Sparrow (37 page)

Even The Fixer couldn’t fix this.

“Can we get you anything at all?” Daisy pulled at her gum, twirling it around her finger. I almost smiled. Almost.

“Hot chocolate,” I said, and before I knew it, she dashed out of the room.

“Your forehead looks nasty,” Lucy commented, brushing her hand along my temple in a motherly gesture.

“I bet my foot doesn’t look too good either.”

“No,” she agreed.

I frowned. “You mean, my foot modeling days are over?”

“Afraid so.”

The three of us laughed—me, Lucy and Pops—and the smile felt good on my lips again. Not natural, but good.

It would take a long time until I laughed again, really laughed, or felt genuinely happy, but this was a start.

I was taking baby steps, but with a broken foot and a shattered heart, this was something, too.

TROY

I FIXED EVERYTHING.

That was me. I was The Fixer.

Sparrow was safe again. I managed to both kill Brock and stop the stupid Flynn investigation from happening—two birds, one stone. Fulfilled my promise to my dad. Crossed the final name on my list. Flynn’s grave was found by the police, but so did Brock’s sloppy fingerprints all over the cabin where he took care of him.

It wasn’t so hard to convince them he was also the one to dig the grave. Especially as his mother in law confessed he had taken a fucking shovel to the woods.

The decaying remains of Robyn Raynes were found – and Detective Idiot and his crew were only too happy to dump the blame on Brock along with everything else.

And
I made Brock’s death look like self-defense. There was still a ton of paperwork to be done, and I knew it will cost me a pretty penny, but I fixed it. Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be. I had a reliable witness—Detective Stratham— who saw the gun Brock was holding in the woods, and the grave he dug for Red. There was no denying the man intended to harm her and me, and my intentions were well within the eyes of the law. I was bulletproof. Sparrow, though shaken, would be on her feet soon.

Everything was fixed.

Well, other than what was important.

I walked down the hallway of the hospital like I was on death row. Every door I passed brought me closer to the door I didn’t want to knock on. I wasn’t scared, I was petrified.

For the first time in my life, I was going to do the right thing, and I wished it felt better, because the truth was, it felt like fucking shit. It felt like hell, like torture, like a sharp butcher’s knife digging into my chest, piercing into my heart and pulling it out slowly, breaking each and every one of my ribs on its way out.

I knocked on the door softly. If she was asleep, I didn’t want to wake her up. She’d looked so frail when I found her. With blood running from her temple all the way down her face like a veil, her leg completely fucked and twisted, her foot the size of a basketball. She was freezing, too, in nothing but thin yoga pants and a Dri-Fit shirt.

An injured Sparrow.

The first thing I wanted was to tend to her, and then and only then to kill Brock slowly and painfully.

But I couldn’t do it the way I had wanted it to happen. Because Brock needed to be finished before he could give away the fact that I buried Robyn and Flynn right there, in the woods. I had no doubt he’d spill the beans to Stratham the minute the cop took him into custody. Every moment he was alive and at a close proximity to the detective, my life as a free man was in danger.

That was fine. By the time I stopped Detective Impotent’s vehicle in the middle of the woods and bolted out, all my urges and need for vengeance were irrelevant.

My quest was useless and irrelevant.

There was no time for revenge.

Everything darkened, and the only thing illuminated was
her
.

So I killed him quickly, coldly, efficiently, but not merrily. Still, I wouldn’t change it for the world, because I managed to save Red, and that’s all that mattered.

“Come in,” she said from the other side of the door, and by the edge of her voice, I knew she figured it was me who came to visit.

I let her keep the rotting rag I wrapped her mom in before I buried her. In a way, digging holes for her mom and for Flynn were the darkest moments of my life. They both didn’t deserve it. Even if I wasn’t the one to kill them, I denied them a proper burial, and that was a lot.

In fact, it was so much, that in a way, not paying Robyn Raynes respect had cost me everything.

More specifically, her daughter.

I pushed the door open and walked to her bed. She had shit load of tubes in her wrists, and her leg was in a cast. And she was still nothing short of divine. My girl, my lovebird. The prettiest. Not because she had the pinkest lips or the greenest eyes, but because she was made for me. Tailor-made to make me laugh, to piss me off, to make me lose my shit. Hell, to make me
feel.

I placed the Godiva chocolate box on her stand, right next to the orange gladiolas. The florist girl said they represent strength of character when I bought them.

I told her she had no idea.

Chocolate and flowers
. That corny shit. But only for tonight, and only for Red. I hoped she’d find it funny, with her sarcastic sense of humor. I wanted to jump on bleachers and sing her a song. She deserved the whole nine yards.

But I also knew it was too late.

She looked at the flowers and chocolate and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath.

“Thank you,” she croaked. But it was me saving her life she referred to. Not this stupid shit.

I took a seat next to her bed, looking down at my hands, or maybe my shoes. I wasn’t even aware of what I was looking at, but it sure as hell wasn’t into her eyes, because I couldn’t deal with what was behind them.

“Don’t mention it.”

I was going to do it. I was really going to do something selfless for once in my life since Cat and Brock happened. The last time I did something altruistic, it became my ruin. I was about to do it again, knowing it would hurt ten fucking thousand times more than it hurt when I broke off my engagement with Cat. Because, looking back, the pain of Catalina’s infidelity was nothing compared to the pain I felt knowing I inflicted misery on my wife.

And I was still going to do it, precisely because of that.

I really was a masochistic motherfucker.

“Are you all clear with the police and everything?” She sounded worried, but I didn’t fool myself.

“Yeah.” I inhaled, closing my eyes and falling backward on the chair with a soft thud. “I’ll be fine.”
Sort of.

I opened my eyes and watched her for the first time since I walked into the room. She licked her dry lips, staring at the box of chocolate. This was us now. After doing the impossible and becoming something, this was us. Two strangers in a clinical room, looking for words that wouldn’t do justice to what we really had to say. Again.

“My mom…” She sighed. “I can’t believe you did that to her.”

“Me neither, Red.”

“Your father made you marry me. Why did you? Was there money involved?”

I nodded, peeling off a dead layer of skin from my palm. “The will said I’d get nothing until I married you. If we divorce, you get more than half.”

She let out a sarcastic chuckle. “I don’t need your family’s money. Everything you Brennans touch gets tarnished.”

“Nonsense. It’s yours. Always will be.”

“Let me go,” she said quietly, her voice cracking. “I need to leave.”

I nodded, knowing she was right but wishing she was wrong. Sparrow was my lovebird, and I couldn’t clip her wings anymore. I have bent her with the weight of my actions and lies for the past few months, and she took it all and took it well, but this was the last straw. If I bent her even more, she’d snap. Forcing her to stay was too dangerous for me and too destructive for her.

Some said that lovebirds could die of heartbreak. That was the myth, anyway. I didn’t look much into that, but I knew my lovebird, my Sparrow. She needed freedom, because even though she was incredibly good at accepting my shit, this was pushing it too far, even for her. I couldn’t hold onto her anymore, even if I wanted to. Now more than ever.

She was my beauty, and I was her beast. But this was not a Disney flick. In real life, the beast goes back to his solitary life, a freak who lurks in the shadows and watches as his girl runs away back to the arms of her family.

She was my only shot at a semblance of normalcy and happiness, and I had to let her go.

Slouching down, my head so low my nose almost touched my knee, I croaked. “You’re free.”

The most painful words ever spoken by me. Sparrow was free to go, to spread her wings and fly. I’d give her everything, as my father’s will ordered. And it still wouldn’t be as painful as seeing her go. “I’m just so fucking sorry. I know it sounds absurd, considering everything we’ve been through, but I never meant to hurt you that way.”

“I know.” Her voice grew cold. She was already slipping away from me. From us.

“My door’s always open,” I added, as if it mattered.

She tilted her head slightly with a nod. “I know that, too. Now, please leave.”

I got up from my seat. Walking in here, I thought I would never want to turn around and walk out. Thought I’d milk this conversation until the very last drop, get more time with her one last time before we said goodbye. But it turned out that when you really care, things don’t work that way. Her pain occupied the whole fucking room, invading my space and knocking me off my fucking ass, and I couldn’t tolerate it without feeling my pulse weaken and my body growing cold.

I reached for the door, about to walk away from her for the very last time.

“Just out of curiosity…would you have done things differently, all things considered?” she asked in her beautiful voice.

“All things considered,” I said, not turning around because I know I’d break and do my usual thing, coerce her, threaten her, force her to stay, knowing that she shouldn’t, “if I had known, I wouldn’t have waited until now, or until our parents were dead. I would have asked you to marry me when you were nine, on that dance floor at Paddy’s wedding, when you had your first slow dance, and damn the consequences.”

She laughed.

She thought it was a joke.

It wasn’t. This is what should have happened. We shouldn’t have spent a minute away from each other while we had a chance. Nothing bad would have happened if I told nine-year-old Sparrow that she was mine.

No Paddy.

No Catalina.

No Brock.

I would never lay a finger on her mother’s body, let alone hide it in the woods.

And now we were going to spend the rest of our lives apart. Damn that “Saving All My Love For You.”

TROY

Two weeks later

LAST TIME I
saw him, Paddy Rowan reminded me that I couldn’t run away from my past. He was right. The truth was one hell of a runner, and it would eventually catch up with you. It caught up with him. It caught up with me. It was delivered coldly, like revenge, on a plate of misery, to my beautiful, wide-eyed, innocent, spitfire wife.

I wished I could cram all my lies into a ball of venom and shove it down my throat, swallowing the pain she felt, making it all better for her. But I couldn’t.

When I first married her, I didn’t tell her my father was responsible for our marriage because I didn’t want this to shame my family, my mother, myself. I didn’t want her to run off to the police with it. Didn’t even feel like I owed her shit. The truth was mine, and for me to stew in.
Alone
.

I couldn’t even stomach the fact that Brock and Catalina knew.

But as we got closer, things changed. I no longer cared about the stupid Brennan pride, but I still didn’t tell her. She didn’t need to know that her mom ditched her for a married man. Didn’t deserve to be saddled by more injustice and pain. For all she knew, her mom could have been kidnapped or murdered or just flat-out crazy, living with a herd of cats in the woods. I didn’t want to reopen that old wound for Sparrow. The parent-child relationship was the most complex thing in the human race, I knew that first-hand, and that scab was too deep and tender to dig open.