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“You heard me,” came the grim, thoroughly un-loverlike reply. “I don’t think you get how vital you are to me, so let me fill in the blanks for you, yeah? Unraveling the motivations behind all the crazy shit people pull made me top of the food chain when it came to profiling. That’s great for business, but pure fucking misery when it comes to having a personal life. No relationship lasted past the third date, because by that point whenever we’d talk I could almost write their script for them. You even called me on it—I was bored.Jesus, you have no idea how bored I was—with dating, with people, with being fucking alive. Then you came along, with your amazing brain and impossible-to-read responses, and suddenly my life had color and excitement and mystery. My world came alive because you were in it, so if you think I’m just going to let you walk out and take my world with you, you’re out of your damn mind.”
My heart pounded so hard it began to crack the ice that had built up around it. “You violated my privacy when you could have just asked me about my mother.”
“I did. You know I did.”
Of course I knew. Damn him for refusing to allow me to play the victim when my silence gave him no other choice but to look for answers on his own. “Then you should have taken the hint and not looked into what’s obviously a private and painful matter.”
“Why is it still painful for you? Tell me.”
I shook my head and tried to step back. “No. Let go.”
“You were there the night your mother was beaten to death, weren’t you? You saw it all.”
I struggled against his hold. “Let me go.”
“You saw Leonard Driscoll beat your mother to death, and that’s the event that caused your PTSD reaction of fighting with berserker rage whenever you get scared. Because deep down you think that if you, a little eight-year-old girl, had somehow fought a big-ass, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal of a man, your mother would still be alive. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’rewrong. You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried.” At last I stopped struggling, because there was no point to it. I was going to be free of his grasp only when he decided to let me go. “Ididfight him, okay? I did. But it didn’t matter. I’d acted too late. I could have saved my mother if I’d acted sooner, but I didn’t. It’s my fault she’s dead because I didn’t… I didn’t kill Leonard sooner.”
He went still. “You killed Leonard Driscoll?”
“Yes.” The one-word confession came out on a trembling breath. Trembling, because my carefully constructed world was coming apart. Trembling, becauseIwas coming apart. “I’m a murderer.” There. I said it. After twenty years of screaming it on the inside, of hearing my own father call me a murderer, I finally had the guts to say it out loud. The mingled relief and agony of letting go of that poison was so vast I almost fainted.
“A murderer, huh?” Somehow I was up and in his arms, moving across the room to the bed, where he sat down with me cradled on his lap. “Wow, I’m having sex with a hardcore, bloody-minded murderer. Maybe they’ll make a Lifetime movie out of our story.”
“What?” My tongue felt thick and the world was still hazy around the edges, but I was at least aware enough to clock that he was laughing at me. “For God’s sake, this isn’t a joke. I’m perfectly serious.”
“Oh yeah, I know you meant what you said, and I’ll admit I never saw that twist coming—again, loving how you keep surprising me,” he added, giving me a little squeeze. “But what I’m not loving is how you’ve dragged around that anvil of a secret all these years, and not one goddamn person helped you to cope with it. You did get a degree in psychology, didn’t you?”
I blinked at the whiplash-inducing change of subject. “Yes, you know I did.”
“Then you know that a child of eight, who just witnessed the violent end of her mother, could never be held responsible for her actions. For starters, she would be in severe shock and not even be aware of what she was doing. Also, there’s the scientific fact that the part of the human brain that takes care of reasoning and consequential thinking isn’t fully developed at that age. Children lashing out is a common occurrence because they don’t yet have the coping skills in their mental toolbox.”
I shook my head, staring at him in dumbfounded amazement. “You’re talking about the nuts and bolts of how a human brain develops, and I’m telling you I murdered someone. It’s like we’re having two different conversations.”
“We’re having the same conversation, only you don’t seem to be hearing my side of it. You’re not a murderer, Eden,” he chided when I looked away with a sound of distress. “No matter how many times you’ve probably told yourself that, it’s just not fucking true.”
“I killed someone.” I practically yelled it in his face.
“I get that,” came the calm reply. “Did you do it out of malice?”
“No! God, no. I told you, I just wanted him to stop hurting my mother, but I was too late. I didn’t act quickly enough, so it’s my fault she’s dead.”
“Oh, I see. So not only did you kill a man, you also somehow managed to kill your mother to boot. Aren’t you an impressive little crimewave.”
Great, now he was laughing at me. “Go to hell.”
“This is survivor’s guilt, Eden,” he said, giving me a little jostle. “I know you know this. Open your eyes and see what I see.”
“What do you see?”
“You tried to save your mother’s life the only way you knew how, and that’s indescribably beautiful to me. You were willing to sacrifice everything for her sake, because you loved her. Don’t you see how valiant that is? How noble?”
I couldn’t seem to stop shaking my head. “Valiant? Noble? That’s not me. None of that is me. It never has been.”
“Then you don’t know yourself.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t know me, but maybe it’s time you did.” And maybe then he’d stop talking about crazy, impossible things like having me be the mother of his someday-children. “I was a willing foil for my father when he started HEG, knowing full well that he started up that sham of a business to fleece the rubes. Right from the beginning we started out with a lie—borrowing Timothy the cat from our next-door neighbors to show the world our idyllic little family life. Truth is, Marvin couldn’t stand to have any animals around. Said they reminded him of all the pigs he grew up with.”
