Written with You (The Regret Duet #2)(46)

Just the way Truett liked it.

I’d shared a meal with Truett multiple times over the years. It had taken a while for me to break down his walls, but I could be persistent when I wanted to be. I wouldn’t say he was exactly fond of me, but he’d put up with me—grumbling the entire time.

Truth be told, he’d needed those visits just as much as I had.

Truett was a military veteran who suffered from severe PTSD after an incident overseas. After his return, he’d left the Army and become something of a recluse. The day of the mall shooting, he’d been out with his therapist on an exercise to help him reintegrate into society. His therapist had died beside him while he’d sat paralyzed with fear. Ultimately, he’d found himself again long enough to take down Malcom, but he was destroyed in the process.

He was now in his early forties. No wife. No family. No friends. Just Truett, alone in his house. He forced himself to the diner one day every week for dinner. After I’d witnessed the sheer terror on his face as his hands trembled while eating a club sandwich, it was all too clear that the venture out of his safe space was more of a punishment than it was therapeutic.

I rested my hand on top of Caven’s. “What are we doing here?”

He was sitting with all the comfort of a man on death row as he drew in a deep breath and turned to look at me. “I want this with you, Willow. Even after everything. Maybe especially after everything.”

My breath hitched. It felt like I’d been waiting my entire life to hear him say those words. He wanted this. With me. Willow.

“I want it too. So bad, Caven.”

“But we can’t start over and be strangers as long as there are still secrets lurking in the background. I just want you to know, whatever happens here today, Rosalee is still your niece. I promised you Mondays and Thursdays. You will always have that with her. You have my word. If you don’t want me around, Alejandra or Ian can bring her to you. But you don’t have to worry about losing her. Okay?”

My concern caught fire. “What are you talking about?”

“Tell me you understand. Whatever you feel or think about me after today, it will have no bearing on your relationship with her.”

“Caven, stop. You’re scaring me.”

He intertwined our fingers and brought them up to his mouth, where he kissed the backs of my knuckles. “Please, Willow. Just say you understand.”

“I understand. But there’s nothing that could—”

“My father killed twelve people before the day at the mall.”

“What?” My whole body jerked, and he was quick to release my hand, as if he thought my reaction was repulsion rather than shock.

He cleared his throat, but it still sounded like he’d swallowed broken glass. “I found pictures of his victims the morning of the shooting. They were the reason we got into that huge fight.” Disgust lined his forehead as he drew in a shuddering breath and then continued to confess his darkest demons. “He’d been doing it for years. Making it look like an accident or suicide. The town didn’t even realize there was a serial killer right under their noses. Trent and I had big plans to go to the police after we collected our final paychecks.” His hand inched toward mine before he stopped it. “We desperately needed the money if we were going to take off and start a new life. But Malcom had other plans. The truth was out and there would be no escaping for him. The only thing he could do was take me down with him. If I’d gone to the police first, the mall never would have happened. It’s my fault, Willow. It’s all my fault.”

“Stop,” I begged. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. I had all the evidence I needed to stop Malcom. But instead of turning him in right away, I gave him time to gather his weapons, create a plan, and kill forty-eight innocent people.”

“Caven,” I breathed, his palpable anguish slashing through me.

Like the rest of the world, I’d learned a lot about Malcom Lowe after the shooting. I was a kid when it happened, but as I got older, my curiosity about that day grew to unhealthy peaks. The computers at the library had become my best friend and greatest enemy. The world was at my fingertips, but I didn’t need to focus on the world. I needed to focus on Willow Anne Banks—a child who was quickly falling down the rabbit hole of guilt and blame.

But in all of my years spent at those computers, I’d never, not once, seen anything about Malcom having committed any crimes before that day at the mall. Which meant…

All at once, my stomach rolled as understanding dawned on me. Nothing would surprise me when it came to Malcom Lowe.

But I shattered for Caven.

“You never told anybody?” I whispered.

He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and his forefinger. “He’d already left us in Hell. He couldn’t hurt anyone else, but Trent and I were two scared kids, worried that the world was about to crucify us for the sins of our father. Neither of us wanted to add to the list of his victims. Trent made the decision and burned the pictures. After multiple surgeries on my abdomen, I was out of it for several days. I almost died twice. When I finally came to, he’d told the police all about the fight that morning but decided not to mention the pictures. What was I supposed to say? ‘No, officer, the only person I have left is lying’?”

He rumbled deep in the back of his throat, his frustration thick as if it had happened yesterday. “Then when he showed me the devastation of the families from the mall as they spoke to the news on TV, I truly thought he’d made the right call. The families of Malcom’s original victims had already come to terms with the fact that their loved ones had died by accident or suicide. Imagine the agony of finding out that the man who had killed your loved one lived just down the street for almost a decade. He’d even been over to some of their houses and attended their children’s birthday parties.”