Page 60 of Tap Left
His arrogance enrages me. I’ve always thought that Daire concluded he was a better brother than I was a girlfriend.
“This whole thing is fake,” I insist. “And Ryan would hate it. He wouldn’t want us coming here to talk about the same damn thing every year. People only want to remember the good memories when someone dies.”
“Lola.” Daire’s voice is a warning. He doesn’t want to get into this, but I don’t care. I’ve let him have his way. I’ve let him throw his childish tantrums and pick and choose the appropriate conversations we are allowed to have. I’m sick of this charade, and I’m sick of him.
“What is it exactly that I’m supposed to remember?” I ask. “It’s hard to choose from all the good memories I have of that night.”
Daire looks at me but doesn’t answer.
I start to count them off on my fingers. “I guess I could remember the way he lied to me and told me he was at dinner with his parents when really he was at the party with you.”
“Or maybe how before I had come to you that night, he was in his bedroom with his tongue down another girl’s throat. There’s something to keep me warm on a cold night.”
Daire’s eyebrows pinch together. “You saw that?”
“Like it was the first time,” I mock. “You thought I was such an idiot. You honestly believed you could tell me whatever I wanted to hear, and it would all go away.”
His eyes wander to the headstone, and he shakes his head. “It wasn’t like that, LB.”
“That’s exactly what it was like. You came to run interference before I ever got a chance to say anything to him. People always talk about the last words they said to someone before they died, but I didn’t get to have those because you took them from me.”
“I was trying to do the right thing,” Daire answers. “You couldn’t have talked to Ryan when he was in that state, and you know it.”
“That was my decision to make,” I sneer. “Not yours. But you just thought you could take control of everything the way you always did. Adrian Daire come to save me again. Looking at me the way you did and lying to me with your eyes. You were a gutless shitbag then, and you still are now. I humiliated myself. I betrayed him for… nothing.”
“You’re drunk, Lola.”
He wants to excuse my behavior because that makes it easier to accept. Only, there aren’t any excuses for what I have to say right now.
“You never liked me,” I continue. “I know you never liked me. You hated me from the moment we met. You were so jealous of me it was pathetic. You wanted all of Ryan’s attention because it made you feel better about being the bastard son nobody gave a shit about.”
Daire clenches his fists and works his jaw, his eyes lasered in on me. I want a reaction, but he isn’t giving me what I need. I need him to feel the way that I feel right now. It’s infuriating, and I can’t stop myself. I continue to prod him until he explodes.
“I know that you blame me,” I accuse. “You think if I hadn’t come along that night, he would still be alive.”
“That’s because he would be!” He growls. “Everything that happened that night happened because of you.”
The victory isn’t a sweet one. It’s the thing I’ve always known to be true, and he’s finally admitted it. He blames me. And suddenly, I’m stone cold sober. I scramble to my feet and take off running before he can see me break down. But I don’t make it very far before he grabs me from behind. His leg gives out during the struggle and we both crash into the mud together.
We tumble around, and I attempt to get out from under him, but he’s too heavy, and the fight is leaving me weak.
“Get off of me!” I scream.
He pins me down with his hands and forces me to look at him, clenching my jaw between his fingers. My chin wobbles and tears leak from my eyes, and I have never burned with so much rage before.
“I hate you! I hate you more than anything, and I never want to see you again!”
“You can hate me as much as you want, poppet,” he answers softly. “But you are wrong. About everything.”
“No, I’m not,” I sob.
His eyes are uncharacteristically filled with emotion. “I had no idea that you saw him like that. I never wanted you to see him like that, LB. I never wanted—” His voice cracks, and he closes his eyes. “I never wanted to see you hurt that way. Ryan was good to me, but he wasn’t good to you.”
At some point, I stop resisting, and Daire’s body is closer to mine now, weighing us both down in the mud. His fingers caress my cheek, and I hate that I take comfort in him, but I do.
“You can hate me for the choices I made that night,” he says. “But I don’t regret them, and I never will. Because if I hadn’t left you behind, then it would be you lying here in this cemetery instead of her.”
It’s the most candid admission he’s ever made, and it knocks my whole world off kilter.
