“It doesn’t—”
I slammed my hand against the countertop. “Don’t you say it doesn’t matter. It matters. All of it matters. I understand what it must have been like for you, Joe. I get it—”
“You don’t get anything,” he exploded. “You don’t get it, because you weren’t there!”
“And whose choice was that?” I said coldly. “You made it perfectly clear that—”
“Don’t,” he said, pointing a claw at me. “You don’t get to say I didn’t need you. You don’t get to say that when it’s not true. I needed you. I needed you too fucking much.”
“That was the problem, wasn’t it?” I said, answers slowly locking into place. “I was your tether. And you couldn’t have me be your tether. Not with what you set out to do.”
“Every time I saw your words,” he said. “Every time I wrote back to you, the more I wanted to come home. To you. To the others. And I couldn’t, Ox. I couldn’t, because I had a job to do. He had taken from me, and worse, he had taken from you. And I couldn’t do what needed to be done while being reminded of home. So yes, I stopped. I cut you all out. I did it because I cared too much about you to be able to do what I needed to do. I told myself that if I kept you separated from me, from this, I’d be keeping you safe.”
“You were wrong,” I said. “We weren’t safe. Not all the time.”
“I know,” he said, deflating. “They told me. The others. I didn’t think—”
“No, you didn’t. You only had one thing you focused on.”
“Revenge,” he said. “Rage. The need to find him and make him suffer.”
“And you didn’t.” I didn’t mean it to come out like it did, like I was accusing him.
His shoulders slumped. “No. We… were close. So many times. But he always managed to be one step ahead. I tried, Ox. I tried to make things right. But I couldn’t. So I just kept going.”
“Would you even be here?” I asked. “If you didn’t think he was coming for us again?”
He said, “I don’t know,” and the honesty hurt.
I nodded. My head felt stuffed. I didn’t know what else to do. “Why would he come here now? Why, after all this time, would he come back? Why not before?”
“I don’t know.”
“When is he going to get here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do we need to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“What the fuck do you know?” I snarled at him. “You have wasted three goddamn years of our lives for nothing?”
He flinched, eyes on the floor.
I couldn’t stop. Not now that I’d broken open.
“Tell me, Joe. Was it worth it? Was it worth keeping me safe like you think you did? Was it worth leaving us all behind so you could go after a fucking ghost?”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know!” I roared at him. “Tell me one fucking thing you do know!”
“That I love you.” His breath hitched in his chest.
And I just.
I couldn’t breathe.