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“He told everyone you’d been driving,” I said quietly. I was still reeling at the betrayal this man had suffered at the hands of the people who were supposed to have loved him the most.
He begged me not to tell anyone the truth. Said my mother deserved to be remembered for all the good she’d done in the community, not for one terrible mistake. He was so upset, Nolan. He really did love her and, despite everything, they were my parents, you know?
I did. Better than anyone. Because I had a similar relationship with my own parents. “I do,” I said.
My father had begged Sheriff Tulley to let the whole thing go. I didn’t know he’d told the Sheriff that I’d been drinking.
“Why would he do that?” I asked. “He could have just said it had been an accident. That you’d tried to avoid a deer or something,” I said, my voice rising as I considered what Jeremiah Kent’s actions had meant for his son.
I don’t know. I guess he was just desperate to protect his and my mother’s images. They’d been drinking in the car, so maybe he’d been afraid the cops would find the bottle or something.
“My mother said Maddox said some pretty bad stuff to you before he left to go back to the army.”
Dallas nodded, but didn’t respond to my comment.
“Have you seen him since your dad…”
Another shake of his head. No. After the funeral, he tried to contest the will that left me half of my parents’ money. He dropped the case just before he was deployed to the Middle East.
“Why haven’t you told anyone the truth now that your parents are both gone?”
I watched as his eyes shifted to the left and followed his gaze to see him looking at a picture on a bookshelf.
A picture of his family.
Both boys were young in the picture and had big grins on their faces. It looked like the photograph had been taken at Disney World. Their parents were embracing them from behind.
They all looked…happy.
“You wanted to protect them, too,” I said softly. Dallas’s gaze shifted to me and he finally nodded. He typed me a quick message and handed me the tablet.
They were my parents.
“I’m sorry, Dallas. It isn’t right.”
I have a good life, Nolan. This place…it’s saved me in so many ways.
My gut clenched at his words. What if he lost it because of me?
I felt his hands on my face. When I looked at him, he shook his head. I knew what he was trying to tell me – that I couldn’t blame myself – but I couldn’t get the image of Gentry clawing at that door or his cries of pain out of my head.
“I’m sorry, Dallas. I just can’t stop thinking about it. I made a comment to Jimmy about him wanting you and it set him off. I didn’t mean it – I was just trying to get back at him for calling you…” I stopped talking because I refused to repeat the word Jimmy had called him.
Dallas pressed his forehead to mine and let out a deep sigh. Then he grabbed the tablet.
Please don’t ask me to forgive you, Nolan, because YOU DID NOTHING WRONG. I need you to believe that, but if I forgive you, a little part of you will always believe it was your fault.
I understood what he was asking, wanted to accept it, even, but I just couldn’t. Dallas tapped the tablet in frustration, then began typing again.
You HEAR me, Nolan. You hear me like no one ever has before. Even when I had a voice to listen to, no one heard me. I need you to hear me now. I need you to do this one thing for me…for us.
I lifted my eyes to meet his after reading that last part.
Us?
Was there an us?
But I wasn’t brave enough to ask him.
I thought back to everything he’d said and knew he was right. There was no way to know for sure if my words had somehow set Jimmy off. He’d said that Jimmy had spread lies about him after the accident. Jimmy was a bully through and through. He got off on hurting others. What if just seeing Dallas’s name on that credit card had been enough to remind Jimmy that his former friend hadn’t disappeared off the face of the earth?
There was just no way to be sure.
Which meant Dallas was right.
I was blaming myself for something that I couldn’t have seen coming.
Jimmy had attacked me as a kid repeatedly, even though I’d never mouthed off to him. In fact, I’d done my damndest to stay off his radar altogether, yet he’d still come after me over and over again.
Dallas’s hands framed my face again. When he gently forced my head up, I saw the unspoken question in them. I nodded. “You’re right,” I said softly. “I couldn’t have known…anything could have set Jimmy off. If it had just been me he’d been pissed at, he would have come to my house or something. It wasn’t…it wasn’t my fault.”
