Page 137 of Last Man Standing

“And what?” he bites out. “What, Tank? You’ll slit my throat? Cool. Heard that one before. You’ll kill me? Heard that one, too. I think I’ll risk it.”

“No, stupid. If you take her away, you’ll be the reason she loses another layer.” I wrap both hands around the steering wheel and squeeze until my knuckles turn white. “She can be happy with me, Castro. When it’s me and her and the world leaves us the fuck alone, she’s happy. But you’re right about my mom.” And fuck, it burns me to admit it. “You’re right about her wanting Arabella’s approval. My mom is scared, too.”

He scoffs.

“She’s a bit like you,” I push on. “Protective and unkind when her family is threatened.”

“My sister is not a threat to your family! I’m not a threat. Nova is not a threat. Jesus! No one actually gives a fuck about where your mom lives or how many clicks south of the Piggly Wiggly she sleeps. You exist in this bubble where you assume the entire world is searching for this one chick who ran away from her father thirty years ago, but in reality, no one cares except you and a dead man whose flesh is already worm food. Believe it or not, but Arabella Aster could hire out a stadium and announce to the world who she is, and chances are, not even the crickets will give a shit.”

I check my rear-view mirror out of ingrained habit, turn at the end of a long block, and circle back toward the airport.

It’s so entrenched in the fabric of who I am, I’m not sure I could stop even if my mother started doing those stadium tours he speaks of.

“My sister doesn’t deserve whatever shit your mother threw at her these past few weeks, and since you’re taking me to her anyway, I’m about to bust three decades of protection and tell that bitch what I think of her anyway.”

“Lincoln,” Nova scolds quietly. “Stop.”

“You’re right,” I admit, though doing so tastes bad on my tongue. “My mother’s behavior hasn’t been okay. And you’re right about Scarlett, too. She didn’t deserve that.” I draw a fortifying breath and fill my chest to bursting. Then I let it out again and add, “which is why I’m walking away.”

Stunned, Nova shoves her head forward until I see her in my peripherals. “Walking away from who?”

“Arabella.” It burns. It hurts. It fucking stings. “My home. My family. Richard’s dead,” I rasp, “and my mom is safe. My brothers will have her back, and if they don’t declare me a deserter, they might even take my calls sometimes and update me if things change.” I study my mirrors again, turn, and continue onto the freeway. “I’m gonna go wherever Scarlett goes.” If she’ll have me. “I’ll be wherever she’s happiest. Because she’s the very best of us all, and she’s the only one of us who never signed up to have her soul stripped away for someone else’s war. You and me,” I glance across at Linc, “We knew what we were getting ourselves into. Even you,” I meet Nova’s eyes in my mirror. “Ry set you up so you could disappear into a whole new life, new name, new home. You could’ve left all this behind, but you stayed. You walked onto the front line and drew your weapons. Scarlett didn’t ask for any of this, and she sure as fuck doesn’t deserve it, so I’m gonna lay down my guns and take her away from the line. I’ll protect whatever is left of her soul.”

“But, what?” Nova whispers. “I feel a but coming on.”

“But… she needs to be able to trust me. She needs to know I’ll always tell her the truth, even if it stings a little. Which means we need to tell her about Mills.” I exhale a heavy sigh. “And then I need to tell her I’ve completely violated her privacy the whole time she’s been at my parents’ house. I swore she was free to go anywhere, talk to anyone, do anything… but I didn’t tell her she was being monitored every minute of every day. I gave her a phone and access to you, but I didn’t explain how every word she typed and every conversation she had was available to the people she already hated.”

“Every text?” Lincoln growls. “Every word?”

In the silence save for the song playing quietly on the radio and the thrum of my tires on the road, I drop my chin in defeat. “Yep.”

“So when she told me how your mom would have her shot in the yard?” he snarls. “Arabella read all that?”

Again, I nod.

“And the conversation she and I had about you? Where she bared her fucking heart, not only about love, but about her insecurities and fears? About junker cars and how she was terrified she was broken… you heard all that, too?”

My pulse thrums painfully in my chest. “Yep.”

“Which is basically the equivalent of tearing her diary open, reading every page, sharing those pages with the world… and now you want to tell her?”

My throat is dry. My tongue, dry. My entire fucking soul, dry. “Yes. I want to tell her.”

“You’ll break her heart!” he roars. “She was already sad and scared and lonely! Her only escape was with that fucking phone, and now you’re telling me you wanna destroy that escape too?”

“To be worthy of her trust, I have to tell her, then I have to choose her. And when we figure out the Mills stuff, I have to tell her that, too.”

“Which will also break her heart! What? You have a humiliation kink you wanna try out on her? Fuck!”

“I need to treat her like she’s not delicate.”

“She is delicate! It’s our job to shield her from heartbreak, Jameson! To shield her from pain. Not cause it. Are you stupid?”

“She needs to be treated like she’s strong,” I bite back. “Because she is strong. She’s brave, Castro. She’s fucking capable. But she doesn’t believe in herself because she’s never been given a chance to stand on her own two feet. She doubts her abilities, because every time she could have tested them out, big brother Linc rode in and fixed everything for her.”

“So you’re putting her pain on me?” He unsnaps his seatbelt and slams his hand to the door. “Pull over. Let’s discuss this the way we’re meant to.”

“I’m not putting any damn thing on you.” And I definitely don’t stop the fucking truck. “I’m just saying her worst regrets are not the men she’s dated, or the situations she’s landed herself in. They’re not the breakups she’s experienced, or the arguments she’s had, or the tears she’s cried. She regrets all the times she knew how to stand up for herself, but didn’t. Because freezing makes her feel weak. It makes her feel unprepared and, worse, incapable. You’ve given her all the tools, Castro. Taught her all the things. But you never took the training wheels off, and now, when she wants so badly to ride on her own, she’s scared she can’t do it.” I tap the steering wheel with the tips of my fingers and meet his seething expression. “She deserves to know she can take care of herself. She deserves to feel safe always, not just when you’re standing over her shoulder. And she deserves the fucking truth, even if it’ll end with a bullet between my eyes.”