I wanted to touch him. To smooth my fingers over the tension there until he finally relaxed. But I had to know… “Were you in love with her?”
“Jesus, no—” He turned to me, piercing me with a hard stare. “No.”
“Then why?”
“She’s never going to walk again. She was suffering enough.”
“And the rest? The money, the house, college…”
“I should have caught it,” he said, his voice low and full of frustration.
The man wanted to rewrite history.
Didn’t we all?
But if he did—if I did—would we ever have gotten to this place? Would we ever have found each other?
I didn’t want to go back and rewrite one damn ache from my past if I missed this.
Missed him.
“What should you have caught?”
“The fake. I should have caught it and I didn’t. That was my mistake.”
“The only crime here was hers.”
“So what?” he snapped at me. “I should have turned her in then?”
Ah, there it is. “I didn’t say that, but the fact that you did says plenty.”
He squeezed the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white as he pulled into the driveway, rolled to a stop, and turned off the engine.
He wouldn’t reach for me. Not right now, not like this. But I would reach for him.
I flipped the middle console up and slid across the bench seat until my body pressed to his.
He didn’t let go. His hands flexed. His arms locked and rigid as he stared off at something I couldn’t see. Something from another time. Another place.
Cupping his chin, I turned him to me.
“Tell me,” I said quietly.
“What?” he said, his eyes unfocused as the past held him in its merciless grip.
“The part you don’t want to say.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat. The echo of tightly restrained pain…and maybe the beginning of his surrender to it. “I don’t want it to touch you.”
“You don’t need to protect me,” I said as I stroked my fingers through the hair at his temple. Over and over, my nails scraping against his scalp until he leaned into me and his eyelids slid closed.
“The last person I loved and turned in, ended up dead,” he said, his deep voice gritty with pain.
I brushed my thumb along that deep dimple and over his cheek, constantly soothing—him and me. “You reported your father.”
“And brother,” he whispered.
“This is not your fault.”
“It feels like it,” he grated out. “Every single day, every single minute it feels like it was all my fault.” His eyes slid closed and he sighed before opening them again. Just a tiny release of the pressure swelling in him. “You know, our names were always this running joke,” he said with a humorless laugh. “Cain and Abel. A good brother and evil brother, but my mother didn’t care; she just liked the names.”
“And you think you’re the evil brother?”
“Are you saying he was?” he said, his tone cutting, the last of his defenses lashing out.
It’s the only part of him I can keep safe now.
That’s what he’d said.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” I said, keeping my voice soft, knowing he wasn’t attacking me; he was still protecting his brother—his brother’s memory. “He was a child and his father didn’t protect him.”
“I didn’t protect him.”
“No.” I took his face in my hands and turned him to me. “You were a child too. And your father was supposed to protect you all. Your brother paid a horrible price for your father’s mistakes—and the price you paid—the price you continue to pay is just as high.”
“You don’t understand—”
“I don’t understand? My mother had no ties. She moved me from town to town on a whim while I hid the tears from the heartache of leaving one more town, one more friend, a school I loved. My mother was kind, loving, and she adored me—but she was a fuckup.”
“Mayhem—”
“It’s okay. It’s true. Every day watching you put up with the judgment here to do what’s best for the people you love tore away the romanticism of what she did. She didn’t end up in jail; she didn’t put me in harm’s way with drug dealers and criminals, but the wounds cut deep just the same.” I pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth and breathed him in as my heart ached for both of us. “When it got hard, she ran. You’re weird,” I said brushing my thumb over his warm bottom lip. “You run when you think they’ve made it easier on you, but maybe you run because when it’s easy, you have no choice but to stare down the demons you’ve been ignoring for so long.”
“What are your demons?” he asked quietly.
“I’ve been afraid to speak up, to rock the boat, because I’m so damn scared I would lose what little hold I had on this town because I’ve never had a home,” I said, surprised how easily they rolled off my tongue now when I’d never dared to voice them before.
He did that.
He gave me strength and confidence to finally admit them without fear.
The same strength and confidence he gave me on the track.
But my insecurities, between never having roots and losing Tilly for so long, were a bit more distinct than his making them easier to tackle.
His twisted around one another. Loss, betrayal, guilt, and anger he’d sought refuge from on the track and in this sport. The tug of home offering comfort, but also stark truth.
His other half—he was never coming back.
And all of it twisted in Lana’s accident and his habit of protecting her above all.
With Lana finally coming clean, it only left lasting fragments of the parts of his past to focus on. The parts of him still left broken.
He looked into my eyes, a hint of a smile there, his face softening just a bit. “You don’t have to keep fighting to hold on, because they’re holding on to you.”
He may be right, but I still couldn’t see it. Couldn’t trust the bond completely. Not quite yet.
But
