That fist that sometimes clenched around my heart started to close again, and I drew in a ragged breath as I nodded. And then, because I couldn’t not kiss him, I leaned forward and brushed my lips over his. “Thank you,” I said simply.
A small smile touched his lips, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He’d gone back into memories, and his words when they came seemed far away.
“Bree was raped,” he said flatly, without preamble. “Beaten. Worked over like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Oh, god. Cole, I’m so sorry.”
“She was eight years old at the time. Eight. I was looking to find a way out. I’d pissed some people off, including a rival gang. Their punishment was for one of their new recruits to earn his stripes by raping that little girl.” His voice broke. “They almost destroyed one of the best people you will ever know because of me. Because they wanted to punish me.”
“It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t,” I repeated more harshly because I wanted him to hear me.
“Maybe not,” he said. “But everything that happened afterward was.”
“What happened?” I asked, certain that I could guess his answer.
“I lost it,” he said. “I completely flew off the handle.” He met my eyes. “I killed them. The fucker who raped her, and the co-captains of the gang who’d set him up to do it.”
I swallowed, but I didn’t say anything. What could I say? That I understood? I did. That the bastards who would do that to a little girl deserved it? I sure as hell thought so, but I knew damn well the courts didn’t.
And I knew that Cole had to live with the consequences of his actions each and every day.
“I can’t even remember making the decision to do it, but I can remember with absolute clarity how good it felt to smash my fist into their flesh. To feel their bones shatter. To snuff the life from each of them. I liked it, Kat. Hell, I sought it out. I needed it. Because that was the only way to turn off the rage that had burst out of me like a goddamn geyser.”
“They tortured a child. You defended her. You stood up for her and went to the mat for her. And because you did, she’s grown up to be one hell of a woman.”
He didn’t say anything, but he seemed to draw in my words like oxygen, as if simply having them there to hold on to made everything else just a little bit easier to handle.
“I was caught, of course. If I’d been even halfway in my head, maybe I could have figured out a way to cover up what I’d done, but I couldn’t manage it in the state I was in. I was arrested. I was tried. I was convicted. And that’s how I met Evan and Tyler.”
“The scared straight camp? They sent you there even with three murder convictions?”
“I had the diagnosed impulse control issues—thank you, crack baby syndrome,” he said with disgust. “And there was an experimental program running through the system then. They sealed my record because I was a juvenile and under the terms of the program, if a defendant is later arrested for homicide, the sealed file can be opened and used as evidence in the adult homicide case.”
He shrugged. “In other words, I’ll never shake my past.”
“You don’t have to shake it,” I said. “You just have to live with it. Like everybody else on the planet. But it’s done, and it’s behind you. And didn’t you once tell me you preferred to live life moving forward?”
“That sounds like something I’d say,” he admitted. “That doesn’t necessarily make it true or smart.”
“Bullshit. You’re not going to kill anyone. Your past is sealed up and gone, and it’s going to stay that way. You just have to trust yourself to move forward. Or if you can’t trust yourself, then trust me. Because I trust you completely, and I’m a very smart woman.”
As I hoped, he smiled. But it faded quickly. “I can’t imagine killing anyone intentionally now,” he said. “But the darkness inside me hasn’t gone away. The impulse control issues that nailed me as a kid—as a teenager. They’re still all right there, and I know that any moment I can go completely off the rails. It’s like spending your life walking on dynamite.”