Rev It Up (Black Knights Inc. #3)(52)
“Jake,” she reached out and touched his wrist. Oh, you’ve gone and done it now. Because the skin there was warm and vibrantly alive, prickly with man hair. It reminded her of what it was like to be crushed up against the length of him, to be held so tightly she couldn’t tell which heartbeat was his and which heartbeat was hers. “I don’t blame you for what happened to Steven. And you shouldn’t blame yourself. No matter what you say, he made his own decision that day.”
“But he’d still be alive if we’d killed al-Masri like he wanted to. You’d still have a husband, Franklin would still have his father, and I can’t tell you how—”
“Jake,” she squeezed his wrist, stopping him midsentence. “Maybe you’d all be dead if things had worked differently. Ever think of that? Maybe you’d have gotten pinned on the plateau and picked off one by one. The fact of the matter is, there’s no way for you to know how things might have turned out. What you can be sure of is that you didn’t do anything wrong.”
No matter how much he’d hurt her, no matter how much his continued presence in her life threatened to hurt her still, she couldn’t bear to see him wrestling with that kind of guilt.
He searched her eyes, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. Warmth spread from his wrist to her palm, up her arm, and across her chest before she hastily withdrew her hand.
“But if you don’t blame me for Preacher’s death,” he regarded her with such intensity she was forced to look away, to busy herself by plucking at a loose bead on her clutch, “then why did you look at me like that last night when I introduced myself to Franklin?”
She briefly closed her eyes and tried without much success to steady her nerves. “Because of all the disappointment and hurt, all the pain and memories, it just seemed so…” She shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know, unfair, I guess is the right word to use. That you were able to act like nothing happened. It…it just…it got to me.”
He dragged in a deep breath, and she glanced over. He’d rolled in his lips, and his eyes were unusually bright in the dim lights cast by the lamps beside the bed. “From the moment you stepped into the courtyard, I wanted to fall to my knees and beg your forgiveness. If I hadn’t thought you’d scoff at my apology, I’d have done just that.”
Her heart cracked along another old fissure.
“Well, now you’ve apologized, and I—”
“No,” he shook his head, sliding from the chair to kneel before her, causing her swirling stomach to drop down to her toes. Taking both of her hands, he gazed into her eyes. “I haven’t apologized for everything. I haven’t apologized for the way I treated you that night at the Clover or the things I said to you outside the base’s gates. I haven’t apologized for—”
“It’s okay.” Even more than his declaration of love, his remorse over the way things had happened all those years ago beat against her hard-won resolve, making her regret, making her want to believe that she was wrong about him. Making her start to wonder if she’d made a mistake. And on the heels of that wonder rode a tsunami’s worth of guilt. She swallowed and whispered through the constriction in her chest, “Really, Jake. I don’t want to hear any more. Let’s just leave it.”
Stay strong, Michelle. He might be sorry for what he did just like Dad always claimed to be sorry, but that doesn’t change who he is…
“You may not want to hear it,” he said, “but that’s not gonna stop me from saying it.”
Please let it stop you from saying it. “Jake,” she begged. “It’s really not—”
“I’m so sorry, Shell,” he blurted. “So sorry for the way I treated you when I got back from that four-month tour. My only excuse is that, even though the teams separate us from society, I’d never really felt like an outsider, like something other, until after the barracks bombing. Until after nearly killing that guy in cold blood. I thought if you ever found out what I’d become, you wouldn’t want me. And then I treated you like shit when you went and did the smart thing, kicking me to the curb and falling for Preacher, but that was just a broken heart and wounded pride doing the talking. I swear to God, I didn’t mean any of it.”
Splat!
Uh-huh, and that would be the sound of her resolve getting bashed flat with a sledgehammer.
He smiled sadly and shook his head, reaching to thumb away the tear slowly sliding down her cheek.
Oh, why couldn’t you have told me all of this back then? Things could’ve been so different…
“People talk a good game about what it’s like. They toss around words like PTSD and battle fatigue,” he went on, squeezing her cold, numb fingers. If only her heart could remain as cold and numb. “But they’re only words. No one really knows what it’s like until they’ve lived it and experienced it. I lived it and experienced it so much that I became totally detached from myself. Some days I felt like the walking dead, completely numb, and other days my senses were heightened to such a degree that the smallest things would set me off. I should’ve handled it better. I know that. But I did what I thought was right. I pushed you away to save you from the monster I’d become. From the killer I’d become.”
“Jake—”