“Word of advice,” Kye said, sauntering over to us. “Wrap it before you tap it.” He slung his arm around Max’s shoulder, but caught my stare and frowned. “Everything good here?”
“Yeah. Max has places to be and I need…”
I didn’t know what the fuck I needed.
“Same time Wednesday?”
I nodded at Max and he took off.
“Do I even want to know?” Kye watched him walk away before settling his eyes on me.
“Did you know Miller’s older sister killed herself?”
“The fuck?” He paled. “So that’s why he and B struck up—”
“Don’t.”
“You’re not actually freaking out about this? I thought things were good between the two of you?”
“Sometimes they are. But it’s new, Kye. Really fucking new.”
“It’s Birdie. She’s been your girl forever.”
“Not like this. It’s different. And after everything that happened… what if—” I stopped the thoughts, refusing to give them steam.
Kye’s expression grew serious. “Talk to me, Nix. Where’s your head at?”
“What if she only thinks she wants to be with me because it’s what she always wanted… before everything happened.”
“Nah, no way. Not possible. The two of you belong together. You know, I always wondered why you never went there with her. It was obvious you loved her.”
“I’ve always loved her.” Possibly since that very first day I’d talked to her when I’d found her sitting on her porch crying.
I was too young back then to know what love was, but I’d felt something. This innate need to protect her and watch over her.
It was the only thing I’d always had absolute faith in, her.
Harleigh Wren.
My Birdie.
She’d always been mine, one way or another. Friend, confidante, the girl in my dreams. Other girls came and went, but Birdie was my one constant. My foundation. My roots.
“Look, Nix, don’t do this to yourself. Don’t get hung up on the what-ifs. What happened, happened. You can’t change that. All you can do is embrace it and find a way to learn to live with it.”
Harleigh had said something similar.
“She loves you, man. You. Something tells me she never stopped. Nate, Max, Marc, her father, they’re all inconsequential. She’s eighteen in a few weeks. You could run off to bumfuck nowhere and marry her if you wanted to.”
“Are you done?” A faint smile lifted the corner of my mouth.
“I was just getting to the good part.” He grinned.
“Where’s Z at?” I asked, noticing he’d never turned up for our usual training session.
“His gran wasn’t feeling so good so he stayed there.”
“Shit, is she okay?”
“She’s getting worse,” he said, pain flickering across his expression.
“Damn.” Mrs. Washington was a fighter. One of the strongest people I knew, but sometimes strength wasn’t enough. Sometimes disease ate at you from the inside, ravaging your body and mind.
Zane would stay with her to the bitter end and nurse her in her final days. Hopefully they had time though, because losing his gran—the woman who had raised him—would destroy him.
I guess we had that in common.
Losing the women we loved more than anything would one day ruin us.