Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 103141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
“How?”
“It’s who my father was. My brother had been even younger, though he’d asked if he could do it.”
My hands fall away at that, heart slamming against my chest with the force of an out-of-control freight train. His brother had asked, and his father had let him?
“If you think I’m bad, you would have hated Sloan. He’s dead now, though. But yes, I knew what was expected, so I did it.”
“And you’ve been doing it ever since,” I add.
“Yes,” Rian replies. “Are you going to finish, or do I have to do this myself?”
“An hour ago, you didn’t want help cooking breakfast, and now suddenly, you’re okay with it?” I’m not sure where the levity of my comment comes from. I guess I just need it in this moment.
“I’m a complicated man. What can I say?”
He’s right about that. I never saw myself as complicated. I thought I was pretty simple, but the way I’m being with him has me wondering if I’m more complicated than I’d realized.
I don’t respond to his question, not that I expect he wants me to, and finish removing his sling. I can’t get what he said out of my head, though, the things he’s done, what his father made him do when he was nothing more than a child. What is that—second or third grade?
How…sad. He never had a chance to be anything other than what he is.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
It seems I don’t need to tell him that I’m apologizing for how he was raised and what he was forced to do because Rian says, “I know. You would be. That’s who you are.”
“That’s who most people are.”
“Not most people who have been kidnapped and held against their will.”
Maybe. Maybe not. In reality, it doesn’t matter.
I help Rian slide one arm into the shirt, then the other, before I begin buttoning it. “Does your son…”
“I didn’t do that with him. Not in the same way. I already told you I’m a bad father. I’m not trying to say otherwise, but I didn’t do that with him. He’s never had to do anything until he was ready.”
Anger shoots through me, making me jerk away. “When he was ready? How the fuck can he ever be ready for that? He was a child, Rian. And you’re his father! It was your job to protect him, to make sure he had things better than you did! That he is better than you.”
“You don’t think I fucking know that!” he shouts, the anger in his voice palpable, but that’s not the only thing that’s there. It’s impossible to miss how it’s fused with pain. “I told you who I am. I told you not to romanticize me. I am the leader of a crime family. I kill people, and yes, my son has followed in my footsteps. There was a part of me that was proud of that…and there still is. We come from different worlds, Abbott. Stop trying to pretend that I’ve ever known how to live by the rules of yours. All it will do is disappoint you.”
He’s right. I keep hoping that he will surprise me, that I’ll realize none of these horrible things about him are true. Why though? Why do I care? Because you feel a connection to him, and if there’s a connection to someone who is this bad, what does it say about you?
Rian continues, cutting off my thoughts. “And he is better than me, even if you’ll never see it. Even if you can’t look past the things he has done. He would have chosen Ollie in a way I never did with Moira. He would have walked away from it all for Ollie, and I never gave her that.”
Moira. That must be his wife. He’s said that name numerous times in his sleep over the past few days.
He’s talked about her…told her he loved her. His friend held a gun to my head and told me never to repeat anything Rian had said, but the only thing he’d talked about was her…Moira, love, and something about tingling.
He’s breathing heavily, brows pinched in pain that I have a feeling is both physical and emotional.
I should turn away from him in disgust. I shouldn’t go for a walk with him, and we should spend our days here in silence, in our own worlds, but instead, I ask, “Why are you sharing this with me?”
“Why are you listening? And asking?”
That’s something else I don’t know, and I have a feeling he doesn’t either. As much as I’m not acting the way I would expect with him, Rian isn’t with me either. Rian is being different with me. Conan made that obvious.
“Exactly,” Rian says. Neither of us needs to use the words to know we’re on the same page.
I’m intrigued by him in a way I shouldn’t be.