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Dario. Just the sound of his name and my chest grew warmer. “He didn’t do it.”
He said nothing, and I sensed his suspicion in the silence.
“He didn’t do it. Trust me. I was there. I saw him, his reaction—” I broke off the sentence, the memory sweeping over me, as painful as it had been the last time it hit. The way his voice had pitched, the awful cry of her name, the sounds of him sobbing. The last time I’d heard a man cry like that ... it’d been when I told my father what had happened at the barn. When the police had ignored him. When he’d swung his fist at the wall and missed. When he’d wanted to kill Johnny and his father but been too drunk to drive over and do it. He’d cried through all of it, and the sounds had broken my heart and stacked up the guilt.
Dario had loved Gwen. If I didn’t know it before, I had realized it then, in that suite, the Vegas lights glittering in the background, her legs sliding forward as he had gathered her to his chest. The pinched look of his features when he had staggered toward me. The cold, businesslike air that had shuttered into place when he’d spoken to me.
It’d been a different man who had come to me two days ago. The one who had lifted me off the stairs and carried me inside? The one who had whispered my name as he had thrust inside of me, his body framing me, touch protecting me, kiss soothing me ... he had been mine. Healed, slightly. Guilty, still.
But not guilty for what Lance was suspecting him for. He was guilty—we both were—of trigger events that had caused her murder. But we’d been innocent of intent, a distinction that didn’t seem to matter. She was still dead.
I lifted the glass to my forehead and pressed the cool side of it against my skin, taking a deep breath. I tried to remember what my mother had said, the words she had preached to me when I had struggled after the rape.
It wasn’t my fault.
They were the evil ones.
God knew the truth.
I was a victim, but I didn’t have to act like one.
I had done nothing wrong.
It wasn’t my fault.
God, I needed her. I needed to tell her everything and have her tell me what to do. I needed to have her hug me, and comfort me, and to convince me that this was not my fault. Not Dario’s fault.
Only, it was.
I wasn’t an innocent farm girl, alone in a barn, just after dark.
I had followed lust and emotion and disregarded safety, ethics, and the seventh freaking commandment. I just hadn’t believed the true evil of the psychopath lurking in the wings.
“B? You there?”
I brought the glass to my lips and took a deep sip, downing half of it before coming up for air. “Yeah. I’m here. When are you going to my parents?”
“Tonight. I’ve got to run by The House and take care of a few things, then I’ll hit the road. I just called and let them know I was coming. Your mom’s got lasagna in the oven now.”
Lasagna. I could almost smell it. Homesickness hit, and I set the glass down before I dropped it. “They don’t know about Dario. Not ... everything. I don’t know what they know, or what the police have told them.” The awareness of how little I knew sank like a rock in my gut. I felt a dozen steps behind, ignorant to everything and being fed information through an eye-dropper when I needed an IV.
“Don’t worry about it, B. Keep yourself safe. I’ll see you soon.”
No. Don’t hang up. Don’t. I need to hear your voice for more than that. I struggled to find something to say, a question to ask him, an excuse to prolong the conversation. I needed, for just another moment, to feel normal.
I was too slow. He hung up the phone and I took a deep, wet breath, struggling to hold in the tears.
Thirteen
Frogs apparently, at nightfall, don’t shut the hell up. I sat on the back step, my arms wrapped around my knees, and listened to them. It was a concert of sounds, almost beautiful in their varieties.
I swiped at a mosquito and resisted the urge to glance at my phone. I pictured Lance, on his way home from my parents’ house, his stomach packed with gooey hot lasagna. Mom made the best lasagna. Five layers high. Four types of cheese. Packed with enough sausage and beef to make you roll over on the couch and belch in satisfaction.
I, on the other hand, had a microwave hot dog for dinner. Thirty seconds on high, the skinny dog wrapped in a napkin, and a little wrinkly when I pulled it from the microwave. Dipped in ketchup and mustard and washed down with some ginger ale. It actually hadn’t been that bad. Had it not been competing with Ma’s lasagna, I probably would have enjoyed it.
