Everything inside me wanted to cross the room and hug him. He obviously needed it.But does he want it, Grace?
“Her house,” he whispered. “I think that was the part that set him off. Because that was when he… he hit her with the bottle.”
I gasped and covered my mouth.
“It was so hard it threw her into the cabinets, and she fell.” His next breath was shaky. “But the bottle broke, and there was glass everywhere. The whole room stank of tequila, and that was when he gotreallyangry.”
Reallyangry? I set my feet on the floor, barely on the bed anymore.Let him finish.
“He wasn’t angry because he’d hurt her, or because she was bleeding on the floor. But because she’dmade himbreak his bottle. Because now he didn’t have anything left to drink.”
Oh god.Tears pricked at my eyes. Part of me didn’t want to know how the story ended, but he needed to get it out, and I needed to be there for him when he did. How could he think any of this made him a bad person?
“I called 9-1-1, but he had the neck and shoulders of the bottle in his hand, and he went after her with it.” His voice cracked. “I got between them. Told him to stop. Begged him.”
He’d been akid.
“He took a swipe at me,” Garrett’s hand moved to his forearm, rubbing at it through his sleeve. “He sliced my arm open, then my shoulder, and kept swinging. I don’t remember exactly how it all happened, but I tried to get the broken bottle away from him, tried to keep him away from her, and tried to give the police enough time, but he?—”
He stopped. His body froze, except for his shoulders, which betrayed how hard his lungs were working.
“He slipped and fell. Or maybe I pushed him. I’ve played it over in my mind a thousand times, but I can’t figure out the physics of it all. One of the pieces of glass…” His voice grew quiet, so quiet I almost didn’t hear, and his hand flailed near his neck. “He bled out on the kitchen floor while my mother screamed, and I just stood there. Watching.”
I got up from the bed and crossed to him, putting my hand on his back. I felt the tension in his muscles, how he was holding himself together through sheer force of will. “Garrett.”
“It was ruled self-defense. There was a history of police reports, hospital records, and the restraining order, of course. But everyone knew what happened. What I’d done.” He shook his head. “We had to move. Couldn’t go anywhere without people staring and pointing.‘That’s the kid who killed his father.’”
“You were protecting her,” I said. “You were a child protecting his mother.”
“Ikilledhim.”
“You weredefendingher.” I circled to his front, keeping one hand on him and putting myself between him and the window.His eyes were dry, but the pain in them was worse than tears. And it absolutely broke my heart. “That’s not the same thing.”
“She died two years later.” He scoffed. “She was barely forty years old, and she died of a heart attack. They said it was some congenital thing, but I think her heart simply gave up. All those years of being afraid, of him hurting her, of living like that? It wore her down. If I’d stopped him earlier…”
“You stopped it when you could.” I slid my arms around his torso and pressed my cheek against his chest, right above his heart. “When you were old enough, when you were strong enough. You were achild, Garrett. You can’t blame yourself for not saving her sooner when you were trying to survive.”
“I loved him,” he choked out. “Even after everything he did. I kept hoping he’d change. If I was capable of loving a monster like him, what does it say about me?”
“About you? It says your heart is generous. It says your love is a gift, Garrett.” I squeezed my arms around him, despite his not responding physically. “He could have killed you, but you stood up for your mother and saved her life. That’s not darkness, Garrett, that’s heroism.”
He made a sound—not quite a laugh, not quite a sob—and wrapped his arms around me. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Make it all go away.”
I pulled back enough to see his face. So close he was a little blurry. “Make what go away?”
“The pain.” He brushed a strand of hair behind my ear, then cupped my cheek. “You quiet the voices in my head.”
“Because they can’t get a word in edgewise?”
Garrett smiled. Oh my god, he smiled, and it was beautiful, and it was all mine. “Because you make good arguments. Because you’re so full of light and sunshine, I want to see the world the way you do. I want to pretend that light is real.”
I turned my face into his palm, pressed a kiss there, and my body reminded me of my plans for when he came into my hotel room. “Then kiss me, Garrett. Kiss me and don’t stop until you feel the sunshine.”
His brows furrowed. “I have no idea what that means, but I sure as hell want to find out.”
