Chapter 54 - Scarlett
SCARLETT
“Scarlett, there’s something I haven’t told you …” His voice faltered. “And once I do, you might never want to talk to me again.”
I adjusted my shirt, my mind racing with horrible possibilities.
“I should have told you sooner. I … let myself get lost in finding out who did this to you while also fighting my feelings, but I should have told you before I asked you to be mine.”
It took Jace several seconds to speak. Seconds where I held my breath until my lungs burned, until finally, his voice emerged, soft and laden with guilt.
“After the death of my father, I felt like I had to be the strong one in the family,” Jace began, pacing slowly.
“The one who never got in any trouble. I kept my grades up and tried to be the easy kid for my mom. Lord knows she was dealing with enough grief of her own, and my brothers …” He ran a hand through his hair.
“Let’s just say, they didn’t handle the death of my father well.
So, I tried to be a good kid for her sake. ”
He paused, his attention sweeping over me. “You might want to sit down for this.”
My heart stuttered. What was he about to tell me? Jace was the first guy I had completely let my guard down with, the first guy I had let myself fall for, the first guy I actually wanted a future with. In short, I’d given him power over my heart.
If he turned out to be someone I should never have trusted, I’d never ever try again.
“I’d rather stand,” I said, bracing myself.
A night breeze rustled through my hair, the horses making snickering noises that felt inappropriately cheerful for the moment.
Jace chewed on his lip but nodded.
“When I was in college, I found out that my mom had cancer.” His voice grew rougher.
“The night I learned her treatments were failing, I was at a bar with Marcus that served underage kids. I was twenty, below the legal drinking age, and I don’t remember most of that night, but I do remember drowning my anger with alcohol. ”
He moved to the nearby tree, twisting a branch between his fingers until I thought it might snap, just like my composure if this conversation continued in the direction I feared.
“I remember coming to on the ground, staring up at the sky, wondering what the hell I was doing, sleeping outside in the middle of the night. That’s when I heard the hiss of the engine and saw steam rising from the crunched hood of the car. I had been ejected when it hit a tree.”
“Were you hurt?” I asked, already stepping toward him.
Jace shook his head. “Your first question shouldn’t be if I was hurt, Scarlett. It should be if I hurt someone.”
My mind attempted to catalog his words, unsure if I really wanted to hear whatever he was about to confess. Some truths changed everything. Some truths couldn’t be unheard.
“I had a head injury,” he said, his voice flat. “So, the paramedics prioritized stabilizing me. By the time the police came to talk to me, they had already gotten a statement from Marcus, who took the fall. He claimed he was driving that night.”
“Was he?”
Jace shook his head, not meeting my eyes.
“In the hospital, he told me what happened. He said I was belligerent and beside myself at the bar, that I had gone to my car to drive. I don’t remember leaving the bar. I don’t remember being in that car.”
“I don’t understand. If you crashed, why did Marcus say he was driving?”
“He didn’t know how much longer my mom would live, and whatever time I had left with her, he didn’t want me to spend it on trial or in jail. So, he took the rap.”
I tried to reconcile this with what I now knew about Marcus. Had there been a time when he was actually decent? How could a man who took a criminal fall for Jace be the same man who hurt me tonight? How could both men inhabit the same body?
Then again, look at my dad. Charming. Funny. Violent. Dangerous. Loving. People weren’t simple creatures with on/off switches for good and evil.
“But a few days later, circumstances changed,” Jace continued, his voice tight.
“We hadn’t just hit a tree; we had hit another vehicle.
At the time, the woman driving didn’t have life-threatening injuries.
But she had a complication. A blood clot went to her lungs and killed her.
” His voice lowered. “So, Marcus was charged with vehicular manslaughter.”
“Oh my God.” I drew my hand to my mouth.
“I tried to recant my statement to take responsibility. I went to the police station. I called a lawyer. I did everything I could, but they didn’t believe me. They thought I was just trying to cover for my best friend.”
My mind was reeling. A woman died? Because of Jace’s terrible decision? I was glad he at least confessed to the police because I didn’t know that I could have respected him otherwise. But still, he was responsible for a death.
And Marcus had saved Jace from certain prison?
“Did Marcus go to jail?”
“Almost. I went to my uncle and confessed everything. He secured the best lawyers in the country who, somehow, managed to make the problem go away. But that only left me with more guilt.” Jace’s shoulders slumped, appearing to recognize how much this reinforced the talk we’d had in the rain.
“I sank into a deep depression after that,” he continued.
“Ashamed that while my mother was fighting for her life, I had gone out drinking and caused someone else to die. And I was ashamed that we had used our wealth and connections to get away with it.”
Oh God. And then I threw things like that in his face outside the restaurant about the privileged not suffering consequences. No wonder he’d looked so destroyed by that talk.
He took a ragged breath. “If the police had listened to me, if they had charged me instead of Marcus, I would’ve surrendered to whatever punishment they sentenced me to. But I couldn’t let Marcus spend his life in prison because of my mistakes.”
He looked at me, his eyes haunted. “I never even told my other friends about it at the time. I was so disgusted and ashamed. I didn’t want anyone to know my darkest secret.”
This was a lot to digest. That poor woman—someone’s daughter, maybe someone’s mother—gone forever because of one reckless night.
That family left with a gaping hole no explanation could ever fill.
Cold fury and disbelief warred inside me.
How dare he get behind the wheel? Grief-stricken or not, drunk or not, it wasn’t just a mistake.
It was a selfish, devastating choice that cost someone everything.
My throat tightened. Part of me wanted to scream at him, to make him feel every ounce of that family’s pain. We all had a responsibility to ensure our actions didn’t hurt others. No amount of guilt or subsequent good deeds could ever bring that woman back.
And yet … looking at the haunted shadows in Jace’s eyes, I could see he’d been serving a life sentence of his own making. The prison he’d built for himself had no walls, but the punishment had been no less severe.
“For a while, I had no real purpose in life,” he continued. “I didn’t feel deserving of happiness, and I felt especially unworthy of love. So, I chose to put up walls and steered clear of relationships.”
My stomach twisted at his words because I could tell he’d believed that.
All those years, he’d been hating himself, forcing everyone away because of a terrible decision he’d made years ago.
Maybe I didn’t know exactly how this would all land in my heart, but I did believe people deserved second chances, and Jace … Jace was a good man. That much I knew.
He moved closer to me, close enough that I could see the pain etched in every line of his face.
“But after a while, I realized self-loathing wasn’t enough. I needed to take this guilt and turn it into fire, into fuel to do something good.”
His voice grew stronger. “I later learned that the woman had been driving on the road that night because she was working a late shift at a job she’d taken after her primary employer laid her off. Turned out, her company had cut hundreds of employees for no other reason than corporate greed.”
Jace’s eyes lit with a familiar passion. The one I’d glimpsed whenever he talked about his business philosophy.
“I realized maybe there was something good I could do with my wealth.” His voice softened. “But I never changed my mind about relationships … until you. I let you into my world, and I developed feelings for you, Scarlett. In fact, I’m falling in love with you.”
Strange how my heart could still react with a hiccup, as if his profession wasn’t imprisoned in a jail of complications.
“But you deserve someone far better than a man who caused the death of an innocent woman. Not someone who was never held accountable for taking another life.”
I had no idea how to process all of this.
It would take time. Hours, days, maybe weeks to digest what Jace had told me he’d done, to see how that settled into my soul.
The woman. The cover-up. The wealth that made it all go away while another family buried their loved one.
I couldn’t offer absolution, not today. Maybe not ever.
But I also couldn’t deny the ache in my chest when I looked at him, the tangle of feelings that wouldn’t simply dissolve because of this revelation.
My father had hurt people deliberately, systematically, without a shred of genuine remorse.
What I saw in Jace was different. This wasn’t just guilt; it was a man who’d spent years trying to atone.
Who’d built a company that protected thousands of jobs.
Who’d turned his darkest moment into a mission.
“I …” I started, then stopped, searching for the right words.
“I can’t tell you how to feel about what happened.
” His eyes met mine, vulnerable, expecting rejection.
“But my father …” I swallowed hard. “He never felt sorry for what he did. And he sure as hell never tried to make anything better.” I took a shaky breath.
“You’ve dedicated your life to helping people, Jace.
That doesn’t erase what happened, but it says something about who you are. ”
“You don’t see me as a monster?” he asked, his voice barely audible.
I shook my head slowly. “What I see is someone who’s been punishing himself for years … who’s convinced himself he doesn’t deserve a second chance.”
I stepped closer, my heart hammering. “You have a choice. You can keep shutting people out, or …” My voice caught. “Or you can forgive yourself enough to let someone in.”
Hope took flight in his green eyes.
“When this is over …” He gestured vaguely, words failing him.
His gaze searched mine, asking the question he couldn’t bring himself to voice.
“Would you … I mean … I’d understand if you needed time.
Or if you couldn’t …” He trailed off, jaw working, the vulnerability in his expression almost unbearable.
This powerful man, who built empires, reduced to incomplete sentences and unspoken questions. Afraid to ask directly for what he wanted. Afraid even to name it. He was asking if there was any hope that he and I could have a future together.
“You opening up to me makes me feel much closer to you,” I assured. “But after everything that’s happened tonight, I’m in a vulnerable, fragile state of mind and shouldn’t be making any life-altering decisions until I’ve had time to process it all.”
There was something more urgent pulsing beneath my shock. Something that made the hairs on my neck stand up.
If Marcus was this good, honorable man, so selfless that he’d taken the fall for Jace all those years ago, why was he behaving so terribly now?
By the looks of it, Marcus had made out like a bandit.
He’d gotten off any criminal charges and been a loyal right-hand man to Jace ever since, benefiting from what was probably an outrageous compensation package, power, and endless opportunities. Why blow it all?
And more pressing, why on earth would he threaten to hurt Jace tonight? This was the dark secret Marcus was alluding to, the one he was holding over Jace’s head.
Knowing what it was now, I could see he’d exaggerated a bit.
Jace probably wouldn’t lose his freedom; I’d have to believe the statute of limitations had run out, but that wasn’t the point.
Marcus wasn’t the loyal friend Jace believed him to be.
He thought Marcus was on his side, all while his “so-called-friend” was threatening him behind his back.
“You owe a lot to Marcus,” I managed, trying to keep my voice flat. Playing the role of understanding friend as I attempted to tease out what Jace might know. Did he have any clue that Marcus was a snake coiled to strike?
“I owe him everything,” Jace said, the raw conviction in his voice making my stomach twist.
And just like that, I had my answer. Jace had no idea Marcus was a monster. He was oblivious to the danger lurking in his inner circle, tethered by gratitude to the very man who wanted to destroy him.
I opened my mouth to tell him the truth.
But then I pictured Jace’s face when he’d found me earlier tonight with that cold, unfiltered fury in his eyes.
If I told him it was Marcus, Jace might do something rash, something he couldn’t take back.
Something that would destroy his life as thoroughly as Marcus intended.
The “good” news, if you could call it that, was that this wasn’t just an HR problem anymore. Marcus had committed a crime by attacking me. I thought of my father, who’d been arrested and sitting in jail ever since he’d assaulted me. There was a system for this. A process.
I’d go to the police first. File a report. Once Marcus was safely behind bars, where Jace couldn’t blow up his life by beating him senseless, then I’d tell Jace everything. This way, I could protect both of us.
But that created another problem: Marcus had explicitly threatened to expose Jace’s past if I went public. The accident. The cover-up. Everything Jace had just trusted me with could become headline news if Marcus made good on his threat.
I had to choose: protect Jace’s secret or protect Jace from himself?