“I don’t want you to assume blame for anything I’m about to say, even though it happened while I was looking for you. These were my choices. I made them. Understand?”
He only nods.
“I haven’t told anyone since it happened except for Juliet because I left the child with her, but you deserve to know if you think you want to spend forever out here with me.” His eyes go wide and she backtracks quickly, realizing how that sounds. “It wasn’t mine.”
There’s no proper lead-in for something like this. She’s scaring the hell out of him with the way those worry lines between his eyes form a crater.
“Whose kid was it?” he says softly, once she’s allowed a long pause to consume her.
The phantom scent of smoke from her gun wafts up her nostrils, sweeping her back into a memory she’s tried so hard to forget.
Just say it. Get it over with and the urge to throw up all over this fancy blanket will vanish, then you can both move on.
“I killed her parents when I was looking for you. I didn’t know at the time that they had a kid. It was just another outpost. I did what I always do, shoot first and ask questions later. Then…when I was searching the compound, I found her. Sitting in her crib alone. Three, maybe four years old. She was cryingand scared, and I made her an orphan. I know exactly how that feels, and I did it to someone else. She may not be the only one, either. I killed so many people. So many. I thought everyone who was with Silas was evil, and I acted accordingly. Never thought that maybe some of them were just trying to survive. That’s who you want to be with, Wade. They’d call me a murderer back before the turn, but now that almost everyone is, no one says it anymore. It’s still true, though. I took that child’s family from her.”
God, she sounds psychotic. Unaffected and monotone. It takes the reality of what she’s said a moment to catch up to her while she’s locked eyes with Wade, who simply stares like he hasn’t a clue what to say.
She bolts off the bed, grabs her pants off the floor, and tugs them on while fighting the bile in the back of her throat and the lightheaded fuzz that only appears when she’s in the middle of a panic attack.
What has she done? How can she ever look him in the eye again? He’s known that she killed for him, but the extent of it is something else entirely.
She can’t stand the silence anymore, just needs to be outside where the air won’t smother her, and she’s not reminded of how easily she threw away the best thing that’s ever happened to her with a single confession.
She never should have told him. This moment was about finding relief and acceptance for herself. It had nothing at all to do with him, and now she’s ruined everything.
“Kara, wait!” he calls out, finally kick-starting to pull on his clothes and chase after her as she aims for the door.
He grabs her arm just as her hand closes over the knob and she jerks free. “Don’t.”
She shrugs back, her defense mechanism of pushing away anyone who’s getting too close, still as functional as ever, as sheducks out into the sunlight. Tries to suck fresh air into her lungs but they stall and stutter. She’s just as strangled outside as she was on the bed with the man she loves, looking at her like she’s a monster.
Maybe she’s having a heart attack. Only knows that everything feels tight and not even the steady clawing at her chest, so deep blood gathers under her fingernails, won’t uncoil the tension. There’s a snake curled around her and no escape from the pressure.
“Please don’t.”
His voice stops her for how worn and shaky it is, tainted by the wet tears clear on his cheeks when she turns to face him.
His outstretched hand reaching for her as if she might jump is the only thing that makes her realize just how far she’s gotten to the edge of the overlook. A few more steps and she’d be tumbling over without any hope of salvation. Hadn’t meant to go in this direction, but turns out all her paths lead here no matter what.
“Please don’t,” he says, again. “If you go, I go.”
He’s convinced she’s about to launch herself right over on purpose. Keeps taking these tiny steps in her direction as if approaching a jumper on a high rise.
“Wade, I can’t breathe,” she gasps. “I can’t. Help me…help.”
Her thoughts have narrowed past the heart-wrenching admission of what she’s done, into a slim tunnel that’s closing in on her by the second. All that matters now is her next breath and when she reaches for him, because he’s always been the only one who can save her, miraculously, he’s there to catch her as she crumbles. Pulls her in tight and squeezes hard enough to hold all her tattered pieces together. Instead of feeling even more suffocated, his arms are a relief, and his hold a refuge.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. This doesn’t change anything between us, I promise,” he whispersinto her temple, telling her everything she wants to hear like a lifeline tossed into choppy waters.
“How many other families did I destroy and I never knew? I thought they were all the enemy. Maybe they saw me as the monster. You know what’s worse?”
“What?”
“I would do it all again because it worked. I got you back. What does that say about me that I feel the weight of this guilt crushing me, but I still wouldn’t change what I’ve done?” A sob breaks free as he squeezes her tighter.
“You said you brought the child to Juliet?”
She nods against his chest, wiping her tears against the fabric of his shirt. “I’d check on her every few months. Make sure she had what she needed. One of the families there adopted her…and now she has our dog. Nothing I could do would ever make up for what I’ve taken from her. I know how it feels to be an orphan, and now I’ve sentenced someone else to that fate. I started keeping a mental tally after that. Logging every kill I made. I almost ran out of space in my own head.”
