Page 11 of The Choices I've Made
He gave me a ghost of a smile as his eyes went glassy. “Yeah,” he choked out. “We never seemed to be able to do what we had been told.”
“Remember how we made fake pirate swords out of driftwood and practiced battling each other as the tide receded?”
“I bested you every time.”
“I wasn’t made for fighting, I recall.”
He coughed a strangled cough that made my insides burn. “No, you were always suited for something better. Something bigger. I’m glad you found it, and I’m fortunate I was able to see it before—”
“No,” I said. “Don’t you dare say it, Dean. You and I are going to get off this trash heap of a boat and walk into town as heroes, you hear me? You’ll be the talk of the entire island. Hell, you might even get laid.”
He laughed, and I could see the struggle in his gaze as he did so.
“Tell Molly I’m sorry.”
My eyebrows furrowed as I tried to decipher his words. “Tell Molly you’re sorry for what?” I asked, not knowing if he was still here with me or lost in a memory.
“Tell her I’m sorry for not being enough. For not being you. Take care of our Molly for me.”
I shook my head as I looked down at him, disbelief invading every molecule of my body.
“It was always you and her, Jake. Now everything will be as it should.”
His words swam around me like piranhas as I tried to make sense of it all. I looked into his eyes one last time, remembering the moment before the explosion.
Molly and I are getting ma—
Married.
My chest burned as I watched Dean’s eyes shut tight and I was left holding the limp body of my oldest friend.
The man who’d stolen the only woman I’d ever loved.
