Belle cut a hard look towards her brother.
“I’m just gonna, uh, go back to my room,” TJ said, disappearing up the stairs.
Belle walked into the kitchen shaking her head. Memories of Bently kissing her trampled over her wounded heart. She pulled out a chair at the table and sat. The muscles in her body ached. Every part of her felt tired and sore. Her nerves frayed as a million questions swirled in her mind like a tornado.
“Can I make you some tea, or coffee?” Bently asked quietly as he approached.
“I’d rather you explain what you meant. You’re a police officer. I understand your job is dangerous. I also understand the risks of being with a cop.” Of loving one. Whatever his fears were, this went deeper. “Why didn’t you just tell me? I had a right to know.”
He took the seat next to her and faced her. “I’ve never told anyone this before.” He cleared his throat and took a deep breath as if mustering the courage. “My earliest memories as a child were of my father beating my mother. Once I got a little older, I mean like three or four, I’d try to make him stop. I’d yell or go at him.”
Belle’s gaze never wavered as she listened to a story not unfamiliar to her own. Her heart broke for the boy Bently had been as he recounted the trauma.
“I was never strong enough. I begged my mother to leave him. But she said to me, ‘Bently, you don’t understand. I love him. I can never leave him. Even if I did, there’s no way I could take care of you kids alone.’” He shook his head. “I never wanted anything to do with love after that. Not if it could hold someone captive, against all better judgement. She chose him over us. The woman who was supposed to love us and care for us.”
His parents had picked everything else over him. Destruction and chaos over love and peace. The picture of Bently Evans was becoming clearer. Belle reached out and put her hand over his.
He looked up at her, pain and conflict evident in his expression. He wrapped his warm hand around hers as he continued. “I told her I could get a job and support them, but she said I was just a child. I wasn’t strong enough when they needed me. She . . . she took her own life when I was sixteen. Jasmine found her.”
Belle sat forward, her need to support him pulling her closer to him like a magnet. No words of comfort would erase the pain of losing a parent, much less one who left by choice. The only thing she could do was sit with him in this heartache while he released what he’d held inside all his life.
“A year later, Jasmine came running into the mechanic shop where I worked—Link’s place. It’s off Main Street. Anyways, I’d never seen her more scared in my life. I dropped what I was doing and told her to go to Dre and Remy’s and raced home.” He closed his eyes and wiped a stray tear from his eye that hadn’t yet fallen.
“I thought Mikel was dead.” Bently choked out. His expression was grim. “There was blood everywhere. His face was so swollen, I barely recognized him. My father had almost killed him. I knew in that moment that I needed to end the bastard myself before he could hurt them any further. I thought that was my only way. We’d had CPS involved before but that meant separation and group homes. Jasmine wouldn’t be safe without me. Last time we’d spent time as wards of the state, she’d been hurt by the family that took her in. I couldn’t chance it.”
Bently shook his head. “We stayed in some abandoned factory while he healed. Jasmine remained at Dre’s parents’ house. I asked Mikel what set Dad off. He’d always hated Jasmine more—if that was possible. Because our mother had an affair with another man. My sister was the product of that. The look in Mikel’s eyes when he told me what our father had done to Jasmine . . .” Bently’s voice cracked as his expression crumpled in utter devastation.
Belle sucked in a sharp breath. She knew better than to ask for details. She knew firsthand what that look meant.
He cleared his throat, his eyes snapping to hers. “I waited for Mikel to heal and plotted the million different ways I’d do it.” He searched her face.
He wasn’t looking to her to absolve him—she knew firsthand how trauma changed your brain, how it made you consider things you wished you never had to in order to survive. She understood too well the deepest darkest depths of the wickedness of humanity. Sometimes there was no good choice. Sometimes it was kill or be killed.
“I’m still here,” she said, placing her hand over his, assuring him she wouldn’t be scared away by his darkness, that they were alike in more ways than he could ever imagine.
Maybe they were both broken. But just maybe their shattered pieces could come together and make something whole.
Chapter 39
Belle
“I went there to do it,” Bently said.
Belle held her breath. Was she ready to find out if he had in fact murdered his father? Would she be able to look at him the same?
Yes.
She nodded, urging him to continue.
“But I was too late. It was already done.” Bently’s brows drew together and his shoulders sank.
“And you feel guilty that it wasn’t you?”
His eyes snapped to hers. “How did you know?”
“I’d feel the same way in your position, but only for one reason,” she said, her mind racing and her heart pounding. That wasn’t just guilt over wanting to murder his own flesh and blood glinting in his eyes. It was failure.
“What reason?”
“If someone I loved,
