Chapter 60

That love wasn’t something he could give. That it was easier to be angry with his father and the brother he’d never really known. Easier to blame them than to think it was something in himself. Something that meant they could never love him. He would never know the answer to that now, though. They were gone. You have to let them go.

The pain fractured inside him, and for some reason all he could see was Anna in the bathroom the night of the gala. Anna standing tall and fierce. The light that filled her as she’d told him she loved him. The tears on her cheeks and the pain in her eyes as he’d told her he didn’t want it.

Let your parents go. Hold on to her instead. He froze, every part of him going quiet and still. She had given him everything. She had never turned him away. Never told him that she had nothing for him. She had opened her heart, had let him give her all his anger and his pain. Had given him hers, too, without hesitation… Nothing about her had caused him pain