Page 372 of Redeeming 6

Ruthless in her quest for whatever the hell she wanted.

I pitied her husband.

Poor bastard.

“I already told you,” I said, leaning back in my seat and folding my arms across my chest. “You can have more out of me when I get a phone call.”

Smiling, she leaned back in her chair, mirroring my actions. “To phone Aoife.”

“Obviously.”

“And say what?”

“How about I’m really fucking sorry for skipping out on you, for a start,” I snapped. “And maybe check on my baby, while I’m at it? You know, the usual.”

“Could we step back for a moment and consider the possibility that Aoife is extremely proud of you completing your treatment program?”

“It would be a lot easier to believe if you let me speak to her.”

“You know the rules, Joey. This program is for you. To focus on yourself for a change. Not on your siblings, or your girlfriend, or anyone else. I know it’s a foreign feeling for you, to put yourself before others, but this time-out from the outside world is necessary for your recovery.”

“Like you’d know a goddamn thing about it.”

“Put the gun down, Joey,” she replied with a sad smile. “The fight’s over.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been fighting for so long, I don’t know how to take my finger off the trigger,” I muttered, cracking my knuckles. “Fuck it, maybe I am crazy. Maybe it is better that I can’t talk to her. I’ve already dragged her through the ringer.”

“What makes you think you’re ‘crazy’?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” I drawled out sarcastically. “How about the fact that I’m hearing my dead father’s voice in my head, to go with my dead mother’s one.”

“Trauma reveals itself in many shapes and versions.”

“Yeah, well, in my head, I’m still fighting a war that I can’t win. Against people who can’t hurt me anymore, but still do. So, I reckon that goes a little deeper than trauma, Doc.”

“Good, Joey,” she surprised me by saying. “That’s really good. Keep talking.”

Deciding I had nothing left to lose, I let her have it.

Every fucked-up thought and notion in my head.

I didn’t know if any of it made sense, and I cared even less.

She wanted words.

Well, she could have them.

“I tried to get them out of there, so many fucking times, but I always caved,” I blurted out. “There was always a part of me that held out hope for her. The same way she held out hope for him. In the end, look where it got the both of us. He killed her, and I stayed for as long as I did to prevent that. The night I walked out, it happened. How can I get over that? How can I ever move on from it? The guilt is drowning me on the daily.”

Blowing out a frustrated breath, I hissed, “It all feels so fucking needless. I could’ve stopped it all from happening. I could have saved her if I’d just stuck in there. But I lost it, my temper, my patience, whatever I had left inside of me, I lost it that night. And because I lost that, I ended up losing everything. Those kids don’t have a mother, and it’s because I walked away.”

“Those kids don’t have a mother because their father—your father—killed her, not you. He was willing to kill all of you.”

“I have a hard time with living,” I admitted. “Being alive is a challenge for me because I don’t work right. I don’t seem to have the right tools for going through the motions. It’s like I’m stuck on fight mode. I’m constantly watching for danger. Doesn’t matter if it’s there or not, I’m programed to sniff it out. Wasn’t so bad when I self-medicated. The drugs took the edge off everything. Made being alive bearable. Until I couldn’t go an hour without them. Then I wanted to live even less.”

“That sounds miserable.”

“No shit.”

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