In question, she looked up at me, waiting.
“Who my father made me.” I amended it, not sure if it was true. Because this? It was in my blood. There from the day I was born. Still, I doubted it’d have come to fruition the way it had without the one who’d planted it in me. “But that doesn’t make me innocent of it, Salem. I’ve done the unthinkable.”
Salem blanched, and I could feel her heart rate kick up a notch. “I don’t know if I can believe that.”
I brushed my fingers through her damp hair at the side of her head. “That’s because you’re seeing who I want to be. Who I’m trying to be.”
“Or maybe you haven’t ever had anyone see you for the man you really are.”
Shame built from the depths where I tried to keep it buried.
Softly, she touched my face, but there was a desperation that lined her voice. “Did you choose that life?”
I gave a harsh shake of my head, the words shards as they popped off with a scoff. “I was forced into it with a literal gun to my head. Told it was my time. That it was my duty, and if I didn’t, it would fall on my brothers.”
Too bad I didn’t fuckin’ know our bastard father had already gotten to Trent. Spun him into destruction the same way as he’d done me.
All of us manipulated from the minute we were born.
Those who had tried to stand in the way had been systematically taken out.
Sorrow riddled her gaze. “How old were you?”
I swallowed over the razors in my throat.
My eyes dropped closed, unable to keep looking at her when I made the confession. “Fourteen was my first. My father said it was time to prove my loyalty. He took me with him on a raid, to act as one of his guards. Turned out, I was a good fuckin’ shot, and I sealed my fate that day. I rode with the piece of shit until the day Trent found a way out. Asked us to leave with him to find a different life. A better life.”
I’d thought I’d found that with Kennedy.
Cupping my cheek, Salem urged me to look at her. “And what if you would have refused? Left before Trent found a way out?”
“My father would have killed anyone I cared about and made me watch.”
Those blue eyes were different then. Blazing with an empathy I couldn’t fathom when she should be looking at me with the disgust I deserved. “I know evil, Jud. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived with it. And I know that’s not what’s looking back at me right now.”
Agony slashed through my conscience, that place that was forever going to wail. “But I went back, Salem. I fuckin’ went back thinking I was doing the right thing, and I ended up committing the greatest sin.”
The unforgiveable.
Something I could never take back or make right.
I’d given that truth to Kennedy, and she’d left. There was no chance in hell I could offer it to Salem. The girl barely knew me as it was. But somehow, in that moment right then, I didn’t think I’d been more in tune with another.
Not with Kennedy.
Not once.
Because she’d never looked at me quite like this.
Like maybe there was a chance that I could be saved.
Like there could be redemption for a man like me.
How the hell could I ask for it, though? When I deserved to suffer with the truth of what I’d done for the rest of my life?
“The only thing you can do is live in the here and now, Jud. The past never has anything to offer but chains…chains and regrets and hard lessons. And yes, we can learn from them, but we can’t remain captive to them. You have to live each day for what it has to offer. You don’t have to be alone, either, Jud, I’m right here.”
Fuck, this girl was sweet.
Fierce and sweet and brave, and the only thing I wanted to do was wrap her up and keep her forever.
“Yeah? But for how long? When are you going to be done running, Salem? When are you going to free yourself of the chains?” Misery crawled out with the grunted hope that kept growing stronger.
Salem itched, fiddled with her fingers as she dropped her gaze. “It’s the only thing I want, Jud. To stop the hiding. The running.” Warily, she glanced at me. “But I don’t know how to make that happen when he’s still out there.”
I had to focus on continuing to dry her hair rather than coming unhinged.
The only thing I wanted right then was a name. Would handle everything else.
“Who is he?”
Distress hitched in her throat. “He was my brother’s friend who’d lived across the street from us growing up. Five years older than me. I started sneaking out to meet him when I was sixteen. My grandmother…Mimi…” Salem peeked up at me with her own shame on her face. “She warned me, Jud, she told me he was no good and that I was only asking for pain. And that’s what I got. So much pain. I fell in love with a man who turned out to be wicked—a man who in turn only showed me wickedness—but I didn’t realize what that really meant until it was too late.”