Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 132437 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 441(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132437 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 441(@300wpm)
“This is not about Al.”
A wave went through V, tripping all kinds of blood-pressure and heart-rate fault lines. In the aftermath, he had to remind himself that he was fundamentally rational. That this emotional trampoline bullshit was, and always had been, a non-starter for him.
“Look.” He put out his gloved hand. “This is not a good time for you and me to play verbal pickleball—”
The cop came over, that stocky body moving with banked power, the creaking of his holsters, the scent of gun oil and cologne, achingly familiar.
The brother reached up, and V felt blunt fingers sweep under one of his eyes and then the other. At least there was no show-and-tell with the moisture.
Butch wiped his hand on the seat of his combat pants. “Just answer me one thing.”
“What.”
“How long did it take for you to think about the war camp.”
V narrowed his stare again. “What the fuck are you talking about.”
“Last night, after you were sure Al was okay, how long did it take you to go back to when you were his age… and where you were when you were just out of your transition.”
About ten minutes, he thought.
Fine, maybe five.
“You know what.” V crossed his own arms over his chest. “How ’bout we go back in there with the King. If my eyes are watering, it’s the injury. My fucking nose was broken—”
“This is just you and me here, V. Nobody else. Not even Jane. Just answer the question.”
That hazel stare was like a lifeboat in a sea of drowning swimmers, and this was the way it had always been between them. For some reason, this former human, this half-breed cousin of Wrath’s, this Dhestroyer prophecy realized, had the ability to see through him in ways that nobody else did. Even his shellan.
Or maybe Jane saw the same things, but didn’t push in the same way.
“How long until you were back in the war camp,” the cop repeated. “Reliving what you saw… what you did. You might as well talk it out. Better than friggin’ crying, right?”
“I was not crying.”
“Tearing up, then. And if you want to keep debating what happened in front of everybody else, fine, but it’s a weak deflection and you know it.”
“Fuck you.” V closed his eyes. “And how did you know.”
“It’s the nature of being a parent. You put yourself where they are, so you can do better by them. And sometimes, when that happens, the past ends up eating you alive.”
Popping his lids back open, V had to clear his throat. “Yeah, that’s about right.”
Well, check him out. He’d spent the first part of knowing Al pretending it was all about the job, and harnessing the kid’s incredible intelligence and facility with programming for the better of the species. And then the second half had been about studiously not acknowledging that he and Jane had taken the male in—and not just in a housing, roof-over-the-head sense.
And now he was here. Admitting a truth that terrified him.
Allhan was his son. Even if that sphinx of a male didn’t think of V as his father.
“Look, all that matters is that I’m going to do right by him.” V turned his hand-rolled around and stared at the unlit tip. “He’s not going to have to go through the horror of war alone. And if I occasionally stroll down memory lane myself, who cares? It’s not like I haven’t thought about my résumé from time to time.”
When Butch didn’t respond, he cocked a brow. “So now that we’ve had that breakthrough, can we go back to the meeting? Yay, for profound shit—”
“There’s another part of it, V.”
Taking his Bic out, he impatiently flicked the wheel over and over again, the spark flaring and dying on repeat. “No, there is not.”
“Yes, there is.” Butch put a hand on V’s shoulder. “Don’t you wish someone had been there for you.”
V felt a sheen of sweat break out across his brow. It was like the cop had peeled all of his skin off on a oner, and then promptly gone to work filleting his muscles off his bones.
That Boston-accented voice was relentless: “Don’t you wish someone older, and stronger, and harder, had protected you. Taken care of you. Let you rest as you recovered, knowing that you were safe and not alone.”
A sensation like a car had been parked on his chest made breathing impossible.
“Fuck you,” V whispered in what sounded like, even to his own ears, a young’s voice.
As everything went blurry, Butch took the Bic out of V’s hand, struck the wheel, and held up a flame at the hand-rolled. “We can’t go back, but fuck. Our kids can make us see shit all over again, until it feels like history’s nightmare is real.”
The only reason V didn’t walk out was because he knew the cop had suffered like this, too. Had been scarred. Had been alone with his own torturous thoughts of the past.