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“Yes.”
The weight of my confession crashes around us.
His hands fist at his sides, and I see the anger simmering beneath a dark expression.
“All that shit about your stepfather—”
“Was true. He did do those things to me.”
“But he didn’t kill your mom like you said. She’s alive.”
“Yes, she’s alive. But everything else I told you… the rapes, the abuse, he did all of that and that is why I put three bullets in him.”
“You killed him?”
“I couldn’t let him get away with what he did. I thought you, of all people, would understand that.”
His angry gaze burns across at me. “And then you came looking for me to make me pay for Joey’s death.”
“Yes.”
The muscle in his jaw ticks. “Then why didn’t you?”
I can barely breathe. “Ares—”
“Why didn’t you follow through with your plan? Why start a relationship with me?”
“Because I wasn’t expecting—”
“You weren’t expecting what?”
“I wasn’t expecting you.”
A wild, tortured growl escapes him, and he stalks toward me, stopping only inches away. “What does that even mean?”
I look up into his beautiful, tormented face and feel the pain tighten in my chest when I take in the blazing eyes and handsome features. His hair hangs loose and falls in wild waves down past his shoulders. He’s never looked so beautiful, and it kills me to be so in love and so enraptured by the very man I should hate.
Tears well in my eyes.
“Before I came here, you were just a monster in a photograph. Then I saw you at one of your fights, and suddenly you weren’t that monster anymore. I kept coming back to watch you. I didn’t know why. It didn’t make sense to me that I hadn’t done what I was sent to do. All I knew was the need to know more about you, and I thought if I got close to you, I would understand it all better. Why you did what you did. Why I felt so drawn to you. But when I met you, I couldn’t stay away.” I sob. “Then I fell in love with you.”
He pushes me away. As if my words hurt him.
“Don’t talk to me about love,” he says, his voice thick.
“It’s true.”
He turns away but quickly swings back. “Do you even know who your brother was?”
“Of course, I do.”
“I don’t think you do. He did sick, bad things, Rory. Depraved and vile things that hurt people.”
I glare at him.
“Don’t say that.”
He’s wrong. Joey wasn’t depraved. Or sick.
