Page 6 of The Last True Hero
Two
"DIDN'T THINKHE was your type," Jake said, tapping his fingers on the bar and watching as the doors swung shut behind McClain.
"He's not." Mia pulled her mind out of wistful nothings, and gathered up the coins McClain left behind. They were stamped with New Merida symbols, no doubt paid out in blood money. She didn't particularly like that they came from the slave towns down south, but money was money, and it was far more than what he'd owed. Most of the time she was paid in Wasteland coppers—the square bits that were stamped with whatever the maker decided to put on them and worth only the metal that they were made out of. A good bar owner could tell when someone mixed too much metal with the copper. A good bar owner also knew when she was holding on to solid gold. She looked toward the fluttering doors and had a moment of doubt.
That itch she couldn't scratch.
Maybe she shouldn't have been so hardheaded, but McClain made her nervous, and she'd burned her fingers before. Indeed, she wouldn't be in this situation if she'd listened to that quieter, warier part of herself.
"Yeah?" Heat darkened Jake's eyes, a mix of jealousy and something else—something he had no right in feeling. "I know what you look like when you want a man."
"You would know." She turned away, sliding the sticky glasses toward her. Once he'd been her best friend, her only ally. Now? "That doesn't mean that this is any of your business. And you heard him. He's leaving."
Too late for her to do anything about her choices. Maybe it was for the best?
"Hey." Jake caught her wrist, leaning forward. "It's not my place to say it, I know that, but he's not the type of man—"
"You touch me again, and Iwillcut off that hand," she told him, staring him down.
With a grimace, he let her go. "I'm trying to—"
"You're married. To my sister." That hadn't stopped him once upon a time, when they'd been barely adults, though she'd been completely unaware of the promises he'd made to Sage just four fucking hours earlier. Four hours. Mia shut her eyes. All of it had been a mistake—telling Jake that she wanted something more than him, wanted to see the world, and him taking all that fury and rejection and asking her sister for something he shouldn't have.... And then later that night, for not telling her the truth of what he'd promised Sage when Mia changed her mind and went looking for him.
Yes, she'd kissed him. She'd done a hell of a lot more than that. But he'd had his chances to tell her he'd proposed to Sage, and he hadn't. Now Mia had to feel that crawl of guilt every time she looked at her oblivious sister.
Sage had been so happy to marry the man they'd both loved, that she'd never even known what was in her sister's heart. Maybe it was Mia's fault, for not telling her how she felt about Jake? Love wasn't something to hide, but she'd been wary, even then.
She didn't know how to fix this. Sage's heart broke every time Jake rode out of town, but he couldn't stay here with everything that lay between them. They just kept cutting at each other, and Sage didn't know why.
"I've been thinking," Jake said. "About... this."
Mia buried her hands in the sink. She just wanted him to go. It had been seven years since that disastrous night and she felt sick every time she saw him.
"Mia, are you listening?"
"Only occasionally." She sounded weary. "You should go home," she said. "To your wife. She misses you."
"I know." Jake's hesitation lingered. "I'm thinking of taking her north."
"What?" Mia smacked her head on the shelf above the sink. Her heart plummeted into her feet. "You can't take her away. This is our home."
"But it's not mine," he said firmly. "I can't keep doing this. I care for your sister, and you're the one who keeps throwing it in my face about the promises I made her. How do I fix this? You want me to make her happy, but you don't want me around." He let out a sigh. "I know you don't want to see her go, but she and I could make a life together, away from all of...this."
Herwas what he meant. "And what about me? You're going to take away the one piece of family I have left? Haven't you done enough damage?"
"I care for your sister, Mia. Really care. Sometimes I think there could be more between her and I, if we gave it a chance. I don't want to see her hurt any more than you do. Maybe she'd be happy? I could divorce her and leave forever, but you know what she was like after she lost the baby." His voice dropped. "I'm a fool who's made a lot of bad decisions, but I'm not a bad man, Mia. I hate being the villain in all of this. I fucked up. I fucked up badly. But I don't want to drive my wife back into that walking-zombie state by leaving her, and I can't see any other way out of it."
That hurt. Mia didn't love him, not anymore, and he didn't love her. There was too much bitterness between them for that to have lasted. But why did she have to be the one who kept missing out?
"I owe her better than what I've given her," Jake said. "I oweyoubetter, but I can't change the past. The only thing I have left is to change the future."
Tears sprang to Mia's eyes. She knew what he was saying was the truth, but that didn't make her feel any better. Sage was her only... anything. "You bastard."
"I'll wear that," he said in a roughened voice. "Let me pay my dues, Mia. Please."
Swallowing hard, she brushed her wet cheek against her shoulder. Enough of that nonsense. "Where will you take her?"
"Thank you," he whispered, as if she'd given him her blessing. "I don't know. It's a hard land up north, but there'd be plenty of work for me and Sage would fit into the communities up there. They don't take to strangers easily, but when they do it's forever, and Sage's talent in salvaging electronics makes her valuable."
