“Sometimes I think the only way to avoid paying for the sins of your father in perpetuity is to try and atone for them. Other times I think maybe there’s just nothing that can be done. I’m not sure if it’s even really Dad’s sins I’m trying to atone for.”
Understanding passed between them. He had never talked to Denver about the things he’d done for their dad, and Denver had never talked to him about his own place in all of it. Neither had Daughtry, though he knew Daughtry carried around some pretty heavy demons considering the guy had gone into law enforcement like it might wash all his sins clean to outright join a different team.
“I don’t have any advice for you,” Justice said. “Mostly because I haven’t figured out how I feel about any of it. I worked the ranch, Denver. Because you love it, mostly. Because it matters. Because this is where we managed to make a little something that looks like a family. But I think it’s atonement I’m after.”
There was something that made him angry. Viscerally angry for the young boy he’d been. That boy hadn’t hurt anybody. That boy had been hurt by the people who were supposed to take care of them. It was noble, he supposed, Denver’s quest for atonement. But it just wasn’t the same for Justice. He didn’t feel guilt. He felt rage. He felt like he had been used. Like his childhood wonder and trust had been crushed before it ever had chance to really take root.
“You know what I resent? That we never really got to have a childhood. Because everything centered around Dad.” That was a simplistic way of saying it, but it was close enough to the truth.
“Yeah. I resent more being recruited to... to hurt the community.”
“I get that. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to grow up. I want to get something back for that kid. Doing what feels good... it’s definitely not something I got to indulge in back then.”
“How’s that going for you?”
“Just perfect,” he said.
He thought about last night. Was that his problem? When he got seized with the urge to do something that felt good he couldn’t just turn it off? Was that why he’d said those things to Rue? Lord Almighty. He hoped not. He hoped that he was better than that; he just had a suspicion he might not be. Was that his real thing? Was he running around acting like a giant man-child because when he was a kid he had been full of fear and uncertainty? Because he hadn’t had fun?
Well. Maybe. But then, there were other things about him that he supposed flew in the face of that. He also liked his house to be in perfect order. And he liked to limit the traffic in it. Except for Rue, of course.
Though... the King household certainly had not been in order during his childhood. Which made him wonder how much of that went straight back to control now.
A freak in the sheets, a control freak on his home turf.
It all painted a picture he didn’t think he liked very much.
It made him wonder how much of a right he had to be angry at Rue. Most of it, to be fair, was already directed at himself.
But she put up with a hell of a lot when it came to him. A lot of his own issues. A lot of his broken pieces. The last couple of weeks had been devoted to her, and he didn’t think he was doing that great of a job.
“These done?” he asked, gesturing to the steaks.
“Yep,” said Denver.
“For what it’s worth,” he said to his brother. “You’ve done a good job.”
“I’m not Daughtry.”
“You’re handling it the way you see fit.”
“Yeah. For whatever that’s worth.”
“I think it’s worth a lot, actually.”
“Thanks, little brother. I appreciate it. Even if I am pathologically averse to showing it.”
“Well. How the hell would we know how to show any kind of appreciation?”
He took a plate of steaks into the house, and Rue was standing inside the living room, talking to Bix and Arizona. Fia and Landry weren’t coming tonight, because they had gone down to the coast for the weekend with Lila. Of course Lila was thrilled to be having a sibling, but Landry and Fia were now working overtime to make sure she didn’t feel sidelined. After all, she might be their daughter, but she was still relatively new to living with them. They didn’t want her to think she was taking second place to the baby they were going to raise from day one.
It amazed him that his brother thought of things like that, given their own terrible parenting situation.
Maybe that was the perk of being the youngest. Not that Landry hadn’t had his share of struggle. But their dad was more or less identified as the hideous narcissist he was by then.
At least, that was how Justice saw it.
“They invited me to the next town hall,” Rue said.
