“I could have done that with you.”
“No, you couldn’t have.”
“You know, you keep saying ‘no.’ Everything I say, you say ‘no.’ Like you know me better than me. Like you can make the decisions about what’s best for me.”
“I do know you better than you, and it killed, Lyla, but knowin’ that, knowin’ what you needed, I had to make the decision that was best for you.”
I leaned my torso back and crossed my arms. “Well, obviously you felt that way because that’s what you did. I didn’t agree but,” I shrugged, “no matter. No matter then and it doesn’t matter now. Though I will take issue with how much it killed you, Preacher. It took you maybe two minutes to gut me, looking tan and healthy, before you walked away. No drama, which was probably nice, not to have to recover from that as well. But not a tear shed either. All our time together. All we shared. All we gave each other. Two minutes, you rip us apart, you walk away, you don’t look back and you’re gone.”
“You cannot think for a second that didn’t kill me,” he said low.
“I saw what I saw,” I replied.
“Lyla—”
“You told my grandfather I’d always have respect from you, and I do not call that respect. Not what happened in Seattle. Definitely not what happened in Portland. And absolutely not what happened on that beach.”
He didn’t pause even a single beat before he returned, “I think, Audie knew what was goin’ down, he might not have championed the way I did it, but he would have agreed with the fact it had to be done.”
Those words just did not just come out of his mouth.
“I cannot believe you,” I hissed.
“It’s true, cher,” he said gently.
All right.
Enough.
“You didn’t trust me,” I whispered.
He shut his mouth.
“You didn’t trust me to be strong enough to find my way. You didn’t trust me to be strong enough to look after you when your world caught fire. Can you even begin to imagine the pain I felt, first, not knowing what was going on with you? And when I found out, getting up every day knowing you’d be trying to find some way to get through the day without me at your side, and then going to bed every night, not sleeping, because I was in agony, wondering if you got through the day without me at your side.”
“Baby, everything that happened to you, from the minute I walked up to you in that lounge chair by Amber’s pool, to not seein’ it through when you blew me off because I’d fucked up before your mom died, to Josh mouthin’ off and sayin’ shit that dogged you everywhere you went, to you not bein’ able to hold down a job or take a minute and get to know yourself is…”
He leaned toward me and thumped his own chest, he did it with his fist, and he did it way better than me.
“On me.”
“Preacher,” I whispered, about to tell him it was not.
But I didn’t get the words out.
“You’re absolutely correct. I promised your grandfather. I promised Audie. I promised him I would take care of you and you’re snortin’ coke and poppin’ pills and you don’t got a job and you haven’t found your passion and you’re not gonna find it walkin’ in the huge shadow I cast over everything. And that journalist was gonna publish and the lid was gonna be blown off and I was terrified that was gonna happen before the cops got their shit together, found Baptiste, got what they needed to nail it down. And what?”
He leaned back and kept going.
“I drag you along with that too? I know you know because you faced it when you went into that courthouse, and maybe you saw on TV how much worse it was for me, but you were inside, Lyla. You were in the courthouse. So you didn’t see. They were so up in my shit, I could barely wade through the motherfuckers shovin’ their mics in my face, wanting to know how I felt about the fact my parents murdered my baby brother. And I’d already dragged you through cycle after cycle of shit. I’m also supposed to drag you through that?”
I opened my mouth.
He wasn’t done.
He also crossed his arms on his chest and declared, “So, yeah. Fuck yeah. I can imagine your pain because I felt it. I was right there with you, baby. But I’ll take that, cher, again and again, rather than havin’ to watch you go through that with me. And to drag you along with what came after.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make,” I said quietly.
“Well, obviously, you’re wrong about that because it was.”
“I needed you, Preacher.”
“That isn’t true, and I know that shit because you told me that shit. You said it straight up and I’ll never forget it. You said you didn’t need me to live your life and you were right.” He threw his arms out again to indicate our surroundings. “You didn’t need me. And that’s good. That’s healthy. But more, you didn’t need to drown in my shit.”
“Yes, I said that, but I also said I needed you. And I thought you got me but it’s clear you didn’t get me.”
“Lyla,” he said slowly, obviously losing patience, “you are not seein’ this from my perspective.”
“And you aren’t seeing it from mine.”
“That’s the only thing I can see,” he retorted.
“They were all gone,” I said. “All of them. Except you.”
His body gave a jerk.
“You don’t know, and I hate it that you don’t know because I’ll take what I’ve got and what I lost rather than what you had but let me explain it to you. You do not just,” I lifted my hand and snapped my fingers, “get over losing the foundation that lay under you your whole life and move on. They were all gone. Mom. Gram. Gramps. Everyone who kept me safe in an unsafe world. You’re right. Gramps died locked in the prison of his mind, but somewhere in there, I know he felt all right. He felt good. At least about me. He did because he left me to you.”
His throat convulsed with his swallow.
“Of course I was lost,” I continued. “Of course I was floundering. I’d sustained blow after blow after blow. But you were my foundation, Preacher. You were the only thing solid in my life. They were all gone, but before that, Gramps sat at our kitchen table with a euchre hand in his fingers and watched you form a shield between me and my dad, and it became you. He left me to you. That’s what I meant about needing you. I don’t need you to exist. I don’t need you to breathe. I don’t need you to survive. I just needed you to be there. Because I loved you and my grandfather trusted you and I knew down to my bones I’d be okay after they were gone because the one solid thing I had in my life I’d have the whole of my life. And that was you. And then you left me standing on a fucking beach.”
“Baby,” he groaned.
I saw his pain.
I felt his pain.
But I could not be swayed by that pain.
“And Josh could say whatever he wanted, and I could have flashbulbs popping and a thousand mics in my face and a hundred pundits discussing what I was saying about health to the girls of today that I had a big ass if I had you. And having you means having all of you so when you’re working with cops to get your brother justice and journalists are leaning on you to tell stories you don’t want told and you’re fighting with your brothers in the band, I need to be there for you. But you took that away. You got ugly to drive a wedge between us and you made a decision for the both of us and neither of those things are okay.”