Page 325 of Face Off

Briggs shakes his head. “She loved me.”

“Maybe she did.”

He looks at me, stunned by the answer.

“Love doesn’t make every fucking thing someone does inside it acceptable,” I say. “You know that better than anyone.” He knows I mean his parents and their abandonment. He was conditioned to take it.

His eyes lower again.

“I’m not asking you to decide what Lyric felt,” I continue. “I’m telling you what she did. She slapped you. She kicked you. She called you stupid until hearing the word from me shut you down even though you knew it’s a term of endearment from me.”

“I know you didn’t mean it.”

“Your body didn’t.”

His breath catches. I pull from the bottle again and hand it to him.

“You went quiet before your head had time to remember who said it. That didn’t come from nowhere.”

Briggs turns his face toward the window. His reflection looks small against the city despite the size of the man sitting beside me.

“I kept thinking if I became what she wanted, we’d be okay.”

“She kept moving what she wanted.”

He drinks the bottle and at any minute at this rate one of us will get the worm. “I could never reach it.”

“You weren’t supposed to.”

The words break something new inside him.

Briggs folds forward with both hands over his head. “Why wasn’t I enough?”

I move before he finishes asking. One arm closes around his shoulders while my other hand catches the back of his neck. He fights the hold for half a second, instinct and pride pushing against being contained. Then every ounce of strength leaves him.

His body collapses into mine.

“You were enough,” I tell him.

Briggs’s forehead strikes my shoulder. “She didn’t think so.”

“That doesn’t change what you are.”

“I’m so fucking stupid.”

“You’re not.”

“I stayed.”

“You loved someone who taught you leaving meant you failed.”

His hands fist in the back of my shirt while his crying turns raw enough to shake both of us. I tighten my arms and hold him against me, letting his weight drive my hip painfully into the floor.

“You are not stupid,” I say against the side of his head. “You are not embarrassing, and you were never too much while also being less than what she deserved. You loved her with everything you had. She took that love and kept using it to make you apologize for bleeding.”

A shattered sound leaves him.

“I caught her with someone else, and I apologized because catching her hurt her feelings.”