Chapter 16

Alex POV

I wasn't angry. How could I be angry? It was just. No matter how fucked up things got, you could only get truly angry if you thought that things weren't fair and just. I deserved every bit of this. Ember was fate, slapping me in the face and telling me it hadn't forgotten what I'd done. Two and a half decades had gone by and I'd successfully hidden. My guilt was in the past and I was living my quiet grey life. No love, no glory, no fame but also no pain.

Then she strode through the wreckage of my life, making me remember what was possible and what I had lost. I'd fucked women over the past twenty-five years. I'd had good times since my world ended. There were even times when I was happy. But Ember was the first thing since they died that was real. She was the first new person that I felt that I might be able to love. And she turned out to be my son's best friend and I was such a crappy father that I didn't even know she existed.

Well played, Fate.

I couldn't go back to my bed