“I never wanted to leave you.”
Our hushed voices were contained in the space between us, trapped by the four walls.
As if we could admit anything, and the wood and plaster and ghosts would hold all our secrets.
I stared at the lines and curves of her gorgeous face in the shadows, and I finally found the courage to ask her the one question I’d been both desperate and terrified to ask her all along. “You named her Bailey.”
Sadness streaked across her features.
I wanted to reach out, wipe it away, but I needed to know. It’d been gnawing at me like a bitch since the first time I’d heard her utter the name.
Her fingers were back on my face, eyes so intense as she searched for understanding. “I told you, sometimes dreams don’t die. Sometimes they don’t burn out even when the light is taken away.”
“I’d wanted it, Faith. To share that with you. I did.”
Bailey and Benton.
Bailey and Benton.
Bailey and Benton.
Old hopes spun around us, sucking me back to that time, like the girl was casting her hopes amongst the rose bushes.
“I’ll love her the same,” I murmured. Hard and soft. Lined with truth.
“How does you saying that break and heal my heart all at the same time?” she asked, a wisp of grief working its way into her words.
My grief.
Hers.
Ours.
“I promise, Faith. I will. I’ll love her like she was mine.”
“Is it wrong I wanted her to be? That the second I saw her, that name came out of my mouth before I could stop it? One look at her, and I was in love, Jace. The level of it was something I’d only felt one other time, and it was dropping free like a claim.”
Regret prowled beneath my flesh.
“If I could have stayed, I would have. I had to leave. I had to.”
“Because we broke into this house?” She searched for the answer in my eyes, her own horror there, like she could have been the one responsible. “That’s the reason you went to prison? Because we broke in here that night?”
“Partly,” I told her, unable to stomach the idea of actually telling her why. What I’d done. The effects that had spiraled through the years.
“Why didn’t you come back for me?” she whispered.
There was no missing the hurt that slashed across her face. So goddamned real I could feel it spear through the center of me.
“I tried. Sometimes we’re too late. Sometimes no matter what we intend, we fall short.”
“Oh, God, Jace.” Regret swam with the love in her eyes.
I tried to give her the only encouragement I could find. “But we can’t regret our lives or our pasts or the decisions we’ve made. We can only learn from them and live in the day. For right now. For forever.”
“Just . . . promise me one thing.”
I took her hand that rested on my chest, brought it to my mouth, and brushed kisses across her knuckles. “What’s that?”
“Don’t walk away from me for me without telling me why you’re doin’ it. Don’t make that wrong decision for me. Not again. Don’t ever hide what’s happening in your life to protect me. You should have let me make that decision.”
“I won’t,” I promised her.
Silence climbed back into the room. Like the questions crawled in from under the crack in the door.
Penetrating and invading.
“I need you to tell me everything you know about Joseph,” she finally said, her plea small and insecure.
If Joseph weren’t already dead, I might jump from that bed, hunt him down, and kill him myself for that sound alone.
For the terror that trembled through her body.
I knew there’d come a time when we had to lay it all out. Mack’s warning from earlier rambled through my mind and clawed at my consciousness.
“You have to tell her everything.”
I knew I did.
But how was I supposed to put her through that?
I wanted to protect her.
Wrap her up and hold her and promise her that everything would be okay.
Reaching out, I yanked her closer. “Come here.”
I rolled onto my back so I could envelop her in my arms.
She rested her cheek on my chest, angled so she could still look up at me.
“It’s going to be okay, Faith. I promise you.”
Mindlessly, she ran her fingertips over my stomach, her thoughts going far. “You know that’s what Joseph told me, too? When I asked him what was happening, that’s what he told me.”
A bolt of agony slanted through my spirit. I shifted so I could look at her better. “Is that all he said?”
Her head began to slowly shake, taken back to that time. I wanted to grab her and pull her out of it, tell her to stay with me, right here, in this moment, but I needed to know.
I kept my mouth shut and let her continue. “One night, he got up from the dinner table with the excuse that he needed to go back into the office. It was the same excuse he’d been making more and more. I’d finally called out after him—to his back as he was walkin’ out the door—and asked him to just tell me. Whatever it was, to just tell me.”
Insecurity bunched up in her shoulders. “I guess I’d figured he was cheatin’ on me. Maybe it makes me pathetic, but I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least since sex between us always seemed kind of . . . unfulfilling. Our relationship was . . . different, Jace. When we first got together . . .”
She trailed off, searching for what to say, her eyes blinking up at me for understanding. “He was there for me when you walked away. You have to know I had no idea where you’d gone or why. Had no idea you’d been sent to prison. I thought you left me. Joseph kept me company, being a friend and telling me one day I wouldn’t miss you so much.”
Sadness blanketed her spirit. “About nine months after you left, he kissed me. Right out by the roses. I started to cry because it felt so wrong. So off. I told him I was always goin’ to love you, that time wasn’t going to change that, and he told me that was okay. That he’d love me enough for the both of us.”
She winced. “In time, I did love him. Different from how I loved you. It was a comfortable kind of love.”
I wanted to claw my eyes out at the vision. Joseph with her. Touching her. I’d bet my ass for Joseph it hadn’t been unfulfilling at all. The fucker had no idea how to treat her right, and she’d taken that inadequacy on herself.
Or maybe . . . maybe she really just hadn’t ever felt a spark.
Regret filled her sweet gaze. Like any of this could ever possibly be her fault. “But things had started to change. He’d been acting different for about six months before he was killed.”
Her eyes narrowed, like she was trying to look into the past and figure out what she’d missed. “He was acting anxious. He had always been a little jittery. Watching over his shoulder. But something had changed. Something that kept him up at night. I tried to ignore it. To chalk it up to the fact that we all have different moods, and that we’re all going to go through different phases in our lives. I’d thought it would pass.”
She met my gaze. “That night? After I’d finally confronted him and told him to tell me what was wrong. He came back just before dawn. He’d been drinking . . . obviously upset. He’d said he wanted to erase you from my memory. He promised he was going to take care of us, that he was going to fix everything. Crying when he said everything was goin’ to be all right.”
Guilt blazed in her eyes when she looked up at me. “I ignored it, Jace. I ignored it and shoved it away as some drunken nonsense he’d been spoutin’. Ignored it because he’d said he wanted to erase you from me, and that was the last thing I wanted him to do. I ignored it harder when I got the call that he’d been killed.”
Her fingernails clawed into my skin. “I should have known. I should have said something.”
She choked over a cry. “How could he do somethin’ that would put Bailey in danger? I don’t understand, Jace. I don’t understand.”
I hugged her closer, desperately trying to release the confession, but the words were hanging on as tight as a man about to go overboard.