“Not easily. I was angry at Dad for siding with you—”

“He didn’t side with me.”

Dodge raised an eyebrow. “He did. He sat by your bedside the entire time you were in the hospital. While I sat in jail, by the way.”

“I didn’t know that.” Colt remembered waking up, seeing his father praying. And, of course, Dodge. However, “I didn’t know you were in jail.”

“For a week. He didn’t press charges against me—said you declined, but really, it felt like I was in prison for ten years. Because I refused to forgive—you, Dad. Echo. And that’s its own sort of prison.” He made a face, then stared at his joe. “We make our prisons, Colt. Hand down our own sentences. And we don’t have to do that.” He looked up at him. “You don’t have to do that. There’s a life beyond what you see . . . you just have to let go of the one you’re hanging onto.”

Colt stared at him. His brother did seem different. Less angry. Less bossy. Less . . . judgmental. Colt’s throat tightened, his voice thinning. “I don’t know how to do that.”

A pause. Then, “I was thinking about what you said last night. About your defective heart.”

“I was on drugs, let’s not forget that.”

Dodge managed a slight smile. “The problem is that you do need a new heart, bro. And you have for a long time. Before the event in Sudan, even before our fight. Because your heart was broken the day Mom died. You heard the lie that you caused it, or that you were trouble, or darkness, or whatever, but like a virus, it got inside you and infected your entire body. Your vision. Your life. Told you that you weren’t worth saving—and then you went out and lived that lie. But you are worth saving, Colt.”

“No—”

“Just listen. You need . . . for lack of a better word, a vaccine. Something to awaken your system. Give you some defense. You need truth, buddy. And here it is, so pay attention.”

Really?

“You can’t fix your heart on your own, no matter how much you try to redeem yourself. And you can’t just patch up the old, broken heart, either. You need a fresh start. But to get that, you have to surrender your old, faulty heart to God and let him put in you a heart of faith. A heart that belongs to him. And that changes everything because suddenly you don’t have to worry about proving yourself, fixing yourself, redeeming yourself. You are already redeemed. And now you’re a different kind of warrior. No longer a mercenary, but a soldier for the Lord. At his command.”

Colt blinked at him.