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“All right.”
“Good girl.” He smiled with the praise, but it was pained around the edges, which just added another layer to the guilt she already felt. “I’ll be in the living room when you’re ready to talk.”
“‘Kay.”
She took her time eating, so much so the cereal had pretty much turned to mush by the time she’d finished. When every last bit was scooped out, she made her way to the sink to rinse her bowl and even gave the island and countertops a good wipe down before finally accepting she’d run out of ways to stall.
Bracing herself for the confrontation to come, she made her way to the living room, where Dean was waiting for her.
Here goes nothing.
She perched on the opposite end of the couch from him, not trusting herself to get through everything she needed to say if he touched her. Hell, she wasn’t entirely sure she could get through it if he keptlookingat her the way he was right now, with that mixture of concern and understanding that just made her want to curl up in his lap and beg him to make it all go away. “I don’t know where to start.”
“There’s no rush, babygirl. Do you remember what the nightmare was about?”
“Yes. Mostly, anyway. I think.” Panic tightened around her chest and she had to force herself to breathe.
“It’s alright if you don’t remember all of it, honey. Just tell me what you can. Was it about Nate?”
“Yes, but not all of it. It-it started with my mom. And my brother.”
* * *
It tookeverything in him not to react to her words. The question about what had happened with her brother had lingered in the back of his mind ever since she’d mentioned him during that first round of UNO, but with everything else going on, he hadn’t wanted to push. “Was it a nightmare or a memory?”
“A little bit of both. My brother died when I was sixteen. He was eight.”
Two sets of instincts warred with each other inside of him. The investigator, the man used to seeking out threats and eliminating them, wanted to press for more details and then hunt down everyone who had ever hurt her. But the Daddy wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and tell her everything would be okay, that she didn’t have to talk about it if she didn’t want to.
Unfortunately for both of them, neither set of instincts would serve them well just then, so he sat where he was, his nails digging into his palms to ground him. “I’m so sorry, baby. That must have been hard.”
“It was. My mother killed him.” There was no inflection in her tone, like she was simply sharing what day of the week she’d been born on and not a life-shattering event that had happened to her.
Jesus Christ. “What do you mean?”
“It was an accident. At least, I think it was an accident. She was never really violent with us. Mean as a snake, but not violent. That day is the first and last time I remember her laying hands on either of us.”
Her eyes had gone unfocused, glassy, as if she weren’t really seeing him. He wondered if she knew she was crying. “What was different about that day?”
“I don’t know. She’d been on me all day about one thing or another. Telling me how stupid and useless I was, how I wasn’t even worth what she spent to feed me—which I’d figured out by then wasn’t very much at all—and for some reason that day I just couldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt, so I was crying. And Kev, he just… something clicked inside of him. Or snapped, maybe, and he went to confront her.
“I was in the kitchen, trying to find something, anything for us to eat for dinner and I could hear them screaming at each other upstairs. It hurt my ears. More than anything else, I remember how much the screaminghurt. I’d just about worked up the courage to go up there, to tell them to stop, when I heard him call her a bitch. And then this sort of thumping sound, like someone taking the stairs down two at a time but… not quite the same. Even before I left the kitchen, I justknew. I couldn’t even move until I heard her laughing, because I knew, somehow I knew he was dead. But he wasn’t.”
Fuck it. Giving in to the need to touch her, hold her, Dean shifted to sit beside her, plucking her up off the couch to cradle her in his arms. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so fucking sorry.”
As if he hadn’t even spoken, she continued. “I found him at the bottom of the stairs, just lying there. He was still breathing, and his eyes… you know what it’s like. To watch the soul leave them, the way they just sort of go dim.”
“Yeah. I know.” And oh, how he fucking hated that either of them had that kind of firsthand knowledge.
“The screaming part, that wasn’t in the nightmare. But mama telling me how worthless I am, that was in there. Kev dying was in there. Then it was Olivia, tied to a chair, begging me to save her while Nate strangled her. I watched her die, in my dream. Watched that light leave her eyes, just like I did with Kev. And the whole time, Nate was telling me he knew how much I liked it, how much I enjoyed watching them die.”
“Enough.” He couldn’t hold her close enough, tight enough to ease the ache in his chest. “That’s enough for now. It was just a nightmare, baby.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he was right. Maybe I knew what he was all along and I just didn’t want to admit it. Maybe I—”
“No.” She flinched at the fierceness of his tone, but he’d be damned if he was going to sit here and let her say those things about herself. “You are not that kind of person. You are good, and kind, and loving. You are nothing like him, or your mother. Do you understand me?”
“How do you know?”
