Come Back for Me (Arrowood Brothers #1)(78)

My body feels as though thousands of ice shards are poking me. I keep shaking my hands, hoping the feeling comes back. I struggle to draw air into my lungs, and it’s as though the walls are caving in. I can’t stay here. I can’t just . . . sit here.

I jump to my feet, pulling the sheet with me and wrapping it around my body, my stomach roiling and saliva flooding my mouth. I’m going to be sick if I sit still a second longer.

He was there. He saw my parents be killed. By his father.

He knew. He fucking knew what happened, and all this time, he’s kept this from me.

“Ellie,” he says from behind me.

“No! No! Don’t say another word.”

My mind is going in circles as I look at him. Connor, the man who I am so in love with that I gave myself to him wholly, the man who held me after I had been beaten, had been lying to me. He vowed to protect me, built a tree house for Hadley, made me believe in him, and all for what? All so he . . . could . . . break my fucking heart?

His chest rises and falls as he extends his hand toward me. “Ellie, let me explain.”

There’s no way he can. He used me, just like Kevin. Anger churns in my gut, and I explode. “You knew!” I scream. “You knew, and you, what? You came and rescued me so that you could ease your conscience? Was I some game? Was this fun for you? Save the girl whose parents you killed?”

His eyes widen. “No! What happened with us had nothing to do with any of this.”

“Right.” I laugh. “The hell it didn’t. You were there, Connor! You were there, and you kept your big secret, and now you tell me? After all of this!” I point to the bed where I let him love me. I felt his love all the way through my bones, and now I want to break every last one of them.

How could he do this to me? How could he use me like this?

“I didn’t know until the other day.”

Please. “I’m not a fool. Sure, I’ve acted like one, and I was the dumb girl who stayed in an abusive marriage, but I wasn’t lying about any of it. I gave you everything! I gave you my heart, my love, our daughter!” I scream the last word through a sob. “God, you let me tell her! You fucking asshole! How could you do this to her?”

My tears fall easily while my heart breaks into a million pieces. I trusted him. I thought that he wouldn’t lie to me, but he did. He has been all along.

I wipe my face, feeling angry and broken.

“I didn’t know until Declan came. He pieced it together, and I swear that’s the truth. I love you, and I love Hadley, I would never hurt you on purpose.”

Well, he’s a little late for that. It’s exactly what he did. He used me to get what he wanted.

“If that’s true, then you still knew before you let us share a night together. Why? So you could get laid before you told me you saw who killed my parents?” I can’t stop yelling at him. I feel so betrayed. He was supposed to be different.

Connor was the man who would never do this to me, and yet he is.

“I didn’t plan this, Ellie. I had every intention of telling you! Hell, I tried when you got here!”

“Don’t you dare put this on me! You had plenty of opportunity, but you didn’t.”

He grips the side of his head before his shoulders slump. “I’m not putting any blame on you. I should’ve told you, you’re right.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

He watches me, his breaths coming in short bursts and then he looks to the ceiling. “Because I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to ever say the words, least of all to you. Maybe I’m a bastard, but I need you. The idea of hurting you was fucking killing me, but you deserved to know more than I wanted to protect myself.”

“There’s no maybe about your being a bastard, Connor. You lied to me. You used me, and you used the fact that I love you to gain what you wanted.”

I’m such a fool. Always the damn fool with her hand in the jar, hoping to find a cookie and then getting bit by something.

That’s what I am.

“I didn’t use you. I made love to you because I knew this would be all I got. I knew that, once I told you the truth, you’d leave me, and I love you more than anything in the world.”

I shake my head, tears falling as I stare at the man I no longer know. “Love? Love doesn’t take. Love doesn’t rob someone of choice. Love gives, and love cares. You took something from me, not just that night, but right now.”

His eyes are filled with regret and sadness as I tear through him. “I fell in love with you not knowing who you were. I have lived with the guilt of what happened for eight years. I didn’t know, Ellie. Hurting you goes against every fiber in my being. I would take a bullet, cut my arm off, or anything to avoid it.”

He may think that’s what he means, but I don’t believe him. He shot the bullet, right through my fucking heart. “Go back to where you say you didn’t know. When didn’t you know?”

Connor licks his lips and then closes his eyes. “Ever since the day I met you . . .”

“When we met at the bar where my parents were last,” I say with new knowledge dawning on me. “I want to know everything. I want you to tell me every detail on how it happened.” He . . . he knows what happened, knows how broken I’ve been because of it, and he never told me. “After their car flipped and they were left for dead, what happened then?”