Written with You (The Regret Duet #2)(47)

I covered my mouth, bile burning a fiery path up the back of my throat. “Oh my God.”

He hung his head. “I could have stopped him, Willow. I could have stopped him, but instead, I’ve spent the last eighteen years covering for him. You call me a hero. But I’m not. I helped one little girl and killed forty-eight others.” He tipped his chin to the brick house outside my window. “If you want a hero, he’s in there. But it’s not me. And you deserve to know that it will never be me. I’m not just a hypocrite because you forgave me for the unimaginable. I’m a hypocrite because I’ve lived the last four years of my life trying to protect Rosalee from the monsters in this world, all the while carrying the secrets of my father, the biggest monster of them all.”

His breathing was ragged by the time he fell silent. His blue gaze boring into me almost begged me to berate him the way he so thoroughly believed he deserved. But all I could think was how maybe those forty-nine feathers tattooed on his arm were the right number of victims after all. Because, even eighteen years later, Malcom Lowe was still killing his son.

“Okay,” I croaked out before clearing the lump from my throat. It wasn’t the time for me to break down.

He’d just confessed his deepest and darkest secret; the last thing he needed was pity.

He did, however, need a good, long reality check.

I reached for his hand and he tried to dodge me, but in the confines of an SUV, he had nowhere to go. Curling my fingers around his, I kissed his palm. “I’m glad you told me this.”

“I’m not,” he replied, looking very much like he wanted to peel out of that car and never look back. “What do I do, Willow? Please just tell me how to make this right. Please tell me what I can possibly do that will ever make this right to all those people and all those families.”

I didn’t have to think about it long. It was what I’d been trying to do since I’d become Hadley Banks.

“You live.”

He blinked at me. “What?”

“Personally, I don’t think it would be a bad idea for you to go to the police and tell them the truth about your father. Give yourself and those families some closure once and for all. But that’s something you and Trent are going to have to decide to do in your own time. I don’t get an opinion on that. But just know your secrets are safe with me. Now and forever.”

“You do get an opinion. The choices I made that day ruined your life.”

I leaned back in my seat and stared at him. “Caven, my life isn’t ruined.”

“You know what I mean. I failed so many people that day. I’ve spent my life trying to make up for it. When I first started Kaleidoscope, I thought if I could just help one person, I’d feel better. We managed to put hundreds of criminals like my father behind bars, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing is ever enough. I just need someone to tell me what to do to make this right.”

“Okay. Well, first off, you have to stop assuming that you could have changed what happened. It’s an illusion that has kept you locked in a prison of guilt. There is no magical key to escape. The truth is the door has always been open. You can’t change anything. There is no right to be found in tragedy.”

“There has to be something.”

“Okay, step two: Stop assuming it’s your something to give. Why didn’t Trent tell the police about the pictures while you were still in surgery?”

His back snapped straight. “Don’t pin this on him. It’s not his—”

I quirked an eyebrow. “Fault? Exactly. That’s because it’s nobody’s fault but Malcom’s. Let me ask you an honest question, and I want you to really think about it before you give me an answer. Did you have any reason to believe that he was going to show up at the mall with an arsenal of guns?”

“I saw the pictures. I knew what he was capable of.”

“I’m not talking about hindsight. I’m talking about in that second. That one second when you made the decision to go to work. Did you ever once think it was a possibility?”

He groaned and dropped his head back against the headrest. “No.”

“I didn’t, either.”

His head swung my way. “What? You couldn’t have known.”

“No. I couldn’t. But I was the only reason my family was at the mall that day. We’d gone to get my film developed. Hadley was pissed. After a morning at the park, she wanted to go home. My mom even tried to talk me out of it, saying she’d take me later in the week. But I wanted those pictures. I begged my parents on my hands and knees, promising to do extra chores, whatever it took. My dad finally relented. They were dead an hour later.”

“Jesus,” he breathed, catching me at the back of the neck and dragging me toward him.

I didn’t need a hug, but I thought maybe Caven did, so I remained silent and got lost in his scent.

He smoothed the back of my hair down and kissed the top of my head. “There is not a day that will ever pass where I won’t regret going to that mall.”

“And yet every day you thank God for your daughter.”

His hand at my neck spasmed, and his body turned to stone. “That’s…”

“The truth.” I righted myself in my seat.

Just as I’d suspected, he was inching toward the edge of panic. “Don’t give me that ‘everything happens for a reason’ bullshit.”