50. BLAKE
BLAKE
The distant city sprawled out like a constellation of stars, its lights twinkling in the velvet darkness, while up here on the terrace, the air was just chilly enough that I’d wrapped Tessa in a cashmere blanket.
Our wineglasses caught the soft glow from the string lights overhead, casting ruby shadows on the small table between us.
“Tell me why you’ve always pushed love away?” Tessa repeated her earlier question softly, her voice barely carrying over the muted hum of traffic.
I felt my shoulders tense, that familiar wall rising while my fingers pulled her closer against me, buying time.
“You already know some of it,” I began. “About my parents …” I trailed off, taking a slow breath while Tessa’s fingers brushed my wrist in a gentle anchor to the present.
“The basics, yes,” she acknowledged. “But not everything.”
I nodded, fixing my gaze on the city lights.
“I learned early on how quickly life could change.” I paused, swallowing hard.
“The first lesson came on Christmas Eve when my sister and I were baking cookies with our grandmother.” My voice grew distant, lost in memory.
“Mom and Dad had gone out for some last-minute shopping.” Another pause, longer this time.
“I can still see my grandmother’s red apron turning white with flour as she wiped her hands to answer the doorbell.
But what I remember most is the sound she made when she collapsed after learning her only child had died in a car accident. ”
A slight tremor ran through me then, but, as if sensing she needed to be steady, Tessa’s hand stilled as it rested on my leg.
“With my Grandmother’s death, we didn’t have extended family who could take us in,” I continued, hearing the clinical tone in my own voice, using it as armor against the raw emotion threatening to consume me.
“So, Faith and I entered the foster system.” I took a long sip of wine, trying to wash away the bitterness of the words.
“That first night was when reality hit. I was lying in a bed with a green comforter instead of my football one. Breathing in artificial vanilla instead of the familiar scent of home.”
My head went back in time to that first night.
Lying in bed, I counted the shadows on the ceiling that the streetlight made through the weird-shaped tree outside.
That’s when I heard her tiny feet padding down the hallway, the creaky floorboard by my door giving her away.
Faith’s shadow looked even smaller than a five-year-old girl’s in the doorway.
“Blake?” Her voice was wobbly, like when she tried not to cry at the doctor’s.
“Hey.” I sat up, clicking on the lamp. The one that wasn’t mine, in the room that wasn’t mine. “Bad dream?”
She ambled closer. “I want to go home.” Her eyes kept jumping around like scared butterflies, not landing on anything in this foreign room for too long. She hugged Mom’s old sweater tight against her chest. The pink one she wouldn’t let the social workers take away.
“I know,” I whispered because what else could I say?
“When can we go home, Blake?” She said it like it was simple, like maybe we just got lost and needed directions to get back.
My throat got tight and scratchy. I patted the space next to me, and she climbed up, her hair still smelling like the baby shampoo Mom used to use. I held her close, trying to be brave enough for both of us, trying to find words that wouldn’t hurt so much.
“We’re never going home again, Faith.”
She pulled back to look at me, her forehead all scrunched up, like she hadn’t fully understood the conversations that preceded this one. Of course she hadn’t. She was only five. How do you understand death at five?
“Never?”
I shook my head. “We have to be each other’s home now.”
Her bottom lip started doing that wobble thing, and her grip on Mom’s sweater got so tight that her knuckles went white. I wanted to fix it so badly. To make everything okay again. But I couldn’t even fix my own heart, let alone hers.
“I miss Mommy,” she whimpered.
Three little words, and everything inside me crumbled like a sandcastle in the rain. Faith’s sobs shook her whole body and mine, too, as I held her. The sweater between us still smelled like home, but home wasn’t a place we’d ever experience again.
A cool breeze brought me back to the present, rustling through the potted plants surrounding us, carrying the faint scent of jasmine.
“Down the hall, my parents weren’t sleeping in their room. They’d never make us breakfast again or take us hiking through national parks like Dad loved to do. They’d never …” My voice dropped, and Tessa shifted even closer, nestling her head onto my shoulder.
How did this woman know exactly what I needed? Her presence, her warmth, a sedation to my pain.
“It was like Faith and I had been launched from a cannon and landed on a different planet. Nothing felt real anymore.” I met Tessa’s gaze briefly as she looked up at me, the compassion in her eyes almost too much to bear.
“Externally, I maintained composure, primarily for Faith’s sake. The first foster family was decent enough.” I worked my jaw silently for a moment. “After a few months, we’d adapted to their routines, their way of life. But grief has a way of seeping through the cracks.”
I rubbed Tessa’s arm, pulling her tighter to my body to remind myself I wasn’t alone anymore. “Six months later, they said goodbye.”
Tessa took a deep breath, perhaps bracing herself, sensing the worst was yet to come.
“I convinced myself it was my fault,” I admitted, each word feeling like it was being dragged from somewhere deep inside me.
“That my demeanor had been too somber, too damaged. So, at the next placement, I became the model foster child.” A bitter smile crossed my face.
“I did chores unprompted, maintained perfect manners, followed every rule. But after a few months, they turned us away too. Claimed it was just part of the foster family process, but I knew better. Foster families were allowed to apply for adoption; they chose not to. Eight homes in six years, each one falling somewhere between awful and barely tolerable.” I swallowed. “Then came the worst placement.”
My voice dropped, the words feeling like gravel in my throat. “The one with a predator hiding behind a smile. The one who chose substances over basic human decency.”
Beside me, I heard Tessa’s sharp intake of breath, the soft rustle of the blanket as she shifted, wrapping her arm around my waist, like she was the one who needed the reminder that I’d made it out.
“Who weaponized our fear of separation to ensure our silence. I didn’t know then that his threats were empty, that he couldn’t actually separate us. That manipulation kept us there far longer than we should have been. Maybe if I’d reached out for help …”
I stilled and braced myself to reveal something I’d never wanted her to know. But if we were really doing this, she needed to know what I meant when I said I was damaged. That I’d always be damaged.
“Tessa, there’s something else I’ve never told you. Something I’m terrified to say out loud because …” I swallowed hard. “Because I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
Or reject me.
“What is it?”
I laced her fingers with mine, memorizing how they fit together in case this was the last time she’d let me hold her hand.
“One night, that foster dad was beating Faith worse than ever before. I tried to stop him, got between them. For a minute, he turned on me instead. Which was what I’d wanted.
But then he went back to Faith. He was high on something.
I could tell because his eyes were wild, movements erratic.
And I knew …” My voice cracked. “I knew I was watching my little sister get beaten to death.”
Tessa’s hand tightened, but she didn’t pull away. Her eyes held mine, steady and present, giving me strength to continue.
“When I picked the baseball bat up, I just wanted him to stop. But after that first hit …” I closed my eyes, the memory visceral.
“I couldn’t stop. I saw every bruise he’d left on Faith, heard every scream, felt every terror she’d lived through.
Blood sprayed across the walls, across the dresser.
By the time I stopped …” My voice dropped to a whisper. “There wasn’t much left of his face.”
I forced myself to look at Tessa, expecting horror, revulsion. Instead, I found tears in her eyes. Not of fear, but compassion. She released my hand and touched my cheek.
“That’s the darkness you’ve been carrying?” she asked softly.
“Ryker and the guys know. Told them one night after too many beers. They know what I did, what I’m capable of.
” I turned my face into her palm, still amazed she hadn’t pulled away.
“Telling someone you deliberately took a life … it changes things. Tests everything. But they didn’t run.
Instead, they accepted me.” My body tightened, thinking of Knox.
“That’s what made me bond with them like brothers. ”
And why I cared so much about Knox. He was sitting in prison for murder while I walked free. Different circumstances, same deadly outcome. The guys stood by me when they learned my darkest truth, so how could I do any less for him?
“That darkness …” My voice roughened. “It’s still there, Tess. I wear the white coat now. Took an oath to do no harm. But if someone tried to hurt anyone I love …” I broke off, jaw clenching.
“You’d protect them,” she finished, her voice steady. “Like you protected Faith.”
The acceptance in her tone warmed my body.
I’d hoped she might understand, like the guys did, but this was different.
Here was a woman who’d been attacked herself by a man who overpowered her.
Trying to now trust a man twice her size who’d not only admitted to killing a man in the past, but who’d admitted he was capable of doing it again.