Page 85 of Forever Finds Us
“God.” He shook his head. “That makes me so fuckin’ happy. Things weren’t easy for her… before. With Dad.”
“They weren’t easy for you either.”
Dixon dropped his hands to his sides. “Why’d you really come here, Brand? Just to hash out the past? I get it. Everybody’s happy and movin’ on. I’m the holdout. You didn’t need to come here to rub it in my face. Trust me, I do enough of that to myself.”
Facing him now, I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t put all that weight on him. What if what I’d come here to say was the reason he relapsed?
“You got out,” he went on. “Good for you, or you might’ve ended up here with me, but I’m not ready to go back yet. I’m not ready to tell my kid his mama’s dead. And I’m not ready to see Candy’s replacement raisin’ him. It’s on me, I know. I left Stu there with Bax and his new girl, but that don’t mean I’m ready to see it every day.”
“It’s not like that?—”
“Why. Are. You. Here? Say it now and get it over with so I can go back to work. Listen, I’m grateful for what you did for me. Really, I am, but this job, this place is the only thing I have right now. It’s the only thing keepin’ me sober. I’m not leavin’. Not yet. So if you came here with all your money, thinkin’ you’d swoop in and fix my life, you can turn right back around and go home.”
“That’s not why I came.”
“So tell me why and get it over with already. Jesus.”
“Fine.” I took the bait. He was prodding me, trying to get a rise out of me. “I came here to tell you I ain’t keepin’ your secrets anymore. They’re tearin’ me up inside. I feel so fuckin’ guilty! Every time I look at Bax. At Merv. At your fuckin’ kid. I can’t do it anymore.”
“Fine. Just don’t give them my location.”
“Fine? It’s fuckin’ fine?”
“Yeah. Tell ’em. I don’t care. But I’m not comin’ home yet.”
“Fine?” I repeated. All this time, and he was “fine” with it? “Fuck you, Dixon. I have protected you all this time the best way I knew how. I kept your damn secrets. I carried them and they’re fuckin’ heavy, man. I owed it to you, so I did it, but no more. I came here today because I wanted to earn your forgiveness. I wanted to deserve something I had no right to want. So thanks for makin’ it clear that I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve her.”
I turned to go. What more was there left to say?
“‘Her’?”
“Forget it. You don’t need to carry my shit too. I’ll see ya.”
His hand on my shoulder stopped me from going any further, and the dogs jumped up and rushed around us.
He released my arm. “Sit down, you mangy muts. I’m not hurtin’ him.” To me, he said, “Brother, wait. What did you mean you wanted to earn my forgiveness. What’s there to forgive? And who is ‘her’?”
“I left you,” I said without turning. “I left you with Dad after graduation. You didn’t deserve that, and look what it did to you. I ruined your life.”
The last thing I expected to hear was his laughter.
His loud snort cracked the air. “You ruined my life? Brand, you sure got some kind of superiority complex goin’ on. Trust me, you don’t have that kinda power. There are only two people responsible for my problems, and one of ’em is dead. The other one is standin’ behind you, laughin’ at the bullshit comin’ out your mouth.”
That had me spinning in a second. “What?”
He shook his head, chuckling, and it was the first time I’d seen a genuine smile on his face in years. “You didn’t do this to me. I did this to me. Dad had a big hand in it, but it was my decision to pick up a bottle, and then pills and needles.”
“You were just a kid.”
“Yeah, and then I wasn’t anymore. I’d been to enough therapy and rehabs to know there was help out there. I didn’t ask for it. Thought I could handle my problems on my own, just like our old man said I should. We were both wrong.”
“All this time… Twenty years.”
“All this time, what?”
“I felt guilty. Shame. I thought if I’d done things differently back then, maybe you wouldn’t have?—”
“What else could you have done? You got out. You don’t know how happy that made me. I’m not sayin’ you were the best big brother. After you left, I didn’t hear from you. But you were just a kid too. I never expected you to fix my life.”
