“Tell me something,” she found herself saying. “Tell me something I’d never guess about you in a million years.”
His brows pulled together so slowly, it was almost comical. “Why?” He took another long sip of his tea. “For more blackmail? I already told you I’d burn the contract and fix the dating disaster at the office. You don’t need any more ammo.”
“It’s for the promotion you didn’t agree to yet.”
He studied her, his eyes burning right through her. He shifted uneasily in his chair and when he opened his mouth, he shocked the hell out of her. She never expected him to say something personal. On any level. His words didn’t just cross that line, they obliterated it completely.
“My name isn’t really Blaze Hanson. I grew up in Chicago to parents who hated each other. My mom left when I was nine. Couldn’t take it anymore. My dad was a drunk. He was a good-looking fucker so he screwed around with anyone stupid enough to listen to his tale of woe. He liked to pretend I didn’t exist. Those were the good nights. The other nights, when he suddenly remembered he had a kid, he liked to blame me for all his troubles and knock me around. I always swore to myself that I’d kill him. That I’d get back at him for hating me and hurting me. He was the one who broke my wrist. It didn’t happen snowboarding like I told everyone. And then, one night, he called me to pick his drunk ass up from the bar. I was seventeen. Just got my license a few months before and suddenly he wanted to try and be a pal and ask me for rides. Do the right thing and shit. I liked driving. Always did. He bought me this old muscle car. Said we’d restore it, like he actually gave a shit. I was driving sober. The bastard who hit us was drunk. Go fucking figure. My father didn’t have a seatbelt on, and he ejected through the windshield. He died instantly. So, I guess, I made good on my promise. I killed my father.”
CHAPTER 18
Blaze
Silence. Stone. Cold. Silence.
Colette’s eyes widened with shock and then brimmed with tears. What could she do except sit there with a stunned, horrified look on her face?
Why the hell had he just felt the need to blurt the longest, most terrible, verbal shit he could think of? It was like he’d attacked her with an onslaught of truth. Like it burst out of him, from that dark place he kept buttoned down. Except the barriers had finally burst and it came spilling over, filling up the kitchen and space between them, soaking through their souls and drowning them both in the flash flood.
He gave his head a shake before Colette could slide from her stool and do anything as wretched as attempt to comfort him. “I don’t know why I said that.”
“Why? Wasn’t it true?” Her hand twitched on her mug, but she refused to look at him. Probably because she was blinking so hard that it looked like her eyelashes would fly off. She didn’t want him to see her cry. Which was a good thing, because he didn’t want to make her cry.
“Yes. All of it.”
“That’s not- it’s… you didn’t kill him,” she said softly. Her hand curled around the mug a little harder, her knuckles turning white. “That other driver did. Which is why you aren’t in jail. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were sober.”
“Oh, I know I was sober.” His voice came out like it was on auto-pilot. Stiff. Emotionless. “I didn’t actually choose to make it happen, but I wanted it to, and after it, I was fucking glad.”
Colette’s quick intake of breath said it all. She was disgusted with him. Good. That made two of them. He hadn’t told another living soul about the shit that happened to him. No one knew about his life before he was Blaze Hanson, billionaire. That was the thing with money. It could literally buy you anything, even a fresh start.
“He had life insurance, if you can believe that. My mother actually took out the policy long before she left, and he kept it up. Which was fucking hilarious, because there were so many nights he didn’t bother to put food on the table. Always had a bottle though, or a fucking lady friend on the side that he could spoil. I got a hundred grand. Spent nothing on the funeral. Literally. I had him cremated, since he deserved to fucking burn for how he lived. Hell isn’t guaranteed, so I wanted to make sure it happened for him in some form. I was eighteen a few weeks later and got the money pretty much right away. I had a friend who got a job at a bank and he helped me make a few investments with half of it. A year later, they’d paid off. I went to a shit college and got a computer science degree. All the while I was dabbling in the stock market, making hand over fist, because I was pretty good at that shit. Street smarts, I guess. I started developing apps as a project in college and got fucking good at it. Like you, I guess, but I had some training. The rest, you probably know, because when I graduated, that’s when I disappeared. The old me. I had enough money to reinvent myself. Go into business. Get a different name. A different ID. Even a different degree and a different background. I had a few people working on that and it’s all fucking fake. All traces of me were erased the day Blaze Hanson was born.”