He looks up from his lap and into my eyes. "My friend kissed me as I set the new tank in place. I'd kissed girls before but this was different. There was a need there. It was overwhelming."
I see the pain in his expression. "What then?"
"I can't remember exactly." He straightens his legs, his back stiffening against the couch. "We kissed more. She told me she wanted to do things to me."
He was caught in his own desire. He let a woman into a space that was forbidden. "You forgot about the tank?"
"I forgot everything." He hesitates a moment, then exhales audibly. "I took her to the guesthouse and she blew me. We spent hours in the bed there, doing everything I wanted. When it was over I fell asleep. The next thing I remember was waking up to the smell of weed, she was gone and my father was crying telling me mother was dead."
Chapter 4
"It was a mistake," I say the words to comfort him but their meaning is lost. A mistake is when you forget to pick up a loaf of bread at the grocery store or the due date on the electricity bill passes before you have a chance to pay it. Those are the mistakes we live with, and deal with. Neglecting to check the connections on your mother's oxygen tank isn't a mistake. I don't want to trivialize this. He lost one of the most important people in his life because he neglected to supply her with the one thing she desperately needed.
His hand brushes over his forehead, stopping to rest against his eyes. "It was stupid. Every decision I made that day was idiotic and selfish."
He has beaten himself up over this for more than a decade. It's a part of him now and although the actual day that it happened may be buried in the past, the emotional toll of it is right there, at the edge of who he is. I saw it when he dropped to his knees beneath Noah's accusations. "You were young."
"It's not an excuse." He jerks his hand from mine. "I was responsible for her care. I broke the rules."
Breaking rules is one thing. Being charged with murder is completely different. It's hard to understand how that happened if it was completely an accident. "Why were you charged with murder?"
He recoils physically at the mention of the word. "I was in a daze. The police came to the house with the ambulance."
That's expected. It's protocol. The same thing had happened the evening my neighbor died when I was a child. The loud blare of the ambulance and police cars had charged me awake. I remember standing on the front porch, staring across the street as they wheeled her lifeless body from her home, her husband shaking with sobs following the stretcher.
"You explained what happened, right?" It's logical. It's an open and shut case in my non-legal brain.
His leg shakes slightly and he grabs hold of his thigh to steady it. "I told them I killed her. I told anyone who would listen to me."
I place my hand against my knee. Its instinct is to jump to his to help calm him. I want to reassure him that I understand because up to this point I do. "You felt responsible for her death."
"I was responsible." The words dart out falling into one another in their haste. "I didn't check the hose on the tank. I walked away."
"There's no way you could have known that she'd die, Ben."
"Kayla." He edges slightly to the left, creating a divide between us. "Alarms were sounding, she was struggling and I wasn't there."
I stare at his face. The guilt is woven into who he is, just as the need to heal is there alongside it. "You didn't do it on purpose."
Abruptly, he faces me, his eyes skimming a path from my forehead to my chin. "You believe in me. It's been so long since anyone has."
The words aren't expected and I'm sure my expression can't mask the surprise. I do believe him. I won't boast and say I'm an incredible judge of character because Parker is proof that I'm not, but with Ben it's different. He's a doctor. His life's mission is to help people get well. He's torn up inside over his mother's death. His reaction to Noah's incessant verbal berating wasn't staged. He was broken, he was remorseful and I saw it with my own two eyes. Just as I'm now seeing a man attempting to forgive himself for what happened when he was barely old enough to drive. "I do believe in you, Ben."
He turns towards me, bending his leg on the couch. "Before me mother died, there was a lot of talk about money."
"Money?" I don’t toss the question at him to catch an answer. I know where this is headed. Alexa had unwittingly told me about the inheritance the twins received from their mother's estate when they turned twenty-five.
He leans towards me, his arm reaching across the back of the couch. "My mother changed her will shortly before she died. She included Noah and me in it."
We've shared our bodies in every way the last few weeks. I've held onto him when I've crashed into the most intense orgasms of my life, yet, now as he talks about money and his mother's death it feels more intimate than anything that's taken place in his bed.
"She talked to us about it." His eyes dart down and out of my view. "She didn't go into details about amounts or terms but we understood it was substantial. My mother's family was very wealthy."
I'm listening intently because I know it's going to take me to a place I need to be. He's going to explain why he was arrested for mistakenly forgetting to attach the hose on her oxygen tank. "Was that part of the reason why you were charged with her murder?"
His hands leap to his face. I watch as his body rocks forward slightly. "That's exactly why."
I don't know how to offer comfort so I rest my hand on his calf. "They thought it was a motive?"