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Three-fourths of the way down the gnarly bruise, he grabbed her hand. “I’m fine.”
She cracked a rapid-cold pack and held it to the bruise. “Did you get the license plate of the Mack truck that hit you?”
“You’re such a comedian.” He turned away and rubbed the back of his head, revealing a patchwork of angry red slashes across his back and rough-looking gashes where his knuckles had connected with the thugs’ hard bones. “You can have the sleeping bag, I’ll just—”
“Not so fast.” She gripped his forearm and the skin-to-skin contact sent a jolt of electricity straight to her core. “You’ve got cuts and scrapes all over you.”
She ignored his grumbling and started with his knuckles before moving on to his face, smoothing her hands over his five o’clock shadow and feeling for tenderness. His skin heated beneath her touch and the pulse in his neck jumped. By the time she was caring for the one-inch cut on his cheekbone, the ache in her hip had been replaced by one between her thighs. God, she’d make the world’s worst Florence Nightingale, if she kept getting all worked up while dotting a guy’s face with Neosporin.
Her sanity couldn’t take much more, so she started to hum an old song her mom used to sing to her whenever she’d woken up with a nightmare. Devin jerked under her touch.
“I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”
“No.” None of the light, teasing tone from earlier remained. Instead, his deep voice sounded hollow. “It’s the song.”
Something in the aching emptiness of his tone pulled at Ryder. “You know it?”
“It was my brother’s favorite when he was a little kid. He used to sing it every day just to drive me nuts.” His voice broke. “Now he can’t even remember the name of it.”
She digested that for a few moments, hurting for Devin. “What happened?” she asked softly.
“I failed at the most important job every big brother has—to protect your younger siblings. I almost killed him.” He paused. “I wonder sometimes if it wouldn’t be better if I had. James was one of those fifteen year-olds you read about who are already going to college. He was halfway through earning his BA in physics when he came home to visit.”
Devin stared out at the starry sky through the circular mesh window in the roof of the tent, but the darkness in his eyes extinguished the starlight that should have been reflected there.
“A bunch of us used to drive down to Waterburg to drag race the locals. It was a great way for stupid twenty-somethings with too much time and money on their hands to blow off steam. James had never been, so it seemed like the perfect brother-bonding time when he came home for spring break, plus it got him away from Dad, who was always pressuring him not to take a minute away from school. Most of the time, the police would break it up before we’d been there for long, but not always. When the cops arrived that night, it was too late. My cherry red BMW roadster was overturned off the side of the road, with my brother and me hanging upside down. The car I was racing against, a Mustang, had gone head-to-head with a tree and lost. Badly.”
The back of Ryder’s throat tightened and she reached for a strand of hair. But this time the smooth feel of it wrapping around her fingers as she twisted did little to alleviate the anxiety churning her insides into mush.
Devin white-knuckled the steering wheel and went on, “I crawled out of the Beemer with a few superficial scratches. The kid in the other car wasn’t as lucky. He’d gone straight through his windshield and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.”
Ryder actually remembered the accident. The kid who died was from their neighborhood. Richie Vivier. He’d been a few years ahead of her in school. She hadn’t known him well, but he’d been on the football team with her brother, Tony. The night of the accident, their father had come home after working the scene, hugged all of the kids, and locked himself in the den for the night. He’d played Otis Redding and gotten stone-cold drunk.
“There was an investigation, but no charges were ever filed,” Devin said, each word more painful to hear than the last. “The other driver’s family filed a civil complaint but dropped it a few months after they received an anonymous cash donation. My dad paid half a million dollars to hush the whole thing up.”
Ryder blinked. Jesus.
“One kid died, I walked away with scratches, but only a shadow version of James got out of that car.” His voice wavered on the last word but he took a deep breath and continued. “He suffered permanent brain damage and lives in a resident care facility. He had a genius level IQ and now he has no fucking clue how to work a TV remote control. I did that to him. It was my fault.”
A bone-deep ache for him wracked Ryder. She wanted to reach out, to comfort him, but Devin was clearly a man barely hanging on. She’d grown up in a family of cops, tough men who refused to admit their own
pain or wanted others acknowledging it. Touching Devin might be just the thing that would push him over the edge, so she curled her fingers around the gold blessing bracelet that matched his.
“I killed one kid and ruined another.” Devin’s voice strengthened, but beneath the volume lay an ocean of pain. “And yeah, I walked away with only a couple of bruises, but there’s not a day when I don’t pay for it. Not a single fucking day. But obviously I’m too stupid to have learned my lesson. I should have been watching out for you today. There’s no way in hell I should have let you go gladiator against two thugs. I almost got you killed today and that is not acceptable.”
…
Devin’s throat closed around a lump of blame and regret he could never fully banish. Raw and angry, he wanted to fight back against the disappointment and shame, but he couldn’t drown it in alcohol or beat it away with a punching bag. God knew he’d tried both already. The guilt always returned every time he cracked open his eyelids with the morning sun.
“Today was not your fault, Devin. You didn’t lead me into anything. It was my plan. And if you recall, I ran in front of you, not behind you. Anyway, I would have liked to have seen you try to stop me.” The pity in her dark brown eyes nearly undid him.
My fault. Again.
How many people did he have to hurt before he accepted that his father had been right? He was a dumb jock who reacted first and thought second. Sure, he’d moved up the corporate ladder, but he couldn’t ever shake the idea that the whole thing was a fluke. After college, he’d devoted five years to MMA training. Maybe he should have continued. At least then the people he hurt would have signed up for it. God knew he had. His opponents’ fists had been punishing, but never as bad as he deserved. His mission whenever he’d entered the ring had never been to win. It had been to have his opponent knock the memories from his head.
If only it had worked.
He brushed his fingers over the green bruises slashing across Ryder’s cheek, guilt burning through him. “You were hurt.”
