Shea continued to fumble through the confession. “At the time, I thought it was the best option. The only option. He didn’t even look at her. He just turned and walked out. But not before he stopped at the door and told me I’d never get so far that I’d be out of his reach.”
Just like he’d promised me.
Pride.
Pride.
Pride.
How sick this meant more to him than anything else.
“He would have found a way with or without you being in the middle of it,” she begged, eyes searching my face, and her feet bringing her another step closer.
Maybe he’d been waiting. But I’d served him the ammunition on a silver platter.
I gripped the smooth wooden railing where I stood on the third step down. “You want to know what Anthony just told me, Shea? Why CPS showed up here and took her? They took her because of me. Because they believe I’m dangerous and because of that, Kallie is at risk.”
“You would never hurt her.”
Biting laughter rocked from me, because no, I’d never purposefully hurt her. Never. But that didn’t mean my mere presence didn’t beg for trouble. Chaos and mayhem and violence attached to my name.
“Look at me, Shea.” I stretched my arms out to my sides like an offering.
Shea knew what was underneath. All the scars and hardened body that came from living a hardened life.
It was the truth of who I really was.
“Look at me,” I said again. Defeat filled the words.
Tears Shea hadn’t been able to stop the entire night rolled faster down her angel face.
Did the fact I had the urge to cross to her make me a sick bastard? Push her against the wall and kiss the hell out of her until neither of us could remember our lives had just gone to shit? Get lost in her sweet touches and soft seduction?
But maybe it was time both of us started facing our reality.
She took me by surprise when disappointment coursed from her. “You think I don’t see you?”
Slowly, she shook her head. “Do you want to know what I see when I look at you, Sebastian? I see someone who takes the burden of the entire world and places it on his shoulders because he somehow thinks he deserves that weight. The one who’d bear it all if it meant those he loves would suffer a little less. I see someone who’s made mistakes just like the rest of us. Just like me. I see someone who maybe on the outside looks a little frightening. But what I’m frightened of most is how intensely he makes me feel.”
She touched her chest. “I see a man who’s loyal. Devoted. One who opened himself up enough to a love a little girl who isn’t even his. I see the man who caused me to fall so hard I didn’t know what hit me. I see a man I’d needed so badly, yet hadn’t even known it until he showed me what I was missing. I see the one I love.”
Shea’s words assaulted me, battered me with her unending belief and light. Like she was lifting me above the dark she threatened to drown me in.
An enigma. This girl I had no clue if I even knew. My savior. My ruin.
She didn’t stop. She just kept firing away.
“I see the only one who I want to do this with. Am I scared Jennings is using you to take Kallie from me? Yes. I’m terrified for her. But I also know he would have found another way, and I know it’s time I faced it, and I want to face it with you at my side. I don’t care what the rest of the world sees. All I care about is what you mean to me.”
My chest tightened, welling with emotion. Because fuck, I wanted to believe that, too.
“What if none of this is good enough?”
“What if it is?”
Trying to block it, I shook my head.
No.
God, she made me weak.
My voice grew quiet. “How could I put Kallie’s future on the line, knowing what I’ve done? I’m guilty, Shea. All those accusations…they’re true, and there’s nothing I can do to dispute them.”
They went so much deeper than the courts had record of, too. All the bullshit I’d gotten away with when I was nothing but a punk kid out trying to make it big, me and the rest of my crew out to conquer the world one fucked-up mistake at a time.
Worst part?
Jennings knew. Didn’t matter he was the dirtiest crook there was. He held all the cards.