Deploy, Part One (Rawlings #1)(54)
She grunted and in confused anger her hands clenched the thin air. “Then what? Nothing. Not one more f*cking letter? Could you be any more confusing?”
His gaze rapidly rushed over her, reveling in the strength he saw but determined to state his point. “Over two months! You expect me to believe you endlessly grieved for your abusive, drunken father for that amount of time?” He stepped forward and ticked his jaw up. “Murdock keep you company? You cry on his shoulder?”
“No,” she said with a sick, pissed expression on her face. “I needed that long and then some to get over the fact I killed him.”
Declan jerked his head back, his gray eyes mixed with furious confusion.
“Yeah,” she said with a sneer. “I listened to you. I pushed back.” Her voice cracked then. Even though he was before her eyes, she didn’t see Declan but a flash of the last image she saw of her dad—the nightmare that would not die.
In a beat, she felt her face against Declan’s chest, felt his hand cradle the back of her head. She breathed it in for all of ten seconds then pushed back. She didn’t want his validation.
“I don’t need the sympathy. I didn’t mean to do it and more times than not it feels like a nightmare I’m trapped in.”
“The fire?” he asked, moving closer gradually with his hands up in a peaceful gesture.
She bit her lip when she felt it tremble. “He said they could hurt you...all of you.”
“Who said?” Declan asked as his brow tensed. He’d be damned if anyone hurt his own or threatened her—death was all but promised to the f*ck that did as much.
She moved her head side to side. “He fell...I pushed back and he fell,” she said as her gaze stared into nothing, watching it all again. “I went down with him...then I ran...only stopped for a weapon, but when I...when I glanced over my shoulder he was still and—” She looked right at him. “I think I hoped he’d never get up again.”
Again he had her in his arms, rocking her. “You’re fine. You survived, baby. You did it,” his lips said with panted breaths. Emotion was ripping him. He wanted to dig up her father only to kill his ass again. Justice was trembling. Over three months gone, and the ass still had his clutches on her.
When she felt tears coming, sanity came and she moved from him and rushed down the hall to the bathroom to steal a second to compose herself.
Her escape didn’t work out so well. He was right behind her.
“Leave, Declan,” she said, half turning as she walked. “I’m not a charity case. And clearly you had other plans lined up tonight.”
He swayed back, dumbfounded.
“Don’t give me that look!”
“What are you talking about?” he yelled.
“That girl!”
He moved his head to the side trying to clear the absurdity she was saying. Way too much had happened from the last second he saw her until now, and even when he did see her he was on his way to talk to his dad about Nolan.
Nolan. He had to find Nolan, but now this... Now he understood what she’d gone through. How it wasn’t a sudden death that Declan was sure was a blessing. It was a moment that would always be able to reach back and rob seconds from her life.
“That girl!” she said again. “Look, I get it. Whatever we are, it repels as much as it attracts. I get I’m some girl you knew back home and the way you see things, where you’re going, doesn’t have room for this weight. Let’s just stop f*cking with each other, okay? Why rip it open right when we find a way to agree with the pain?”
Oh hell no, she was not throwing that excuse at him. “There was no f*cking girl!”
“What? You’ve had so many you can’t even remember?”
He slammed the bathroom door shut, thinking he trapped her, but all he did was push her to escape out the other way into an empty room. At one time it was a guest room fully furnished with antiques, but now, after selling everything they could to start to pay the debts of her father, it was nearly empty, only a lamp and few frames against the wall remained.
He gripped her arm and then turned her, stopping her from going out another door. “One f*cking girl. One name: Justice.” He moved in closer to her face. “Now, I’ve had a hell of a day, all the more a blur now that I’m here with you, but if I remember correctly my cousin’s wife was hugging me when I first saw you today.”
She furrowed her brow. And he smirked, but not because he was boastful but because he was full of disbelief. She was jealous. She cared. She was not some girl too young for him f*cking ‘Jody’ while he was gone. He meant something to her.
“Is that what the lip biting shit was about? You thought I was making my rounds like some man whore?”
“What the hell was I supposed to think? You gave me the first breath I could remember having in months when I found your letters. You made me see out of the fog of it all. Then what? You just stopped. I didn’t even see you graduate!”
He dropped his head and shook it, his smirk still in place. “I get nothing from you. And after swallowing every inch of my pride I get Atticus to ask you if you had gotten any of my letters—giving you the benefit of the doubt, thinking that you had thought of me in all that time, and you did remember I was writing and were looking for a letter at your post but I was sending them to the wrong address or some shit.” He looked right at her. “Then it turns out no, I hadn’t, you never even thought to check, or about me. During all your shit. Not once.”