“Only sixty dollars? That’s all, bitch?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “I-I’m sorry. That’s all I have. That’s—”
“Give me your car keys.” The end of the barrel grazed my cheek, and I nearly vomited. “Now.”
Falling forward, I dragged my hand across the pavement, skimming over the tiny, plastic bottle of perfume and the beaded coin purse my vovó gave me for Christmas a couple of years back, before she passed away. My fingers brushed over the thin chain of the necklace I’d stashed in my purse—the gift I hadn’t given Brock. I found the keys, snatching them off the ground. With a shaky hand and my heart pounding against my ribs, I lifted them up to the man. “H-Here.”
He ripped the keys out of my hand and started to back up rapidly, the gun still pointed in my direction. I didn’t dare move. I held my breath, praying that he’d leave, that I would walk away—
Several things happened next.
The door to the bar opened and music poured out into the balmy night air. The man cursed. A car horn blew and there was a deafening pop. Red hot pain flashed through my entire body, lasting a second—only a second.
Then there was nothing.
Brock’s tortured gaze held mine now, and I knew . . . I knew he was reliving the same night. “You shouldn’t have even been there, Jillian. You think I don’t remember the events of that entire weekend? I was supposed to take you out to celebrate my big comeback.” He barked out a harsh, biting laugh. “I was planning to. I really was, but I got there . . . and I have no real good excuse, and trust me, I’ve searched for one. Over and over, I tried to explain why I chose to stay there and let you walk out, why I didn’t follow you. No reason I had is good enough—will ever be good enough.”
Brock laid the board down and thrust his hand through his hair. The soft ends flopped forward. “I know I never said these things to you afterward. I should’ve. You didn’t want me saying anything to your parents about why you were there, and I honored that, but I got to tell you that shit ate at me. I was out there, fighting matches, winning money, and seeing your dad, after everything he’d done for me, was still doing for me, and you were lying in that hospital bed, because I was a fucking jackass. I let you down and that’s something I can never forgive—”
“Don’t say that,” I pleaded, realizing I couldn’t bear to hear him say he couldn’t ever forgive himself for it. “Yes. You ditched me. That hurt—that really hurt, but you’re not responsible for what happened to me. I don’t blame you for it.”
“How can you not?” he asked, voice as sharp as ice.
There was a point in my life I had. That point hadn’t lasted long. I didn’t blame him. He hadn’t been the guy hooked on heroin, desperate for money and tweaking like crazy. I couldn’t hold him responsible for that and I didn’t care if some people thought I should. But I hadn’t let go of all the hurt from that night, and obviously neither had he.
Then it hit me with the force of a speeding semi-truck.
How were we still living like this?
I was afraid of getting hurt again. He was carrying the guilt for not returning my feelings when I was a teenager, and feeling responsible for me . . . for me getting shot, something he hadn’t done? Neither of us was really living.
What in the actual fuck had we been doing?
“We need to let it go,” I whispered, and that moment, the very second I said those words, they rang true with a kind of clarity that was earth-shattering.
Brock needed to move on from that night, and God’s honest truth, so did I, because I hadn’t. For six years, I really hadn’t let any of it go. And how could I move on, be truly happy and gain my life back, if I didn’t?
How could it really work between Brock and me if we both didn’t?
I sucked in a soft breath.
In a daze, I lifted my hands to my face, pressing one finger against the deep indent in my cheek. You’d have no idea that a bullet had entered my left cheek and then went straight through to the other side of my mouth, somehow not touching my tongue, the roof or the floor of my mouth, before blowing through my right jaw, practically exploding it to smithereens, and in the process, taking out some of the necessary parts needed for hearing in my right ear as it exited.
God knows I was so damn lucky.
Besides not being severely disfigured, I’d actually survived. I barely remembered being conscious after being shot. There were flickers of memories—of panic and not being able to breathe, of the metallic taste of blood as it was pouring down my throat, out of my mouth and nose as I heard yelling—screaming. That was all I remembered until I woke up in the hospital with a tracheostomy tube, unable to talk at the time or hear out of my right ear.
It had been a long recovery from that point.
I remained under observation for nine weeks, reentering the hospital multiple times for the reconstruction parts. It had taken a year for me to leave home and come back to Shepherdstown.
And it had taken six years to fully acknowledge that we both were still standing in Mona’s, stuck in that moment of me walking away and him not following. It was a moment that had lasted too long.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
Wordlessly, I stared at him, realizing we were on the cusp of something I had never believed possible. It was like walking up to the cliff’s edge and staring down. Could I take that leap again? I wanted to try, because I was tired of denying how I felt when I looked at him. I was tired of fighting it. I wanted . . .”I want . . .”