Chapter Twenty-Three #4
“I told you to leave because I was tryin’ to protect you,” he replies.
“I was tryin’ to do the right thing. Not that I’ve got any experience in it but…
” He swallows thickly again, his gaze penetrating.
“It’s on me, yeah? I didn’t think. I made you feel like all those fuckin’ college boys did.
But that’s what they are, do you understand?
Boys. Immature little shitheads. They don’t know what beauty is because most of ’em haven’t seen the ugliness in the world.
They don’t know the value of softness when they’ve never felt hard, concrete walls.
They don’t know what it’s like to close your eyes at night and see fire and blood. Instead of daydreams of you.”
I clench my eyes shut for a second before I ask, “What happened to her?”
He freezes. His grip on me goes still instead of rhythmic jerks and pulses.
But I can’t turn back now. I need to know why he’s the way he is.
Why he’s so determined to get revenge. Why he spent the last eight years behind bars, looking at the sky through a barred window, when I know that he belongs out here, sleeping under the stars, riding like the wind, working the land. Being with his family.
So if he’s all statue-like right now and unbreathing, I breathe for him.
I press my heaving chest to his unforgiving frame.
I stretch myself to the bone to get up in his face, bring our mouths together, and breathe out, “What did they do to her? They did something to her, didn’t they?
Something happened eight years ago that made you this way.
You’re not this man. You may be hard and rough but you’re not a criminal.
You’re not ruthless and without mercy. You’re a protector.
You protected me. You’ve been protecting me so tell me what they did. Tell me what happened to her. What—”
“She died.”
His eyes seem faraway now even though they’re on me, and it’s hard to breathe at his declaration, but I do it for him.
I keep holding on to him, pressing my chest against his, giving him my breaths as he says, “She was waitin’ for me.
At one of the barns. The one where we used to meet.
I was runnin’ late when I got the phone call.
” He pauses here for a second and I let him, waiting and dreading his next set of words.
“There was an explosion. On the north side of the property. At first, Rad said it was way off the pastures, out in the woods. It spooked the cows, the horses, but they weren’t harmed.
Coulda been a lot worse, he said. So I was relieved.
For a second, I let relief run through me.
But then it occurred to me. The barn. It was on the north side too.
Away from everything, out in the woods, her favorite.
She loved that place, said it gave her peace after a long day of ridin’ and groomin’.
She worked for one of the ranches in town, a wrangler.
” He pauses again as if seeing her in his mind, before continuing, “By the time I got there, it was all gone. All traces of the barn, her. Just ashes, nothing more. She died in her favorite spot, waitin’ for me.
Probably scared out of her mind. Burned alive, in agony, waitin’ for me to come save her. ”
I know I need to be strong right now.
I know I need to hold him, give him strength, but I don’t know how to do that when I’m falling apart myself.
When my own knees are shaking and buckling.
I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t what he told me.
I didn’t expect to see the sheer pain on his face.
Or hear the acute misery in his voice. I didn’t expect my own heart to break like this. For him. For the woman he loved.
For them.
“I couldn’t though,” he goes on. “I couldn’t save her.”
Somehow through my own tears and ache, I grab his face and whisper, “Arsen.”
My voice is small and broken, but he hears it still and finally focuses on me.
More than that, he finally breathes. His chest shudders against mine, and the force in his grip returns.
In fact, it returns tenfold. He grabs my face in his rough palms much like I’m grabbing his and says, gutturally, “They killed her. They rigged the barn. And I broke into Wildfire and tried to kill the man responsible for it. Eight years later, I’m still hell-bent on destroying him, destroying the whole Turner family and I’m not gonna stop.
Nothin’ will make me stop. Do you understand what I’m sayin’ to you?
These people, the Turners, the Graysons, we’re all the same.
We’re all dangerous. Criminals. We’re cut from the same cloth and that’s why”—he squeezes his fingers around my face, making me look into his eyes—“you need to leave. You need to get out of here in three weeks. You need to be free. You need to forget what happened here and you need to run, you understand? Far, far away. Where no one can find you. Not Turners, not Graysons. No one.”
“Not even you?”
“I’m a Grayson, ain’t I? But more than that,” he continues, his eyes bright and fiery, “I am like your father. You were right. I’m cruel, selfish.
A killer. I couldn’t save the girl I was supposed to love.
She died because of me. I can’t save anyone.
I’m not a protector. So you need to run, you understand?
You need to save yourself. From me. Tell me you understand. ”
I was wrong.
He’s nothing like my father. While my father killed the woman he loved, eight years later, Arsenal Grayson is still mourning the woman he couldn’t protect.
While every time my father came around I’d try to hide behind whatever was larger than me, when Arsen puts his arms around me, I feel safe.
They both have done their own brand of bad things to me, but only one of them wants me to go free.
No, they’re not the same. In fact, they couldn’t be more opposite.
So for the first time in my life, I decide to throw caution to the wind and I don’t berate myself for it. I don’t second-guess myself like I would when I wrote those letters. I wholeheartedly and in possession of all my faculties do what I do next.
I kiss him.