“You’re breaking my heart,” Kieran said with a tone that suggested he couldn’t care less about what I wanted and what I didn’t. He also ignored my condolences, just like I expected. “I can’t let you out. I’m dealing with a war of a sort. This is my organization now and you are not leaving it.”
“I was never a part of it.”
Kieran cocked his head sideways. “Are you sure about that?”
“Kieran,” the doctor addressed him. “You need men that are loyal to the family. People that are willing to die for you, or else you will die because of them. He is a liability,” he pointed at me.
“You know I can’t just let him go. This is not a gym membership. People can’t just come and leave whenever they feel like it,” he said with a tone I had never heard him use before. A tone that didn’t suit a twenty-year-old. I couldn’t figure out if he was impersonating his late father or he had been preparing for this to happen eventually and just stepped into Patrick Hayes’s shoes.
“You know what you have to do,” the doctor said and glanced down to Kieran’s waist. That was the moment I saw there was a gun tucked in his dress pants. It wasn’t the first time he had one on him, but it was the first time I felt he might actually use it.
“Kill me if you have to,” I said and meant every word. “But I’m done. So you better get this over with.”
The doctor turned his back on me, waiting for Kieran to act.
“This is not how I expected this to go.” He pulled his gun out, but didn’t point it at me. Not yet at least. “This isn’t personal, you know. It just business. I can’t let people think I am to be manipulated.”
“Sure. It’s not like we were friends anyway. We just drank together in your father’s bar.”
A sly smiled formed on Kieran’s lips. He slowly approached me and stopped just a step away from me.
“I warned you,” he said and held the gun to my head. “There are no partners in this world. No friends. No one to truly count on but yourself.”
I closed my eyes and waited for it. Only silence followed his words. Then the pressure of the metal against my skull disappeared and my eyes flew open. Kieran leaned in.
“You are on your own. I won’t protect you and I will hunt you down if you decide to fuck me over.” The doctor released a disapproving breath and Kieran continued. “Shut up. You know I wasn’t even supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to be my father’s heir. Let Tyler leave.” Then he addressed me again. “Don’t make me regret this.”
Without another word he turned around and left. It took me a few moments, but I finally managed to ask.
“Am I really out?”
“He needs loyal men right now or he won’t be able to do what he has to. But mostly he gave you something that his father took from him a year ago.”
“What is that?’
“The right to make your own choice.”
The doctor gave me a pill bottle filled with painkillers and let me leave. I went straight to the bar. I didn’t have anything of value there, but since I was leaving that place behind for good, I wanted to check my office and the basement. Just in case.
The bar was closed, just as I thought. There was something shiny on my desk, that caught my eye all the way from the door. I couldn’t really miss it. It shone bright in orange, right in the middle of the dark grey and black interior.
I walked over and took the keychain, looking at it as if I saw it for the first time. In a way I did. I saw it for the first time since I found out I had feelings for Hannah Spencer.
Being the mess that I was, I had to find out I was in love with her the moment she decided she wanted nothing to do with me.
I took my keys and put them on the keychain, then walked out of that bar for very last time.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Tyler
Twelve days after I saw Hannah running up the stairs away from me, I was still a coward and continued to postpone the call I should have made the moment I got my phone back.
I spent a day or two debating what to tell her, to get her to listen to me. And everything seemed idiotic. Around day nine after the beating, I realized I was fucking it up even more by staying silent so long. But I still didn’t call.
Being alone with my thoughts reached a new level of unbearable, so I invested my free time into drinking in the nearest bar.
“What is that?” A female voice asked. It was coming from the woman sitting next to me at the bar counter one evening. I lifted the item I was holding up in the air.
“My keychain.”
That was the only explanation I offered. I wasn’t going to start telling a total stranger that it had been glued to my hand ever since I found it on the desk in my former office.
“It looks old,” she tried to maintain the conversation. “Why don’t you get a new one?”
Because I fucking want this one.
My phone lit up with a call. Clementine. I had started to dodge her calls again, after she yelled at me over the phone about Hannah. All I understood from her shouting was that Hannah kept everything incriminating a secret. Just like she kept the secret about our one-night stand five years ago.
The desire to be close to Hannah overwhelmed me, so I decided to take Clem’s call and devour the crumbs she would offer me. If any.
“Hey, little monster. What’s up?”
“I have news,” she said all businesslike. “You were right.”
“I have to disagree. I’m almost never right.”
She took a deep breath and exhaled, annoyed at my melodramatic behavior.
“We have known for a while now, but I was so mad at you, I couldn’t bring myself to call and tell you,” she paused. “It’s a girl.”
The world changed in that moment. I didn’t know how exactly, but I felt it change.
“It is?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I get girls. I can handle a girl.”
“You can piss a girl off, that’s for sure.” She didn’t mention Hannah, but it was in her tone. The inkling that hurt her best friend.
“I am in love with her.”
That was the first time I admitted it aloud. It felt right saying it, even though I should have probably said it to the person who stirred those feelings inside me.
“I don’t know how to respond to that.”
“Believe me. I know how you feel. I have been sitting on that revelation for a while now and still don’t know what to do with it.”
“Are you sure you’re in love with her?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you should tell her then.”
“She wouldn’t want to hear it.”
“You can turn things around.”
“I can’t.” Moreover, I didn’t think I deserved to. Hannah believed in me, she was actually the only person to believe in me, and yet I betrayed her trust. Knowingly.
“Of course you can. You just don’t want to try, because you are scared she will kick you to the curb.”
I contemplated on that one for a moment, then asked. “Did she tell you something that sounded like she might reconsider?”
“No. She said she was done with you forever.”