Rock Bottom (Tristan & Danika #2)(19)

Theoretically, Bev explained to me, her argument was sound whether I’d killed him or not, but having a corpse in the mix always complicated things.

She sounded so cold-blooded when she said it, as though she wouldn’t have been too upset if he had died, that it gave me pause.

She took in my wide-eyed sizing up with a grim smile. “I made her show me the bruises. You can’t imagine you’re the only one who’d kill for her. That man is just lucky that you got to him before I did.”

She looked so serious, her tone so glacial, that I believed her.

I made a note never to get on Bev’s bad side.

The only time I felt even a second’s worth of remorse about the whole thing was when we got back to Bev’s house, and Danika rushed outside to meet us. She took one look at me and buried her face in her hands, bursting into tears.

That made me feel like a real bastard.

I gathered her into my arms, making soothing noises as I stroked her hair. I’d acquired a T-shirt somewhere along the way, and she buried her face in the white cotton, sobbing hard enough to make my gut clench.

Finally, she calmed down enough to talk into my shirt. “Were you hurt?”

My jaw clenched, my hand fisting in her hair. I made myself relax the muscles of my fingers and stroke over her hair softly. “Not at all. Bastard barely got a punch in.”

“He was so big. I thought he might hurt you.”

My pulse started throbbing again with that reminder of her contact with the man. I tried to moderate my breathing, calming myself. I toyed briefly with the idea of finding Bert at the hospital and finishing him off.

“He was big, but he was slow. Not a great fighter, from what I could tell.”

She pulled back to look at me, her eyes red-rimmed from crying. “You never lose. Where did you learn to fight like that?”

My mouth twisted ruefully. “When you’re the biggest boy in your class, everyone thinks it’s a great accomplishment to kick your ass. You can’t be my size and not know how to defend yourself. Having a bad temper never hurt either.”

“I take it Bev posted your bail?”

“That’s the thing. No charges were pressed.” I had to consider how to word the next part, sensitive to her feelings. “He was…beating on your mom when we arrived. She’ll be okay, I think, but I wasn’t charged because I stopped the beating.”

She showed very little reaction to that news, just the tiniest stiffening of her expression.

“We could go visit her in the hospital,” I offered.

She shook her head instantly and decisively. “No, that’s all right. Our relationship is…complicated. We aren’t healthy together. I can’t stand the woman, but I know that if she catches me in a moment of sympathy, she’ll prey on that weakness, and I’ll end up doing something I’ll regret.”

I knew just what she meant. My mother had pulled the same sort of thing on me, countless times. I kissed her forehead tenderly, thinking that there wasn’t a way I could love her more.

“Do you think I’m awful? I sound like a cold bitch, don’t I?”

I shook my head, bending forward slightly to kiss her temple. “No. You’ve met my mother. I can well understand what you’ve gone through with yours.”

“She thinks I’m like her because of what I let that old man do to me.” The words burst out of her as though it were an embarrassing confession. “I’m not, though. I was just a kid, and I didn’t think I had a choice.”

A bullet to the chest couldn’t have hurt my heart more than the weak thread to her voice as she whispered those words. My eyes stung as I clutched her to me, whispering into her ear. “Of course not. You don’t ever have to defend yourself to me, sweetheart.”

“I know. I know. And I know what the truth is. It’s just so hard to feel it. Some dirt you just can’t wash off.”

I picked her up, cradling her to me. “There’s not an ounce of dirt on you, sweetheart. You have the purest heart I’ve ever known.”

That seemed to appease her, and she calmed and quieted for a long time before she spoke again. “We’ve made a spectacle of ourselves on the front lawn.”

“Ask me if I give a damn.”

I was gifted with a tiny smile and flashing silver eyes.

God, she was beautiful. Perfect.

“Promise me you won’t ever do that again. It scares me when you get like that. You can’t kill a man because I have a few bruises, Tristan.”

I kissed her, a blatant distraction from her train of thought. There was no way I could make that promise when her bruises hadn’t even faded.

“You should never be scared of me, Danika.”

We laid on the grass, side by side, hands clasped, in Bev’s front yard as I told her haltingly about the boy I’d been, always too big, too strong for my own good.

Too good at fighting, too ready to fight, with too much to fight for, albeit futilely, with a mother I could never protect, because she didn’t want protecting from the men that hurt her.

I shared that piece of myself, the huge piece that needed, above all things, to protect, because I hadn’t been there protect her when she’d needed me the most, though of course I hadn’t known her then. It wasn’t logical. It was a feeling, an undeniable sense of failure, because I’d always failed the biggest tests when it came to sheltering the ones I loved.