Kellan went utterly still behind her. “Jesus,” he whispered after a minute. “Isabella, I’m so sorry.”
Despite the shock in his voice, his breath was warm on her neck, his chest so strong and solid and there behind her that everything she’d tried so hard to forget just kept coming out.
“I remember thinking it had to be some kind of mistake. That she’d walk through the front door at any minute with a big smile on her face and ask why we all looked so worried. But instead, the police came to her parents’ house on that third day. They’re the ones who knocked on the door, and they weren’t smiling.”
“That’s why you became a cop, isn’t it?” Kellan asked, understanding dawning in his voice. “Why you throw yourself into the job so hard? You want to protect people like Marisol.”
Protect. The irony rang in Isabella’s ears hard enough to hurt, and she followed them with a bitter laugh. “I became a cop because I didn’t protect my cousin at all. Her death was my fault.”
A pause opened between them, lasting for a full breath before he said, “What are you talking about?”
Guilt rushed up with the memory, heavy enough to crush her chest, but the rest of the story—the part that no one knew except for her family and the detectives who had investigated Marisol’s murder—poured out of her on a tide of sadness.
“We were supposed to go to a party that night, some high school thing to celebrate homecoming.” God, how stupid it had all seemed in hindsight. How easily she could have made a thousand different choices that would have led to a different outcome. An outcome that wouldn’t have ripped out her family’s heart. An outcome where Mari would have lived.
Closing her eyes, Isabella continued. “I’d been invited by this guy I really liked, but my parents made me promise to take Marisol, too. She was so excited. She’d just started her freshman year, and a party like that was a big deal. I was supposed to pick her up.”
She could still remember the night as if it had been a minute ago, the feel in the air that wasn’t warm enough to be summer anymore, but not quite chilly enough to be fall. At the time Isabella had thought that night would be perfect. How stupid she’d been. How careless.
“But I didn’t,” she said, the words wobbling traitorously through the dark of Kellan’s room. “I told her to walk to our house instead so I could have extra time to get ready. I promised her it would be no big deal, that she’d be safe. I promised, and she believed me, and because of that, she died.”
“No.” Although the protest was little more than a whisper, it cracked through the room as if Kellan had shouted it.
A sob worked upward from Isabella’s chest, and God, she hated herself even more. “Yes. I—”
“No.” Grabbing her shoulders, he swung her to face him. “It’s not your fault. Just like you weren’t responsible for Angel’s death, you aren’t responsible for Marisol’s either.”
“But I promised.” Tears burned behind her eyelids, and she slammed her eyes shut to ward them off, to no avail. “She was my best friend, my closest friend. If only I’d gone to get her…I should have protected her.”
“Isabella, you didn’t know.” Kellan cupped her face. “You couldn’t have known. You were only seventeen. Marisol’s death is a terrible thing, a thing that shouldn’t happen to anyone. But you didn’t kill her, Isabella. This isn’t your fault.”
He thumbed away the tears spilling freely over her face now, and oh, she wanted to believe him so badly. “I miss her,” Isabella said. “I miss her so much.”
“Okay. It’s okay.” Kellan wrapped his arms around her, and just like that, she broke apart. Lying in the safety of his embrace, Isabella let out the guilt that had wracked her for so long. He never budged, just held her and took the brunt of her grief as it tumbled out of her in wave after wave. Finally, her bone-deep cries subsided into softness, and he pulled back to look at her with so much certainty, she ached.
“I’ve got you too, sweetheart. It’s okay.”
This time when he said it, Isabella believed him.
26
Kellan sat in the lobby of the Thirty-Third precinct, watching the controlled chaos around him with no small amount of awe. The place hummed with way more activity than a Wednesday afternoon should allow, from the steady stream of uniformed officers moving past the front doors to the near-constant ringing of the phone in the main office space to the desk sergeant barking orders at damn near everyone walking by. Kellan supposed the firehouse wasn’t too much different from a visitor’s perspective; in fact, Sinclair’s daughter, January, ran the office at Seventeen much like her father ran his intelligence unit—no bullshit, all the time. Still, the Thirty-Third was kind of a daunting place if you didn’t have backup.