“I’m all in. Do you get that?”
She worried the edge of her lip between her teeth, giving him a barely detectable nod that lacked true conviction.
“You don’t really get it, do you?”
She frowned. “It’s … well, I just told you that I didn’t cry for my dead friend and that I wanted to kill a man. And I’m not done. The story’s not over. I made good on my promise.” Her brow drew tight. “That’s a lot to be ‘all in’ for: the truth, the person I became that day—and to some extent always will be—my twisted mind, and morbid obsession. Can’t you see how hard it is to ‘get’ that any person with even half my sanity would willingly be all in?”
“Well, I am.”
“Well you shouldn’t be!” She shot off his lap.
He felt his heart rip from his chest, confirming that she had it, at least part of it.
“What is wrong with you? I’m getting ready to tell you I killed a man, but I’m not going to stop there. I’m going to give you every sadistic, gory, fucked-up detail about it. And then I’m going to tell you that I walked away and in the past decade I haven’t regretted it for one. Single. Second.”
“It doesn’t change anything.” He felt her agony, the torture, the unforgivable guilt that left a permanent mark on her heart, her conscience, and her self-image.
Jessica huffed a sarcastic laugh. “Really?” She paced the length of the deck several times before settling with her back to the railing, resting on her hands. “I wanted to die after I attacked my mom when she woke me the first morning home from the hospital. I was so messed up. My father worked round the clock to assure Four would never taste freedom again. But he was privileged, born into a family with an obscene amount of money, so he was released on bond. My family was outraged … everyone but me.”
Luke refused to cower under her glare, the one that said she couldn’t imagine how he could love her … all of her.
“His family sent him to stay at their private beach house to protect him from the media. It was almost too easy, too perfect. I’d been a mess for weeks, and Jude knew I needed something more than a guilty verdict. He was my decoy for getting into the beach house and my backup if anything went wrong. But it didn’t. In less than five minutes I had him restrained with zip ties. I was there for two hours and even that was too merciful. Forty-four … I cut him forty-four times, the final cut was to his femoral artery. He begged for mercy. I showed none—not one second of hesitation, not one moment of regret, not one tear.”
He waited for her to continue, but she just looked at him. Whatever awful reaction she expected him to have, he didn’t. She killed the man that stole her emotional innocence and murdered her best friend. He deserved everything he got. It wasn’t the professional opinion of Dr. Jones or even well-thought-out logic. It was simply Luke’s raw human emotion in that moment, his truth.
“He had it coming, Jessica.”
“Bullshit! How can you have a fucking degree in psychiatry and say that? Yes, he deserved to die, but it doesn’t make what I did right.” Her voice cracked as she fisted and pulled at her hair, squeezing her eyes shut. “My hands didn’t shake. Do you get that? I was a damn surgeon with every cut, immune to his pain, immune to his cries, immune to my own humanity.”
He sighed. “What do you want from me?”
She shook her head, tears growing heavy in her eyes. “I want to deserve your love and I want it to make sense.”
“Jessica—”
She wiped her tears and walked back inside. His muscles ached to run after her. But then what?
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jessica imagined telling Luke everything would free her. It didn’t. Saying the words aloud, hearing them herself, and reliving the events only confirmed her insanity—how unworthy she was of anyone’s love. She could be the strongest most confident woman in the world, but it wouldn’t change her past, it wouldn’t change the truth. Edwin Harvey sealed his fate the day he took Claire’s life and Jessica sealed hers the day she took his. She was destined to live without love and the kind of happiness normal people dreamed about. That was her life—her prison.
On the way home she stopped for alcohol, but not her favorite bottle of wine. Beer. She needed beer. The six pack of Heineken called to her. It seemed like the right choice, a tribute to the man she loved but could never truly have. The first bottle tasted like piss and so did the second. By the third, her taste buds were as buzzed as the rest of her, and it went down like a smooth analgesic.