Still his expression doesn’t change. “You have a point.”
“Yeah, I have a fucking point.” The sudden desire to cut through all the bullshit and find out the truth nearly overwhelms me. I cross my arms over my chest and stare. “I doubted the intel I had on you. It doesn’t make any fucking sense. We had plans together for this faction, for how to change things. When you betrayed me, I figured it was all bullshit, that you just wanted the power for yourself. But then I find out that you went ahead and implemented most of them. Why the fuck would you do that? Why would you do any of it?”
Eli sighs and looks away. “They were good plans.”
“Yeah, they were.” It feels like there’s a knife in my heart, the blade scraping against muscle and rib bones with every word. “Did you really think I had to be dead to make them happen?”
“I…” He scrubs a hand over his face. “The past is the past. We both have plenty of sins to lay at our feet. What the hell does rehashing this accomplish?”
I don’t know, but the fact he’s dodging this question means I need to hear the answer. “Indulge me.”
“Nothing I can say will make a difference, Abel. Not a single damn thing. If I tell you that I had no idea my father was going to set fire to the house, you won’t believe me. If I tell you that I lost no sleep over your father’s death but that I’m still haunted by those forty people, you’ll call me a liar.”
My chest feels too tight. For the first time since I walked back into his life, the polished edge of his voice is gone and there’s only raw pain there. The side of Eli that only I ever saw, the ragged edges and harsh truth. I don’t know if I can trust it, but fuck, I want to. “Is it the truth?”
“Would you believe it if I said it was?”
I don’t know. I’ve spent eight years being driven by Eli’s betrayal. His old man didn’t surprise me; Deacon Walsh always was a mean son of a bitch, and he and my father never saw eye to eye on anything for all that Deacon was his second-in-command. That betrayal stung, but nowhere near as much as Eli’s. It’s not like we were kids. He was twenty-fucking-eight when this shit went down.
I didn’t expect to miss him so much. I sure as fuck didn’t expect for that feeling to get stronger now that he’s back in my life. We’re different people than we were eight years ago, but somehow we still fit. It doesn’t make any damn sense to me. I should want to string him up and leave him for dead for what he did, but I can’t help wondering if Harlow is right.
If there’s some way to salvage this.
Love or hate, trust or not, I’ve never been able to claw out the part of me that cares far too much for Eli Walsh.
To buy myself time, I grab two mugs and pour us each one before I pass his over. I burn my tongue on the hot coffee, but the sting settles me a little. “Tell me what happened, and I’ll decide what to believe from there.”
25
Eli
No matter what Abel says, he’s too stuck in his beliefs to let something as complicated as the truth derail him. When I stood in the ashes of his home, I knew that there was no going back. It doesn’t matter how large or small a role I played; I was partly responsible for that massacre. I don’t deserve forgiveness, but I had to move forward in order to ensure that sacrifice wasn’t for nothing.
If he’d asked me this yesterday, I would have told him to fuck off or said something designed to provoke him. But now?
Last night shouldn’t have changed things. Sex never changes things, not in any permanent way. Even knowing that, I can’t deny that I’m conflicted for the first time since I dedicated myself to the path that ended with me leading this faction.
And then there’s Harlow.
I can still taste her on my lips, feel the slide of her skin against mine, see the sadness in her eyes as she mourns the future we could have had. I don’t know if she’s right. Abel’s been gone a long time, and he reminds me of his father more than ever now. Or he did when he first appeared. Now I’m not so sure. There are cracks, and through those cracks I can see the shadow of the man he used to be. The one that I once dreamed of partnering with to bring this faction into a new future.
I take a tiny drink of my coffee and set it aside. “Your father was a monster. Under his rule, the people of this faction were suffering, were dying, because he was too busying chasing his fights and his glorious victories.”