“Xan and Jax didn’t try to break it up—they’d seen him hit her, too, and they knew I wasn’t gonna kill the guy—but Janey…”
His deep blue eyes misted over and his throat worked to rid him of the lump she imagined forming there. “God, Janey.” He plowed his right hand through his hair and fisted a chunk until he winced. Causing himself pain probably helped release the emotions he’d bottled up inside for so long. Her heart broke for him already.
Resting his elbow on the seat back, he kept that fist in his hair and his gaze where she still held his other hand. “Afterward, I remembered hearing her shout for us to stop, begging me not to kill him. But at the time all I heard was the roar of blood in my ears and the sound of our fists meeting flesh and bone. Someone tried getting between us. I didn’t register who it was before Janey’s boyfriend shoved whoever it was out of our way, which was fine with me because I got in another good shot.”
Kat’s stomach lurched. She prayed her assumption of how the story ended was wrong, but she already knew it wasn’t. She’d gone into this knowing the tragic outcome. All that was left was to listen to how it happened so she could help Irish get past his guilt.
He finally lifted his eyes to hers, causing the wall of tears to overflow in a thin stream down his cheeks. “Joey’d finished his shift and decided to come out. I didn’t see him at the end of the block, but I heard him yell Janey’s name. That’s what finally got through to me. I’d never heard him so terrified, so desperate.
“I looked over to see her in the road, struggling to get up in the rain. Headlights swung around and landed on her. I tried to get to her but I wasn’t fast enough. She screamed and—”
He cleared his throat and swiped at the moisture on his face. He kept his eyes averted, looking around at everything in the car and out of it, except for her. Kat wanted to weep for the man she loved. A man so tough he brought men to heel with only a few words and others to their knees when words weren’t enough.
And yet for all his toughness, the one thing completely soft on him was his heart. She’d seen him treat women, coworkers, and even kittens with a kindness and tenderness prone to the gentlest of souls. It was that part of him she fell in love with. The part that saw a scarred woman afraid of a man’s touch and patiently retrained her body and mind to not just accept his touch, but to crave it. For that alone she could have loved him. Lucky for her, there were dozens of other reasons as well.
“Aiden,” she said softly as she cupped his jaw and forced him to make eye contact with her. “It was an accident. Terrible and tragic, but still an accident. You did not kill Janey.”
He pulled her hands down and pinned her with a defiant stare. “Yes, I did. He hit her because of me. We fought because of me. And she sure as hell ended up in the street because of me.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off. “I didn’t have to fight the bastard, Kat. I could have threatened his life and taken Janey home. Or had Joey and his police buddies stay on him until they busted him for something. But just like Joey warned me, I let my temper control my actions and it led to Janey’s death. It’s no one’s fault but mine she’s gone. It’s why I stopped drinking and quit fighting. I’m hard enough to control without getting help from alcohol and a career that feeds the darkness inside me.”
“But—”
“Don’t you get it?” he asked, his raised voice sending a chill down the back of her neck. “I hurt the people I love the most because they’re around when my shit blows up. It might not be today and it might not be tomorrow, but eventually something will cause me to snap. And when I do, everyone will be in danger. Including you.”
Chapter Eighteen
She’d leave him now.
Aiden couldn’t have been clearer about the danger she was in just by being with him. Now she would finally understand why he pushed everyone away who couldn’t defend themselves against him. He kept in phone contact with his mom and sisters, but that was about it. He’d never survive if he lost one of them like they’d lost Janey, so he didn’t take any chances.
As it was, Aiden wasn’t sure how his heart would survive when Kat walked away from him. He never imagined being able to love a woman so completely, so intensely. He knew he’d never be unbroken, but somehow she made him feel like his broken pieces were glued back together. That in itself was something he never thought possible. Kind of made her a little miracle worker, his Kat.
My Kat.
Not for much longer.