He frowned. She still wasn’t getting it, but she would. “I promised her I’d keep her safe until we got out of town. She trusted me.” Ike hated the sympathy he saw on Jess’s face. That wasn’t the reaction he was going for. He didn’t want her to feel bad for him—he wanted her to be pissed at him, disappointed in him, repulsed by him. All the things he felt about himself. His words came out clipped and angry. “My oldest brother, Aaron, called Lana and told her I wanted her to meet him. She probably thought he was helping us escape. But my father sent Aaron to rough Lana up, scare her away, intimidate her into doing what he wanted and shutting her cousin up while she was at it. I found out about the meeting from my middle brother, David, but I got to her after it’d started.”
Ike shook his head as the images of Lana’s bleeding lip rushed to the fore. She’d been sprawled in the middle of an abandoned barn about a mile from their school, crying and clutching at her stomach. God, the sight had felt like a jagged blade to the gut.
“Aaron and I got into a knock-down, drag-out fight, and he pulled a gun. I hit his arm as he pulled the trigger and the bullet went wide.”
Fists and jaw clenched, Ike could still see the slug tearing into Lana’s throat, the blood pouring from the wound.
“Lana took the bullet meant for me and bled out in my arms. Last thing she said to me…” Ike shook his head as pain bloomed in his jaw from how tight he clenched it. “…was that she was pregnant with our baby. I killed two people that day, two people I was supposed to protect,” he rushed out. So he’d failed as a man and a father, as a lover and a protector. And it had cost the only person he’d ever loved everything.
“Ike,” Jess whispered, pulling her chair closer to him.
He held up a hand, stopping her. He didn’t want compassion from her. Or from anyone. He hadn’t deserved it then and sure as fuck didn’t now.
But there was more Jess needed to know. “I wanted to kill Aaron with my bare hands. But I was too fucking scared. Coward that I was, I ran instead. Eventually, I met up with the Ravens, and Dare took me in. Ike Young’s not even my real goddamned name.”
Jess went to her knees in front of him and pushed her body between his thighs. It was too close, too intimate, too damn much for Ike to handle. She grasped his face in her hands. “You were a kid and your father and brother were criminals. If I didn’t cause my father’s death, you didn’t cause Lana’s.” Her thumbs stroked his cheeks. “Ike, I’m so sorry.”
“You’re not hearing what I’m saying,” he said, knocking away her hands, anger boiling up inside him. Jesus, the pain of Lana’s death and his failure was still so fucking sharp.
But Jess didn’t back off. Instead, she pushed herself closer. “I hear you loud and clear. You and Lana were both victims of a horrible situation.”
“I wasn’t any goddamned victim,” he bit out, shoving his chair back and springing to his feet.
Slowly, Jess stood.
“I was weak and stupid and a fucking coward. And Lana paid for it with her life. I didn’t even get her vengeance,” he yelled, pacing between the dining area and living room. Fucking hell, there wasn’t enough air in here. Not with his words echoing around the cabin. Not with Jess staring at him.
“Yes, you did,” Jess said, her voice rising. “You survived. You didn’t give in to what your father wanted. You got free,” she said, walking closer, and a little closer still. “Living life on your terms is the sweetest vengeance of all, and you did it without making a seventeen-year-old kid bear the awful weight of murder.”
Ike glared. He was going to lose his freaking mind. He really was. “Aaron fucking deserved to die.”
“Of course he did,” Jess said, her expression fierce. “But you deserved to live without the guilt of killing someone more.”
“I did fucking kill someone!” he roared.
She shook her head. “No, you didn’t.”
Jess’s words, her defense of him, her compassion—Jesus, they hurt. They picked at messy scars and painful scabs inside him. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t stand still. He couldn’t bear the weight of the vulnerability. And he didn’t want to examine the why of it too closely—because while it’d been hard to tell this story to Dare and Doc, Ike hadn’t felt this damn exposed with them. “You’re wrong.”
“Ike—”
“Just stop,” he said, his chest so tight he had to gasp for air. “You’re not listening to me. You’re not hearing me.” And not just about Lana, either. Jess was looking at him with so much damn emotion in her eyes that he could barely meet them. He had to make her hear him. He had to make her understand. Telling her the greatest shame of his life wasn’t doing the job on Jess he needed it to do, so he was going to have to be more blunt. He gestured with his hand between them. “You and I?” Ike shook his head and ignored the burning pain in his chest. “We’ll never be anything more than this. Relationships aren’t my thing anyway, and definitely not with a woman always in so much damn trouble.” He was the world’s biggest asshole, he knew he was, especially as hurt flashed across her face. “And last night? That was just fucking, just scratching an itch. So whatever you think it meant, Jessica? It didn’t. Not even a little. Not to me.”
Chapter 11
With a raw, jagged hole in her chest where her heart used to be, Jess watched Ike storm out the front door.