It Never Rains (But It Pours)

Forgiveness

Aaron and Esther Levine had the same dark hair as their son, although theirs was streaked with grey. Esther had passed her sculpted cheekbones and slender form to her son, while Aaron was tall, but stocky. He'd given Adam his jawline and his hazel eyes, while Esther's eyes were a pale blue. Both were very religious, but they were still skeptical of the story being told to them by Eli of the largely-unseen battle their relatives claimed to have witnessed between Blake and an unknown number of demons. Again and again, their eyes went to Blake during the story, taking in the way he was dressed, his odd way of speaking, and his gentle smile as Eli, a former combat medic, tended to his wounds.

Blake's torn, bloody shirt was crumpled in a pile on his lap. Normally, Adam would have admired the view, but now, too wound up to sit still, he paced restlessly around the living room. Over and over, his parents questioned everything that had happened, suggesting politely that Blake might just be a clever con man that Adam and Eli were gullible enough to fall for. They even went so far as to suggest that perhaps Blake's wounds were somehow self-inflicted, making Adam clench his fists and breathe hard through his nose to try to contain his growing anger.

"You know what, Aaron?" Eli said finally. "I could not care less if you believe us. It doesn't matter to me if you believe Blake here's an angel or some sort of shyster. The only thing I care about, and the only real reason we were coming out here in the first place, is that it is past time to put this fight between you and your son to rest."

"Put it to rest?" Aaron asked incredulously. His hazel eyes burned with anger as he looked at his son. "My son, my own flesh and blood, threw over his entire family and gave up the future his mother and I scrimped and saved to provide for him for a hussy that we all knew was already cheating on him, and my brother thinks I should just laugh it off!"

"Wait, what?" Adam exclaimed, finally pausing in his pacing. "What do you mean you all knew she was cheating on me?"

"Oh, Adam, we tried to tell you!" his mother exclaimed. "I told you that Behati would use and abuse you and leave you alone with a broken heart! And that's precisely what she did, isn't it? I don't see any wedding ring on your finger, Adam. She threw you over as soon as she didn't need you anymore, didn't she?"

"Yes, you told me that, and I'll admit I was too proud and in love and stupid to listen. But you never told me that you knew she was cheating on me!"

"Would you have listened, Adam? You thought you knew everything, and you wouldn't listen to a word we said! If we'd told you she was cheating, would you have even believed it?"

Everything in Adam wanted to protest, to argue. But then he looked at Blake.

Despite the pain he must have felt and probably continued to feel, Blake had never protested while Eli cleaned the deep, curving gashes in his arm and closed them with skin tapes from a first aid kit. Now Eli was taping a dry dressing over the wound. Blake smiled gratefully at him. Then those amazing, expressive blue eyes turned to Adam, and his smile softened.

Blake had risked everything to give Adam this one chance to make things right. He couldn't let it go to waste.

Adam took a deep breath, turned and stood before his parents, his hands behind his back as he looked them in the eyes. "I'm sorry," he said. "I screwed up. I was stupid, and I never should have turned my back on you. Mom, you're right. I didn't want to listen, and nothing you could say could have changed my mind. And Dad? I was so angry about the way you took your belt to me and what you said to me that my pride wouldn't let me contact you, not even when Behati used me up and left me behind, just like the two of you warned me she'd do. But I forgive you for that. We were all angry. We were all upset. And not one bit of it mattered tonight when I got that phone call, when I believed you'd both been shot and wouldn't make it through the night. Because when I thought I was going to lose you, I realized just how stupid I'd been. We're family, and life is short, too short to let it go by without realizing what matters the most. Without doing whatever I can do to make it right. So, I'm sorry. I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me, but even if you can't, I wanted you to know." He shrugged, the silence from his parents making him fidget anxiously. "That's all."