Jacked (Trent Brothers #1)(161)

He held my face in his hands, imploring me. “What happened to you?”

It was a simple question, one of which I’d been avoiding answering for years, masking it under a fa?ade of righteous purpose. But one look in his eyes and I unraveled, the agony from hidden shame bubbled up out of me. “She had me feed the baby poison, but I swear I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

He tried to hold me still. “Who, sweetheart?”

Desperation was making me wild. “You have to believe me. I swear I didn’t know.”

“I do.”

I covered his hands with my own, thankful that his grip was holding me together.

“Tabitha.” The memory of her name tasted like bitter acid on my tongue. “Morton.” It was the first time I’d spoken her name out loud in fourteen years, though the burning animosity didn’t feel as fresh. I, my parents—we’d boxed that dirty secret away, adding ignorance and well-crafted lies to our family memories. But I couldn’t hide them anymore. I can’t protect and pretend and go about as though it didn’t happen. Detachment was what was separating us. “She was a friend of my mother’s.”

Just admitting that eased the constricting panic in my lungs somewhat. “I was young, Adam. I didn’t know about such things. I was a self-absorbed teenager, not a mother. I would never…”

He wiped my face, taking special care in my fragile state. He was built so much larger than me and yet he tended to me as if I were made of glass. He listened while I slowly explained about Mrs. Morton’s divorce and her odd behavior, which now made a whole hell of a lot more sense and should have been glaring signs of looming danger. At the time, I was clueless.

I had expected his revulsion, but instead he just gazed at me impassively while untangling me from the ropes. “What happened? It’s okay. Just tell me.”

“What did you do?” Tabitha Morton shrieked. “You killed her! You killed my baby!”

My head swayed as I stepped back in time.

“She was jealous, officer. She tried to punish me for hiring her little boy-crush to do yard work at my house. That has to be it. I left for two hours and she murdered my baby!”

“She bought four gallons of antifreeze that day. Four. Made me carry each one from the car.” My breath hitched after each admission. “Hannah was only… she was only a year old.”

Adam’s hands massaged over each spot he’d exposed, rubbing and soothing my skin. It was starting to feel wonderful, relaxing, but I didn’t deserve it. I’d never atone for my transgressions.

“I didn’t know the signs of ethylene glycol poisoning. I thought… I babysat her all the time. I just thought the baby was sick.”

He unwrapped the ropes around my ribs. “You didn’t know, Erin. How could you?”

A chill ran through me; I was cold and exposed and completely naked.

“So many children come in… neglected, beaten, sexually…” My throat constricted. “Sexually abused, malnourished.” It was hard to swallow. “Left in hot cars… poi… poisoned.”

Adam tossed the length of rope aside and then brushed my hair over my shoulder. “You’re not like that, Erin. You could never be. Is that what scares you?”

Oh God, yes.

He must have sensed my discomfort because he grabbed the thin blanket from behind his head and pulled it around my shoulders.

“Look at me. Tell me the truth. Let’s lay it all out. Did your mom ever hit you?”

He was dead serious asking. Do I look as though I’ve been physically abused? Maybe he thinks…

“No. Never.”

He nodded once. “Your dad? He ever hurt you, or your sister?”

“No. My parents never hit me or Kate. They yelled plenty but never smacked us or anything.”

He pulled the front of the blanket together, covering my exposed chest. “Sweetheart, that’s my point. You didn’t come from an abusive home and neither did I. What makes you think that you’d ever be capable of doing that to yours?”

He didn’t understand. “Why does it happen then? So many women just snap. They lose their minds. I’m sure not all of them came from abusive homes or whatever, but they do it anyway.”

“You have a fear. I get that. But you’ve also dedicated your entire life to taking care of sick people. You honestly think you’d turn into the exact opposite of who you are now? I can’t see that happening, Doc.”

“She poisoned her baby, Adam. Medical exam said it had been going on for a little while. She kept on adding it little by little to her formula and then every time I babysat she’d have me feed it to Hannah so it looked like I was the one trying to kill her. Mrs. Morton didn’t seem psychotic, but she was. Her new boyfriend didn’t even know she had a kid at home.”

Adam rested his hands on my upper arms. “You’ll never be like that, Erin.”

“How can you be so sure?”

His mouth smashed into a hard line. “You remember a few weeks ago when I had that head cold? One sign of a sniffle and you were all up over here with vitamins and saline shit for my nose, making soup and hot tea for me. Remember?”

He’d really had an upper respiratory infection which I was worried might turn into Bronchitis when he started coughing. Then he’d need corticosteroids and…