The memory sucked her back into the past, right back into that horrible moment. Jess smelled the hot scent of the gunfire, tasted the tang of iron in her mouth from where she’d bit down on her tongue when she fell, and heard its deafening thunder and the screams and shouts.
“Two shots went off at the same time, but my dad was on top of me and I couldn’t see what was going on. And then it got very quiet.” Jess met Ike’s solemn gaze, a knot lodged in her throat, tears burning the backs of her eyes. She blinked again and again to keep them from falling. “My dad was dead before the ambulance arrived.”
“Aw, hell, Jess. I’m so fucking sorry.” He reached out and grabbed one of her hands. “Yeah, you made some mistakes, but it’s not your fault he died.”
Jess shook her head. She’d heard it all before, and the repetition didn’t make it any more true than the first time someone had tried to convince her. “He told me my friends were trouble. If I’d listened, he’d still be alive.”
“Every parent in history has probably said that about their kid’s friends at some point or another. Trust me when I say I know what it is to be responsible for someone else’s death. And you absofuckinglutely were not.”
Aw, fuck. What the hell was Ike doing? Besides Dare and Doc, no one else in his life now knew about how he’d failed to protect Lana. Which meant, honestly, no one else really knew him.
“What do you mean?” Jess asked in a quiet, surprised voice.
Ike debated for a long moment, and then he decided that if she could lay her greatest failure out on the table, so could he. And doing so had some extra benefits. First, it might alleviate some of the guilt she carried for her father. Second, it might make her look at him in a way that wasn’t so damn affectionate—because if she thought she’d been hiding her emotions from him since he’d come downstairs, she was all kinds of wrong. And, third, it would make her see that Ike wasn’t a good person—that he was just like the people her father had warned her away from. The first one was all for her, but the latter two were things he really needed to have a chance to put the colossal misstep of last night behind him, to get them back on the track they should’ve stayed on.
Sonofabitch.
As if Ike could have that taste of her and not want more. As if he could make it just about the fucking and keep his emotions separate—problem was, the whole time he’d been operating on feelings, not thoughts, and it was his goddamned feelings that had led him to give in to his body’s demands in the first place.
As if he’d be able to stand any other man looking at her, let alone having her.
Jessica Jakes was his. Only she wasn’t. And that mindfuck had no cure.
He pushed his plate away and folded his arms across his chest. “My father was trash. Working with Mexican cartels, he made his money as a coyote smuggling Mexican migrants into the country across the Arizona border. That was his business. And the expectation was that it was the family business. Me and my two older brothers were all to work for him. I hated it. I hated the intimidation, the exploitation, the separation of kids and parents. I wanted no part of it. One time, I got up the courage to tell my father I wanted to leave after I graduated high school. He beat me so bad I couldn’t see for three days because of the swelling.”
“Oh, Ike,” Jess said, her expression so full of sympathy.
“Senior year, a girl came through on one of our transports. She stayed with some cousins in Tucson, one of whom was my girlfriend, Lana Molinas. Lana and I had been together since freshman year. I loved her,” Ike said, nailing Jess with a stare.
Jess didn’t flinch at that information. She just nodded.
“Lana’s cousin started talking all over town about having been raped and purposely separated from her parents and little brothers. Lana supported her and went to the authorities, which was the right thing to do, of course. But it put her on my father’s radar. On the cartel’s radar. Bad shit started to go down. My father told me to break it off with Lana or he would. If I’d listened, Lana would still be alive. But I loved her, and I didn’t want that life anyway. So we planned to run away.”
“Jesus, Ike. I had no idea,” Jess said. “What a horrible position to be in.”