Page 226 of Broken Saint
He stares at me with a blank, serious expression. I think he wants to intimidate me, but he’s going to need to try harder.
“Is this really what you want?” he asks, glancing around my disaster of a home again.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I had to answer to you.”
“You don’t. I just need to check a few things before I tell you why I’m here. I might think you’re a kickass football player, Colt. But quite honestly, you’re a bit of an asshole for the way you’re treated Ella over the past few years.”
My mouth opens, ready to spit back a response, but I quickly discover that I don’t have one.
He’s right.
No, it’s worse than that. He’s not even close to explaining how much of an asshole I’ve been.
Despite everything, I fell in love with her.
Being with her is too easy.
The way she makes me feel…She makes me a better person. She makes me happier. She makes me…believe…
“Fuck,” I breathe. “I know. I have been an asshole.”
“Huh,” Benny mutters, making me frown. “Didn’t think it would be that easy to get you to confess to that.”
“Things with me and Ella are complicated,” I muse.
“Yeah, I get that. Relationships always are. Or so I hear,” he tags on.
He reminds me a lot of me as a college kid, diagnosis aside.
“But here’s the thing,” he continues, making me second guess my last thought. “Sometimes, they’re fucking worth fighting for.”
His words hit me like a baseball bat to my chest.
“Ella is worth fighting for,” he adds.
“Benny,” I warn.
“Look, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I know anything about the two of you. But there is one thing I do know, and that’s that my sister fucking loves you, man. She always has. Probably always will. I fucking hate that because of how you’ve treated her, but it’s the truth.
“I get it. There are things that for whatever reason are holding you back. But is being apart what you really want?”
My heart pounds hard against my ribs as he holds my eyes in a hard stare.
I don’t say a word, but apparently, I don’t need to.
“Exactly as I thought,” he mutters to himself. “Listen, I don’t want my big sister to be with an asshole who doesn’t treat her right. She’s had her fair share of that already. But I also don’t want her to settle for second best and a man who doesn’t really have her heart. She deserves better than that.”
“She does,” I say quietly. “She deserves the world.”
“My point exactly. So…are you going to give it to her?”
Silence falls between us as the weight of his question presses down on my shoulders.
My heart aches, my chest constricts, and my fists curl so tight my nails cut into my palms.
I stare at him, half hoping he can’t see me freaking the fuck out and half hoping he can.
I don’t want to try to convince him that I don’t love Ella. I do. More than anything.