“He’s…your son?”
My head nodded as I struggled with a way to form an explanation. To catch her up in the same moment I was trying to break us apart. “Craig made a statement to the police. Veronica already knew she was pregnant when Mark died…knew it wasn’t his. Knew it was mine.”
Bitterness twisted my guts. “She knew the whole fucking time. The guy I told you about, Martin Jennings, who we found out had been responsible for Mark’s death?”
She nodded for me to continue.
“You were right in thinking they were looking for something bigger to pin on Craig. He was one of Martin Jennings’ parasites, running around doing his dirty work while that bastard Jennings pretended his hands were clean. Turns out Jennings had been using Craig to draw Mark deeper into the life. Trying to gauge just what Mark knew about the fucked-up attack on Shea and what he was planning on doing to her.”
I pressed a fist to my mouth, fighting the bitterness, the true reason for this entire mess.
Greed.
Martin’s greed.
Craig’s greed.
Veronica’s greed.
But lust for money was the world’s favorite sin.
“Zee.” Alexis’ voice wrapped around me.
Compassion and warmth.
A comfort I couldn’t accept.
I started pacing. “Once Mark was gone, that left Craig and Veronica to figure out how to hook me in and swindle the most money out of me once Mark was out of the picture. They viewed me as an opportunity that they took full advantage of.”
I swung around to fully look at her. “I was a fool, Alexis. Such a goddamned fool, and I wasted so much time, terrified of losing Liam. Terrified of losing what I thought was my last physical connection to my brother, so I continued to play Veronica’s twisted games. Instead, what I lost was six years of truly knowing my son. Tiptoeing around Veronica’s rules. Barely seeing him. Missing him night and day.”
And this girl…this girl looked at me with all that grace and belief.
She pressed her hands over her heart. The girl so goddamned sweet.
“You told me once if you could do anything for yourself, you’d set yourself free. Don’t you see it, Zee? Now you get to be. You don’t have to hide from me anymore. You don’t have to hide from living your life.”
She took a pleading step forward.
Filling my senses with her light.
I wanted to step away, but I could feel myself leaning her direction, needing to fill myself with her memory.
Her tone turned soft, so caring and sweet. “I know you have a past, Zee. I’ve known it all along, even though I didn’t know the details. And now that I do, I love you even more. I love you. God…I love you so much.”
I choked over the breath I sucked into my failing lungs.
Struck.
Gutted.
Everything was on fire, this blaze that singed me from the inside out. She’d never said it aloud before. But I’d known, hadn’t I?
There’d been no missing it swimming in the warmth of her gaze. No missing it in the bliss of her touch.
It took about all I had to edge back and say the words that were thick with regret. “I have a little boy who’s terrified right now, Alexis. A boy who just lost his mother. A boy who witnessed God knows what. He’s my responsibility. My heart. My life. And right now, I need to focus on him. I need to make sure he heals and knows he’s safe and that he’s always gonna have me right there to protect him.”
Hurt lashed across her face, and she pressed her palms right over her heart. “Why can’t you do that with me?”
I reached out, my hand trembling when I set it on one side of her face. My thumb brushed the single tear that slipped from her eye. “Because I don’t deserve him, Alexis, but I’m gonna do my best by giving him every part of me.”
Before I could get lost in the depths of those stormy eyes, I ripped myself away, forcing myself just to move. To get the hell out of there before my resistance failed the exact same way it seemed to do every time I was in her space.
I bolted out her door and down the two porch steps. I squinted against the glaring sunlight that blazed hot. Just as hot as my insides.
God. I felt like I was burning up.
I fisted my hand, the one with the star tattoo, that forever reminder of what I’d done. Swore I could feel another piece of myself disintegrating as I rushed down her walk and toward my car parked at the curb.
“Zee.” It was a frantic plea. A chill blasted across my skin when I felt her presence come closer. Grow denser.
Delicate arms wrapped around me. Refusing to let me go. “Please…don’t go. We can figure it out. I promise, I’ll be good to him. So good to him. I don’t care that he’s not mine. I’ll love him simply because he’s yours.”
Agony constricted my heart, mashing it in its fiery hold. I gasped around it, my hand on the two of hers locked around my waist. I unwound them and twisted around to look at her.
She stood there beneath the sun. All lit up. Hair on fire and face aglow.
An angel.
The brightest light in the midst of my darkness.
Starshine.
I gripped her by both sides of the neck, my thumbs running the curve of her jaw, my insides knotted. “If I could go back, Alexis, if I could go back and make everything right, it’d be you. It’d be you and Liam and me. But I’ve already fucked up too much, and I refuse to make that mistake with you, and I refuse to make another with him. I’ve got to figure out my life, and I’ve got to do it right, and I can’t keep dragging you into my mess when I don’t have a clue what the fuck I’m doing.”
I jerked back and inched away, another piece of me dying when I watched the pain I’d inflicted whip across her features. I finally turned and jogged around the front of my car, freezing for a moment as I opened the door when I heard the guttural sob that tore from her throat.
For a flash, I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing on a star, on a wish, for something better. For a way to make it right. For her. For Liam. For me.
As a kid, I had breathed a million of those wishes.
Countless.
Infinite.
But nothing had changed the silent curse that had been uttered the day I betrayed my brother. One that had left them permanently dimmed.
Where they forever burned and bled out.
Disintegrating into nothing.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Alexis
A swath of sunlight streamed in through the bay window.
Silence seemed to ride in on it. Hovering in the air.
Too profound.
Too dense.
I was sure I’d never felt so alone.
I hugged my favorite book to my chest, my old copy of Little Women tattered at the edges, the pages worn from the swipe of my fingers as I’d devoured its words time and again.
Today, I just held it, embraced it like an old friend. A companion in the desolation.
Two weeks had passed since Zee had come here and nailed the final stakes into my heart.