“You didn’t trust me to be strong enough to find my way. You didn’t trust me to be strong enough to look after you when your world caught fire. Can you even begin to imagine the pain I felt, first, not knowing what was going on with you? And when I found out, getting up every day knowing you’d be trying to find some way to get through the day without me at your side, and then going to bed every night, not sleeping, because I was in agony, wondering if you got through the day without me at your side.”

“Baby, everything that happened to you, from the minute I walked up to you in that lounge chair by Amber’s pool, to not seein’ it through when you blew me off because I’d fucked up before your mom died, to Josh mouthin’ off and sayin’ shit that dogged you everywhere you went, to you not bein’ able to hold down a job or take a minute and get to know yourself is…”

He leaned toward me and thumped his own chest, he did it with his fist, and he did it way better than me.

“On me.”

“Preacher,” I whispered, about to tell him it was not.

But I didn’t get the words out.

“You’re absolutely correct. I promised your grandfather. I promised Audie. I promised him I would take care of you and you’re snortin’ coke and poppin’ pills and you don’t got a job and you haven’t found your passion and you’re not gonna find it walkin’ in the huge shadow I cast over everything. And that journalist was gonna publish and the lid was gonna be blown off and I was terrified that was gonna happen before the cops got their shit together, found Baptiste, got what they needed to nail it down. And what?”

He leaned back and kept going.

“I drag you along with that too? I know you know because you faced it when you went into that courthouse, and maybe you saw on TV how much worse it was for me, but you were inside, Lyla. You were in the courthouse. So you didn’t see. They were so up in my shit, I could barely wade through the motherfuckers shovin’ their mics in my face, wanting to know how I felt about the fact my parents murdered my baby brother. And I’d already dragged you through cycle after cycle of shit. I’m also supposed to drag you through that?”

I opened my mouth.

He wasn’t done.

He also crossed his arms on his chest and declared, “So, yeah. Fuck yeah. I can imagine your pain because I felt it. I was right there with you, baby. But I’ll take that, cher, again and again, rather than havin’ to watch you go through that with me. And to drag you along with what came after.”