Double Jinx (Wattys2017)

Chapter 31

My mouth fell open in disbelief as Ace barreled ahead desperately, "But you have to understand, I did it for you."

"For me?" I asked breathlessly, "How was it for me?"

"It was to protect you." His tone and eyes implored me to understand, "If I had come out looking the way I did, the police would have known the truth. They would have arrested my father and there would have been a long trial with pointless results. Odds are, he would have gotten only a few years in jail and when he got out, he'd be looking for two small kids to take his anger out on."

I couldn't breathe, "That wasn't your call to make."

"Yes, Gen, it was." Ace said, stepping closer as his hands cupped my face, holding me close. He looked down at me, control written in his stare, "I had to keep you safe. I always have. It was my job to fix my father's mess-"

"No." I shook my head, feeling his hands slide across my cheeks as I whispered, "Damn you, Ace. It wasn't up to you."

His eyes closed as his forehead came down on mine, "I had to protect you."

Anger flared up again. I stepped back from him, clearing my mind as hot tears gathered behind my eyes, "You were eight, Ace. You were just a kid. The only job you had was to protect yourself."

I saw his own anger rise, "So your saying you didn't want me to get you out of that basement? That I should have just said fuck it, gotten myself out and left you to rot down there?"

"What I'm saying is you should have come out when the cops were there." I answered him, my pulse quickening with each passing moment, "That's why I brought them there. The police would have helped. It's their job, you should have let them do their job."

"Because they did it so well the time before that, and the time before that?" Ace argued, his face hard with rage, "Face it Gen, no one was going to help us out of that situation. We had to get ourselves out."

I felt my tears spill over, "But you didn't get out."

He crossed his arms over his chest, "That's not important."

"Yes it is!"

Ace threw his arms out to the side, shouting, "What do you want from me, Gen?!"

A tear escaped from my eye, then another. His voice was so loud, so incredibly powerful. But he was so stubborn. Why couldn't he see what he had done, "I want you to stop lying. I want you to tell me the truth, the whole truth, Ace."

"You want the truth? Fine. The truth is that I did what I thought was right at the time. You deserved to go back to your family. Why is that such a hard concept for you to grasp?"

My cheeks were wet by now. I didn't try to stop my words, "Because you should have gotten out too. Why can't you accept that?"

"Because it's not true." He boomed. His voice shook the room and rattled through my body. He ran his hands down his face, huffing angrily through the crevices of his fingers before he continued on in a tone much quieter than before, "That man hated me, maybe I'll never know why but that doesn't matter. I was his son, he had every right to treat me however he wanted. But he took you for no damn reason. That wasn't right, you weren't his."

I should have stopped but the words forced their way from my mouth without much resistance. I should have turned and left before I said something I'd truly regret. But I was tired of holding myself back to save face. It was my turn to speak my mind, "He hated you because of me. It was my fault. Your mom said it was my fault."