Page 30 of The Taste of Deceit

I’ve killed men. I’ve buried them. I’ve done things most people couldn’t stomach, but every one of those choices belonged to me. I walked into my own darkness. Sarah had hers forced on her.

“All I could think about afterward was what my mama and daddy were going to say.” Her voice catches for the first time since she started talking. “They got home a few hours later and found me sitting at the kitchen table. I don’t think I’d moved.”

She stares down at her hands.

“I told them everything. What he did. What I’d done. Then I took them out to the barn.” She swallows hard. “Daddy looked at Randy. Then he looked at Mama. Neither of them said a word for what felt like forever.”

My chest is so tight it hurts to breathe.

“Mama just… came over and hugged me.” A tear slips down her cheek. “Daddy told me everything was going to be okay.” She lets out a shaky breath. “Mama took me back inside, sat me at the kitchen table, and stayed with me. A few hours later Daddy came home and told me it was taken care of.”

The words hit me like another punch to the gut.

“It wasn’t until years later that he finally told me what he’d done.” She meets my eyes. “He drove Randy’s body out to an old abandoned mine shaft and threw him in.”

I don’t know what’s fucking me up more. The fact that her father covered it up, or the fact that, if I’d walked into that barn and found my seventeen-year-old daughter sitting where Sarah had been sitting, I know exactly why he did it.

“I remember Daddy building a bonfire that night.” Her gaze drifts somewhere past me. “A big one. Bigger than he usually did.” She swallows. “Years later, he told me he’d gathered up everything Randy owned. His clothes. His boots. His pictures. Everything. He burned all of it.”

“The next morning, he told the rest of the ranch hands Randy had packed up and left in the middle of the night. Said he’d gotten a better offer somewhere else.” Her voice is quiet, but steady. “Nobody questioned it. Randy didn’t have any family. Nobody was waiting for him to come home. As far as everyone knew, he’d just disappeared.”

I don’t say a word. I can’t.

Because somewhere out in Montana, a father spent an entire night erasing the man who’d destroyed his daughter’s life, and I know I would do the same thing.

Chapter 11

Sarah

Ifinally look up from the table. Luca is already looking at me. I can’t read his expression, and somehow that’s worse. I handed him the ugliest parts of me. Before today, only two other people in the world knew what really happened that morning.

“Come here,” he says.

I swallow and shake my head.

“Sarah.”

It’s the firmest I’ve ever heard his voice. Luca almost never tells me what to do, but this isn’t a request.

I push my chair back and force myself to stand. Until now, I hadn’t given a second thought to the fact that I’m standing here in my underwear and Luca’s hoodie. Now I can’t stop thinking about it. I hook my fingers under the hem and tug it lower, wishing it covered a little more.

Luca waits for me. He’s close enough that I could reach out and touch him, but my feet feel strangely heavy crossing the space between us. The moment I stop in front of him, his hands find my waist. He eases me forward until I’m standing between his knees, then pulls me down onto his lap.

His hand slides to my jaw, and when my eyes drop to his shirt, he tips my chin back up until I’m looking at him again.

“Baby Girl,” he says. “None of that was your fault.”

I’ve spent eight years trying to believe that.

“Do you understand me?”

I nod as tears burn my eyes.

“This doesn’t change the way you see me?”

He stares at me for a second like he doesn’t even understand the question.

“Sarah,” he says quietly, “if that man was still alive, he wouldn’t be tomorrow.”