“And I’ve seen nothing but a good guy,” I argued.
A swell of discomfort rolled through him. “Feel like I’m someone different when I’m around you. Think that might be what scares me most. Fact you make me feel like I could be someone different. Someone better.”
“But you loved her? Loved them?”
Agony crawled through his body, a resounding, palpable wave that nearly took me under. “More than anything. They were my life, Mia. My everything. But the rest of who I was? He was a bad guy. He did horrible, bad things.”
His lips pressed together. Blanching. Self-loathing pinching every line on his face.
Dark laughter rumbled from his lips. “You know, they say karma will one day bite you in the ass. Come back and make you pay.” His brow twisted in vicious emphasis. “She got me double, Mia. That bitch took everything. All of it. But she made the ones who weren’t guilty pay. And now . . . now I’m going to exact that same fate on the one she used to make it possible. And when I do? I doubt there’s going to be anything left of me.”
I should be scared. Terrified. Get up and climb out of this bed.
But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but stay there in the strong security of his arms. Sure he would never hurt me. That he was wrong on so many levels.
I blinked, searching his face, trying to keep up. To understand.
Something tender passed through his features, his own eyes confused. He touched my chin, tilting it up as he looked at me closer. “And then here you are, Mia . . . beautiful you . . . making me question everything. My purpose. My reason. But you’ve got to understand I can’t let that go.”
“B-b-but your music? The band?”
I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying.
He cringed. “You want my honest?”
“Yes.” I issued it without hesitation.
“Love them, Mia. They became the only family I have, even when I tried to stop it. Never wanted to use them, but when it comes down to it, that’s what they were. A cover. An excuse. A distraction.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s because you can’t.”
“Or you don’t want me to?”
“I told you that you couldn’t get that deep, Mia. That I couldn’t let you go there. It’s not safe. And I’m not willing to let you get in the middle of what’s coming.”
I was suddenly frantic. A frenzy of words hurling from my mouth, desperate to find a way to meet with this man. To understand what he was really going through. “Who hurt them? Your wife? Your daughter?”
My fingernails scratching across his chest like I could claw my way inside.
Desperately, he squeezed my hand, words choked. “Please. Mia.”
I didn’t know what he was begging for. For me to stop asking questions. To stop making him remember. Or if he was pleading with me to make it better.
I touched him all over his beautiful, hardened face, hit by the realization of what he had done.
Of what he had put himself through the night he’d saved my Penny.
Of what he’d suffered.
And I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t. Tears streamed free, hot down my face. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
My hands were everywhere, and I was peppering soaked kisses to his face.
Adoring him with all the strength that I had.
It was Leif. It was Leif.
And I didn’t know if it was my tears or his as we touched and adored and sought a way to heal.
When the haggard, stricken words fell from his lips and pled against mine. “She was three, Mia. She was three. A baby. A baby.”
His agony cut and slayed.
And I tried to hold us both together.
To keep us from falling apart. But we were already sinking in his devastation.
With the fury that seeped from his pores.
Rage.
Hatred.
Violence.
Maybe it was the first time I truly saw them in him.
That dark, dark intensity fierce in the night.
True and real and terrifying.
His wounds deep.
Forever bleeding.
He set his hand on my cheek, his thumb rushing across my bottom lip. “Do you get it now, Mia? Do you get it? What I’ve been trying to tell you? Why this can’t happen? I already lost what I’d been given to protect. And seeking retribution is all I have left.”
The weight of his confession crushed down on my chest.
He blinked hard, his hold tightening on my face. “And then you look at me. You look at me, and I don’t know how to walk away. Don’t want to hurt you.”
“Then don’t.”
“I can’t make that promise.”
“Can you try?” I was begging. I didn’t care. Because I could feel it—what this had come to be. What he had come to mean.
“And what if I fail you, too?” The question was pure, gutted grief.
“What if you don’t?”* * *I woke up, startled, dread slicking my skin as I shot up to the empty bed beside me. Sheets and blanket rumpled, a divot in the mattress from where he’d lain when we’d fallen asleep.