at him. Finally, he answered, “I’m not all wrong, Jem. I’m just dead.”
Jem’s eyes dimmed. Sadness replaced his curiosity. He stiffened a single nod, refusing to answer or else the emotion might escape him. Like Thames, Jem too seemed altered. He seemed…far too feeling than before.
“Give me a hint of what to expect,” Thames urged quietly. “Don’t let me walk into something I’m not prepared for.”
“It isn’t that,” Jem tried to explain, sympathetically. “It’s that a lot of time’s gone by and things aren’t the way they used to be. She’s not the Charlotte you left behind.”
“Is she…happy?”
He frowned. “Charlotte is a lot of things, Thames.”
He waited for Jem to elaborate. He sensed Jem had gotten very close to Charlotte, and he felt relief at that. He had trusted Jem explicitly.
“I did my best with Charlotte,” he finally said, as if he needed to explain himself. His words came out in a rush, a light flush accompanying his cheeks. “She’s stubborn, Thames. She’s emotional and impulsive, and I’m not going to lie, buddy, she was also the best fucking thing to happen to me when you went away. And her daughter…your daughter…Thames, you burned Charlotte by shutting the two of them out. Penny is the most beautiful little girl I have ever seen, and you should have been there to see it, bud. That’s my two cents, and I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’ve kept this buried in my chest for years now and, fuck, it needed to be said. You have a lot to make up for.”
Thames felt like his chest was caving in all over again. “Does she hate me?”
Charlotte could have moved on. She could have had more kids. She could have been with anyone, and none of that would have hurt him more than if she hated him.
Jem snorted, looking at him like he was crazy. “Charlotte could never hate you, but…I’m pleading for you to be cautious. You were a wrecking ball back in the day, and she’s reached a level of stability that I don’t want to see jeopardized because you’ve come back into the picture still angry at the world.”
“I’m not angry at the world, Jem, I’m just angry at myself.”
There it was again; Jem was trying to figure him out, trying to understand what the fuck had happened to Thames to make him this…altered.
Suddenly needing a moment, Thames turned the stiff chair around and collapsed into it. Elbows propped on his knees, he ran his hands over his head, closing his eyes to temporarily block out his fresh surroundings. It was sensory overload. He was so used to blank walls and grey colours. He would have been staring into the darkness this very moment in his prison cell, mute and cold.
Still, it was all he knew for so long.
The faces he was used to seeing, he wouldn’t see anymore.
The abrupt change was slowly sinking into him.
“Dominic slept in a cell not far from me,” he said quietly, deep in thought. “He needed me, and I abandoned him.”
He didn’t want to look up to see Jem’s reaction. Jem carried the guilt when it came to Dominic. Thames heard him shuffle around, but he offered no response. Maybe the guilt had muted him.
“Jem…” he pressed, needing some sort of acknowledgement. “He’s alone in there. No crew. Nothing.”
“I’m going to make it up to him,” Jem promised, his voice eerily monotone. “I haven’t forgotten him. I send him money every month. Did he tell you that?”
“It isn’t enough.”
“What do you mean? How expensive is shit in commissary?”
Thames forced himself to look up, giving Jem a