Page 31 of A Brother At My Back

“For once, yeah. Yeah, it is.”

I nodded and got up, “Thanks, Bro.”

“You’re learning,” he said with a nod. “I’m proud of you.”

That struck me right in the heart. It meant a lot that he would say so.

When I’d come here, I’d been lost without my family, my people, far from home – shit, you name it. Dragon had sat me down and asked me what I wanted most out of life and I’d told him honest; I wanted to be a man. A man my mum and my people could be proud of and he’d told me flat out that only I could make it happen and I needed to figure my shit out.

Part of figuring my shit out had been admitting to myself that it was all right not being the best, the smartest, or the craftiest one of any given bunch. I needed to leave my pride be, and just concentrate on finding myself and that connection to the rest of it.

I’d put in a lot of work on myself since coming here and I had to admit, even to me, that while I didn’t like what Tiffany was doing, I hadn’t been completely blind to it, even though I didn’t want to see it. I also had to admit, that while I could judge her for it, keep things strictly business and try never to think about her like that again, doing thatwould just make me a bigger asshole.

She hadn’t judged me, even though she’d told me her friend had done plenty of it. She’d always been honest about things and while she didn’t readily volunteer what she did, I couldn’t recall her actually ever hiding it.

At the end of it all, we were just two people stumbling around in life trying to make our way and be better than the people we were the day before and if anything, I could respect that. In part of being a better man than I was yesterday, I wanted to help her be a better woman, but I didn’t want to end up with things more munted than they already were, and so Dragon was right.

I needed to go back to her place, even if it was out in the wops, and talk to her. I rode back the entire time, trying to figure out what just to say. Practiced it a few times even, but all the words left me when she opened the door for me, her lashes thick and clumped with a constellation of tears on them.

I felt my shoulders drop and a defeated sigh escape me as I figured the saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions was true. So instead of saying anything. I just pulled her tight against me and hugged her and I think it was what she needed because she completely fell apart sobbing against me.

I felt like such an asshole, afraid I’d carked it before it could even get started.

Fuck me.

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