Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
“Both,” Griffen clarified.
“I’m not ready for either one. I hate how I didn’t see what he was. I hate that my blindness let him hurt people I care about. But it’s not about Cole so much. It’s going back there at all.”
Griffen nodded slowly, absorbing my words. “Was it that bad?” Griffen asked.
I shook my head. “That’s the thing. It wasn’t, and it was. It wasn’t like a movie with scary, violent shit happening twenty-four seven. I kept my head down and my mouth shut. Didn’t piss anyone off and didn’t make any friends, which kept me out of trouble. I’m big enough that people didn’t want to fuck with me. Which is a good thing, because as you’ve learned, I can’t fight worth shit—not when it really matters.”
“Not yet,” Griffen said and grinned at me. “We’ll get you there. What was the bad part?”
Flashbacks of shivering alone in my bunk washed over me. “The isolation,” I said. “The restriction. I went from having the world at my fingertips to having my fruit cocktail stolen off my tray and knowing I had to let it go if I wanted to hang on to the little bit of peace I could carve out for myself in there. The monotony and the loneliness…” I trailed off, realizing this was the core of what I’d been struggling with. I was lonely, and I didn’t know exactly how to get back to a place where I felt normal around my own family. “I know it seems like I’ve been hiding away since I came back.”
I glanced at Griffen and caught a short nod.
“And I have been,’” I said, “but not because I’m avoiding you guys. It’s just…the Sawyer clan feels like a lot after going so many months barely speaking to anyone. Just the freedom to sit in the library and read, or make a sandwich if I want one—I can’t tell you how overwhelming that was. It was only a year. I don’t know how guys who’re in a decade or more do it. How do you transition back to the real world? I think it would have broken me if I’d stayed much longer.”
Griffen swallowed and gave another nod. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he said, his voice rough.
I laughed, but it wasn’t bitter. “You’re the one person who can honestly say I got what I deserved. But you’re too good to think it, aren’t you?” I shook my head. “You always were the better man between the two of us.”
“Fuck off with that,” Griffen said with a rough laugh. “I’m not a saint. And yeah, that thought crossed my mind a few times. I still had a chip on my shoulder when I came back here after Dad died. I didn’t want anything to do with Sawyers Bend. Fuck the family. Fuck the town. You all got rid of me—well, now you can get what you deserve.”
I looked at him in surprise. When he’d come to the prison to confront me after our father had been killed, he’d seemed settled, ready to fight for his family and his town, his new wife by his side. “Why didn’t you just walk away?”
A slow smile spread across my brother’s face, a light in his eyes. “Hope,” he said. “She wasn’t having it. She told me I owed this town and my family more—that I had a chance to fix what went wrong. And if I walked away, I’d be just as selfish as our father had been. And I finally realized you did me a favor. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but you did. I got to live a life I never would have had if nothing had changed. I don’t know that I’d be the man I am today if I’d spent all those years working side by side with Dad. I don’t know how you could do that and not be poisoned by him.”
“I didn’t,” I said, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice. “I drank his poison all on my own. You know what happened with Finn.”
“Was that the worst of it?” Griffen asked, sounding more curious than judgmental.
“Yes, but there was plenty that wasn’t a whole lot better.” The words came more easily than I expected, and I realized I was done hiding my sins. If I wanted to atone, I had to face the choices I’d made.
“After Finn, you changed,” Griffen said, considering. “I’ve heard from Quinn, from Royal, Sterling, and Parker—I know you were trying to fix things. You said you were investigating Dad.”
“Yeah.” I shifted, rolling my shoulders. “That was all true. But it feels like too little, too late.”
“Nah, that’s bullshit,” Griffen said, flicking on his blinker at the exit off the highway, slowing to take the road toward the prison. “Too little, too late—it’s just an excuse to not try. You decided to try, and getting caught up in Dad’s crap is what ended with you being thrown in prison for a crime you didn’t commit. I wouldn’t say it was what you deserved. No one deserves to pay for something they didn’t do. But you put yourself in a situation, and that situation landed you in prison.”