Maybe I really was naïve. Nothing but the same stupid little girl who’d convinced Jace to sneak into this house.
Jace shook his head. “If that was all it’d been, I’d have gotten away with a slap to the wrist.”
He swallowed hard. “The day I got taken away, I made them promise me . . . made them promise me that neither of them would go anywhere near Steven again. I didn’t know he’d already sunk his claws into Joseph before I left, didn’t know that Joseph was the one who put the drugs in my bag. I found out the day I was released from jail. I still don’t know why he did it. He never would confess that he was the one who actually did.”
Shock jarred me back. “What do you mean never confessed it? You talked to him?”
Nervously, Jace yanked at the front of his hair. “Yes, Faith, I talked to him.”
Agony sliced through the center of me.
As if it were hacking through the two men I had loved.
Because I hadn’t known Jace had even talked to Joseph in all those years.
Joseph had told me Jace was dead to him.
Dead to us.
It’d hurt, but I’d had to accept that Jace had left me behind. Left us behind.
I’d accepted it and lived my life the best way I knew how under those circumstances.
The fact it was so different sent ripples of anguish splintering through me like shockwaves.
“He came to me through the years for money when he’d get himself into trouble.”
I blinked at Jace. “What do you mean, he came to you? You saw him?”
I clutched the towel around me, scrambling back a little. I couldn’t stop the horror in the words. The accusation in them.
But Jace hadn’t mentioned that he’d ever seen Joseph. Not once in all this time he’d been here.
In all we’d shared.
And Joseph sure had never said he’d seen Jace in all the years that we’d been married.
Hurt bottled in my chest, and unrest whipped through the atmosphere. These fierce lashes of anxiety and worry that clawed through my bones. As if I was about to get sucked away into a vortex.
A hurricane I couldn’t escape. One that would destroy everything.
“He . . . you talked to h-h-im?” I asked again through a stuttered whisper, still unable to process how that was even a possibility.
Pain streaked through Jace’s face.
Torture.
“Yes. Through the years, yes, Faith. I talked to him. And I knew he’d gotten himself in deep. That he was living the way he shouldn’t. He’d come to me when he needed something. When he’d gotten himself into trouble and didn’t know how to get himself out of it.”
Sorrow rushed.
How could Joseph have hidden this from me?
How could I not have seen it?
Anger rose inside me, this slow beat through my blood that increased with each thrum.
Something horrifying flashed through Jace’s being.
The way his big body shuddered in the moonlight, his voice going so low.
“I warned him, Faith. I warned him that I was done. That I wouldn’t get involved anymore.”
My throat went dry, and I swore that I could feel my heart shriveling right in the center of me. “What do you mean?”
“He came to me . . . and . . . fuck.”
Guilt twisted his face in a grimace of his own torment.
“I sent him away, Faith. He came to me. Begged me to help him. Told me they were going to kill him, and I sent him away.”
All the air was gone.
The empty space it’d left swelled with the most gutting kind of pain.
“No,” I whimpered. “You wouldn’t do somethin’ so horrible. I don’t believe you.”
Jace’s voice turned rough with the admission. “I sent him away. I told him I didn’t give a shit what he’d gotten himself into. That it was his fault, and I was no longer responsible. I’d warned him that I was done. I warned him.”
The last cracked on his own grief.
Grief that was overwhelming.
Slamming between the two of us.
The awareness of what could have been stopped.
Jace brushed his fingers over my face. My face that was pinched with the horror of it all.
With Joseph’s choices.
With Jace’s.
With what he’d ignored.
What could have been stopped.
“I’m so fucking sorry.”
I winced against the feeling of his hand on my face.
Was that another betrayal, too?
Another lie?
“You . . . you knew they were gonna kill him, and you turned your back on him? You let him die?”
It was all a spill of horror. Pain and guilt and remorse as tears broke free and streaked down my cheeks.
“You came here . . . knowing all of this? What Joseph was into? And you didn’t tell me any of it? Why didn’t you tell me, the first day you showed up here, what you knew? Why didn’t you tell me?”
The last left me on a screech of confusion. With too many emotions binding up my insides. The reality of everything feeling as if it was goin’ to finally bury me.
Jace was tied to Joseph in a way I’d never known. Had had an inside into everything Joseph had been involved in, even a say in it. All the while, both of them had left me a fool floundering in the dark.
Shame.
Jace had always worn some of it.
But I wasn’t sure I’d seen him wear as much of it as he was right then.
But this was the quiet kind.
Because it was real.
Maybe for the first time, he had something to feel shameful for.
I clutched the towel to my chest. “How could you have kept that from me?”
A sob wrenched free.
One for Joseph.
One for me.
One for Jace.
How could we ever get past all these things?
“I loved you. Trusted you. I don’t understand how you could just lie to me this way.”
He sat back on his heels. “I told you a long time ago I’d never be good enough for you. Do you finally believe it?”
That was the problem. I didn’t want to believe it. But the truth glared back at me.
Both men who I’d loved, trusted, had lied to me.
Kept me in the dark.
Made me a fool and put my family in danger.
I stared at the man I could feel crushing my heart with each second that passed.
“It was never a question of you being good enough for me, Jace. It was a question of what you did with your life. The choices you made. And you made the choice to lie to me.”
Those fingers fluttered across my face. So soft and full of sorrow.
His and mine.
I didn’t think either of us knew what to do with that.
“I knew you would hate me before I left here. But coming here? Protecting you and Bailey. I won’t regret that. Not for a second.” Jace’s expression crumpled. Just as quickly, determination raced in. “I have to go. End this. For the two of you. Felix is going to be parked outside as the lookout. I know you hate me. I accept that.”
His voice twisted in deep emphasis. “I just want you to know that my love for you? It was always the truth. I could never tell a lie that great.”
Then he pushed to standing, turned his back, and strode out the door.
Grief crashed into me.
Stunning and extreme.
Annihilating.
My body swayed, and I slipped from the bed and onto my knees.
Sobs ripped out of me.
Loud and pummeling.
Blows against the walls that echoed and shook.
I wanted to scream out for him. Beg him to stay.
A new kind of fear rumbled through my spirit as I heard him grab a few things from the room next door, his hesitating footsteps out in the hall before he hustled down the stairs.
The front door slammed closed with the type of finality I didn’t ever want to consider.
Forty-One
Jace
Pain lanced through me.
Cut after cut.
Excruciating.
I stumbled out into the darkened hall of the old house. I swore that I could hear ghosts screaming from where they were chained to the walls. Metal clanging and scraping. Shrill howls as spirits begged.
An echo of Faith and me.
A wail from Joseph.
A tangle of thieves and liars and cheats.
What had I done?