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Fifteen
Raven
She watched the confusion take over his features again, dim his concern.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean”—she pushed off his shoulder, planted her hands on the hood and straightened, letting the cold air sink into her body again—“Jake was a good man, and I couldn’t be what he needed. I had too many walls up and too many barriers in place and too much trauma to have any business taking up with him. I needed therapy and time in my own head. I needed an Aunt Pat.”
“Who’s Aunt Pat?”
That was probably the most important person in Raven’s life in the last few months and also the least pertinent to this conversation and the information Connor needed.
“I’ll tell you about her later,” she said then hurried to add when his expression clouded, “Suffice to say, Pat got my head on straighter than therapy ever did.”
His eyes held hers, studied her closely. “Okay, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
God, she loved the rumbly way he said that, how it floated through the air and filled her belly with warmth.
“I didn’t have an Aunt Pat back then,” she said, “and that meant I wasn’t in any position to be in a relationship. I drained him dry.” The words were hard to say, and she had to push them through the tightness in her throat. “Jake needed a partner, and I was a desert, unable to even give him the smallest oasis.”
“That’s a lot of metaphor, baby.” Connor touched her cheek, turned her head back to face him. “Why don’t you just tell me what went down?”
Shit.
Okay.Okay.
A breath. “Jake got me out of the trailer. He and his parents helped me have a safe place to stay during college. He was my first kiss, my first lover, the first boy to hold me as I slept, and…I broke him.” The last words were a whisper, mostly because that was as loud as she could make them. “He tried to piece me together, to save me—” Crap. She wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t allow herself to have that. “And when he failed…”
Connor’s knuckles brushed lightly over her cheek again.
“When he failed, he couldn’t handle it.” She sucked in a breath. “He started working, harder than ever, so he was never home to see me in all my fucked-up-ness.”Breathe. Just breathe.“And he worked so hard that he had a heart attack.”
“Shit, baby,” Connor said, not knowing, not getting it. “That wasn’t your fault.”
Except—
“Jake had the heart attack whenIwas there.” She slammed a fist against her chest. “I was in bed. We’d gotten into another fight, and I went to the bedroom to avoid him. I heard athunk, and I was half asleep and”—unbidden, the fight, the sound of his bodythuddingto the ground, the way she’d ignored it, how she’d found him later,allof that flashed through her mind—“I thought he was upset and throwing things around and Iwent to sleep.” She exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled again. “I found him a few hours later. Woke up, rolled over, and realized he’d never come to bed, so I went out to the living room, and he was…” Fuck, her eyes started leaking again. It was bullshit. This wasn’t something that happened to her. It had happened to him and his family and if she hadn’t ignored the noise, he’d wouldn’t have spent his last moments laying there alone on the floor. “He was gone. I was finished with med school, was a baby doctor in residency. I’d been trained in CPR, and I’d used it plenty. I’d worked with patients having heart attacks and…I still didn’t save him.”
Connor moved closer. “Sweetheart.”
“I didn’t save him. I had the training and the skills, the knowledge, the abilities, andIdidn’t save him.”
Strong arms wrapping around her, pressing her back against his chest, holding her close, stroking a hand through her hair, breathing slow and steady. “Easy, baby,” Connor murmured. “Easy now.”
“Jake died, and it was my fault and—”
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-six.” She sucked in a breath, inhaled the warm spice of him. “He had an undiagnosed heart defect.”
Connor’s arms tensed. “So, how could you have known he would have had a heart attack?”
“I know what you’re trying to do.” She pushed against his chest. “And Pat already tried that route with me. It’s not that easy, you know. It’s not that simple. If I hadn’t stressed Jake out, if we hadn’t been fighting, his heart wouldn’t have been working that hard.”
“Do you think, for one second, Jake regretted helping you out of a shitty situation?”
