“Don’t be,” she said. “No one could have saved him. Not even me, even though I tried like hell.”
“You were nine.” He knew she would have tried, if she’d been able. She would have fought with all of her might to stop them from hurting her father.
“I ran,” she whispered. “I ran away when he needed me.”
Carter’s face collapsed.
“Don’t do that to yourself.” He waited. Breathed. “He told you … to run, Kat.”
She froze in his arms. Carter shut his eyes and clasped his hands at her back, suddenly terrified she would bolt. He couldn’t let her run again. He couldn’t lose her.
“What?”
Carter held his breath. “He told you to run.”
She moved her head back. Her eyes told him the pieces were falling together, slowly but surely, and all he could do was plead with his own for her to wait, listen, and try to understand.
“Carter.” Her voice shook. “How do … how do you know that?”
He stared at her, praying he wouldn’t have to say the words aloud, but knowing with every inch of himself that he had to. He had to tell her. “You told me last night.”
She didn’t look convinced.
She cocked her chin, studying Carter’s face. The cogs of her mind turned behind her emerald-green eyes. They flashed with pain and shock at the same time she gasped loudly, shoving him, breaking his hold on her. She stumbled back.
Carter’s heart shattered.
“I … I want to know what you remember.” His arms dropped to his sides. They were useless without her in them.
“Why?” she pushed, with anger in her voice. “Why do you want to know? Why, Carter?”
He took a step closer and she instinctively took one back. Carter’s teeth clenched.
“Because,” he started, rubbing his hands across his beanie, terrified, “I was— Because … Peaches.”
“Fuck’s sake,” she cried. “WHY?”
Her yell ricocheted around them as the rain clouds broke, and the heavens opened above them. But it didn’t matter. Carter was numb. He stared at her and lifted his arms minutely before letting them fall, defeated. He dropped his chin, gathered himself and the fear pounding in his head.
“Because I was there.”
The look on her face tore Carter wide-open, making his legs unsteady. Christ, she looked sick. She started shaking and gasping for air while mumbling words he couldn’t decipher. She clamped her eyes shut while her mouth continued to move in incoherent ramblings.
“No. No. No,” she repeated. “It wasn’t— I can’t.”
The rain pummeled Carter. “It was me,” he whispered. “It was me, Kat.”
She was instantly mute, staring at him as though he were a stranger. She opened her mouth, but he didn’t let her speak.
“I was in the area near your father’s rehabilitation center. I’d been with Max, but we’d had a fight, and I—I’d left him at a friend’s. I was having a smoke and heard a scream, so I went to see what was going on and … I saw them. I saw you. I saw them hit him with the bat.”
“Stop,” Kat rasped.
“I saw the guy hit you—”
“Stop, Carter.”
“Your father told you to run and you didn’t. Why didn’t you run?”
“Fucking stop!”
“NO!”
He took three strides toward her and yanked her into his arms. She began to fight him. Her skin was slick from the rain, making it hard to get a good grip. She hit his chest and arms as she screamed at him to let her go. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.
“I grabbed you,” he cried above her protests. “I grabbed you and ran with you. I’ve never been so scared, Kat. I had to drag you; you fought me so fucking hard. You fought me like you’re doing now, like you did last night. But I couldn’t let you go. I couldn’t. They would have killed you, just like they killed him.”
Kat sobbed in his arms, buckling at the knees.
“We landed on the floor, and, your hair, Kat. Goddammit. Peach-scented hair. My Peaches.”
Her head snapped up and she screamed in his face. “GET OFF ME!”
At the fury in her voice Carter released her and stepped back, only to receive a white-hot slap across his face.
For a few seconds the only sound around them was the rain pounding the trees. He couldn’t look at her and see the hate in her eyes. He was paralyzed, desolate, but he couldn’t stop telling her. He had to tell her.
“I held you,” he muttered, “for two fucking hours, in a freezing-cold doorway, talking to you.”
“You,” Kat accused. “You stopped me from …” She could barely speak through the wracking gulps of air. “I could have— I could have … He was my father!”
Carter turned back to her, his hurt, angry tears merging silently with the rain running down his face. “He told you to run. I couldn’t watch them kill you.”
“You had no right!”
“No right?” he argued back, his voice rising to match hers. “Your father wanted you safe, Kat. I … I saved you!”
“No, you didn’t, Carter!” she shouted back. “No, you didn’t, because I fucking died that night, too!”