Darker Water (32 page)

“She loved you, asshole!” I kicked him,
sending him sprawling backwards, skidding on the cement. I wasn’t
done. “She loved you, and this is how you pay her back for it?”
Shit started pouring out of my mouth so fast, my brain couldn’t
keep up. My fists couldn’t keep up. “Why’d you come back? Because
she might have had enough time to get over you? She might actually
be happy or have found someone who would treat her like she should
be treated?”

Everything faded except my enemy and my
fists, occasionally my boot, as if they didn’t exist until they
were in contact with his body. “Someone who actually understands
how amazing she is? What the fuck is wrong with you? She’s not
weak, and she’s not going to take your shit. I’m not going to let
her.”

I didn’t even see his face anymore—it had
blurred out a few seconds ago. Fifteen years gone as if they’d
never passed. I was gone. I was nothing but rage and violence. The
emotional and physical feeding off one another, combining into
something I couldn’t control. Didn’t
want
to control. I
wanted to hurt, to punish, to make him stop.

This time I could. I was strong enough and
brave enough now—I could make him stop hurting her and me and
Hayden. “We don’t need you.” We could leave him and not come back.
We could be like everyone else. Be a family. I could be normal. Not
afraid of him or myself anymore. I—

In the distance, someone screamed, pulled on
a body that didn’t feel like mine anymore.

“I’m not done with him yet,” I growled. I
couldn’t stop until I’d made sure this bastard never hurt any of us
again. I felt another tug as somebody tried to drag me away. “I’m
not done!” I spun and open-handed the person to get them to back
off.

They fell onto one of the tables littering
the place, and I heard my name. “He’s not your dad, Carson. I’m not
your enemy. Please, just stop.”

And then reality returned. And she came into
focus. Crying, holding the side of her face.

Where I’d hit her.

I fell backwards onto my ass and scrambled
away from her, knowing she wasn’t cowering from Kevin, she was
cowering from me.

“Lane.” Her name emptied my lungs of air, and
I wished they wouldn’t fill again. So I would be punished for what
I’d done and who I was and what I was capable of. But they
did
fill, and my heart kept beating, and I lived. Even
though I shouldn’t.

I touched my cheek where Carson had hit me,
but my mind wasn’t on that or the pain or how much I was bleeding.
Everything just out of my vision seemed to be moving faster than
what I was looking at.
Who
I was looking at.

“Carson,” I whispered.

A screeching noise redirected my attention.
Kevin climbed to his feet slowly, knocking over a desk, one hand
putting pressure on his ribcage. His face was a bloody mess. He
staggered towards the door and then turned to look at me with
nothing but venom in his eyes. “I hope you’re not with him for his
money, Laney. Because that’s all going to be gone soon.” The voice
I used to be in love with was now ugly and nasal. I hoped like fuck
that his nose was broken, and he’d speak like that for the rest of
his life.

“When did you turn into such an asshole?” I
shouted, stepping between him and Carson. “This was all your
fault.”

He craned his neck to look at Carson behind
me. “You should find out more about the people you’re fucking. This
isn’t the first time Bennett has beaten someone for no reason. I
saw the guy he fought, set some of his bones. Bennett’s people paid
him so he wouldn’t go to the cops.” He spit out blood and wiped his
lip.

I didn’t know what he was talking about, but
it made sense, explained a few of the things Carson had said. I
didn’t care, though. Carson wouldn’t hurt anyone without a damn
good reason. Asking him would have to wait, though, because I
couldn’t turn my back on Kevin.

“How much do you think he’s worth?” Kevin
asked. He talked about Carson as if he wasn’t there. As if he meant
nothing. “Since this is the second time he’s done this, I should
get double what the other guy got, don’t you think? Bennett is
pretty important, right? Helps sick kids or some bullshit like
that. Great. Now he gets to help me.”

“Don’t start anything, Kevin.”

“It started the second he touched me.”

“You have just as much to lose as he
does.”

“I have nothing to lose, Laney. Nothing.”

Everyone has something to lose. The question
is what you’ll do to keep it.

As he turned, he shoved a chair sideways,
breaking it and a few other pieces I’d been working on. He didn’t
say anything as he left, leaving me with Carson.

At least, it
looked
like Carson. He
had his arms wrapped tightly around his knees, curled into himself,
his head low. He was looking at me but I wasn’t sure if he could
even see through all the water welling in his eyes.

I was afraid to touch him, afraid even my
fingertips would shatter him. We stared at each other in silence
for a while, long enough for my heartbeat and breath to slow down.
I don’t think his did at all.

“Carson?” I moved slowly, talking to him.
“I’m fine. I’m okay now.”

He flinched when I reached out to him but I
didn’t stop until I was right in front of him.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, running my hand
across his face. I pulled my hand away when he grimaced. I knew his
reaction wasn’t just about me or even mostly about me. This was
years of pent-up fear coming to the surface because of one
accidental slap. Kevin had hurt me far more than Carson did, but
Carson was the one paying for it, maybe for everything.

“Carson, what should I do?”

He met my eyes and spoke slowly. “Run.”

“Well…” I swallowed. “I’m not going to do
that. So what else can I do?”

“Stop loving me.”

I inhaled sharply. The word neither one of us
had ever used, the admission I was too afraid to make, spoken in
the worst possible moment.

“I told you…” he said. “ I told you I would
hurt you. Now do you believe me?”

“No. It was an accident. I don’t—”

“It doesn’t matter if it was an accident or
not. It happened. Because I couldn’t control myself.” His voice
dropped to almost a whimper. “I couldn’t stop it from happening,
Lane. I tried so hard, but I couldn’t stop it. I’m sorry.”

“There’s no reason to be.”

He pushed away from me and stood, clearing
his throat. “The reason never matters. Excuses never matter. What
happens does. And what happened is that I hit you. I hurt you. I
never wanted to hurt you.”

I didn’t know what to say, knowing that
anything I said would be wrong—emotions were running too high for
an actual conversation. Yes, he’d hurt me. And he’d saved me. How
did he miss that part?

It was an accident. Heat of the moment, eyes
seeing nothing but red. The stuff he was shouting wasn’t about me
or even Kevin. He’d been somewhere completely different until the
moment he’d started seeing again, the moment he’d realized it was
me.

He went into the storage area. I followed
part of the way but stopped in the hallway, hearing him open the
mini-fridge and slam drawers and mumble to himself. I leaned
against the wall and tilted my head back.

He jolted to a stop when he came barreling
into the hallway, almost running into me. He held a plastic garbage
bag of ice and a clean rag. “Don’t put your head back—you’ll
swallow the blood.” He came close, checking my face, gently
touching me, caressing my jaw.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

“I seriously doubt that.” My voice sounded
different, changed by damage that was all Kevin’s fault.

“I wasn’t talking about the way you look.” He
cleared his throat, stood straighter. “But you’ll be beautiful that
way too, once the swelling goes down.” His tone was timid,
lifeless—so unlike Carson. “You’re going to bruise a lot, but I
don’t think your nose is broken. Lean forward a little. It’s going
to hurt but you need to pinch it to make it stop bleeding.”

With my back still to the wall, I did what he
said until my nose stopped bleeding and the throbbing was numbed by
the ice pack. The whole time he stood two feet from me, leaning
against the other wall, watching and waiting with his arms crossed
over his chest, expressionless.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want
this to happen.”

I saw where this was going, what he was
thinking, from the guilt in his eyes. “Stop it.
He
did this
to me, not you.”

He let out a single bitter-sounding chuckle.
“I hit you, Lane. Me.”

“It was an accident.”

“What about next time? Are you going to say
that again next time? Am I going to say it to you?”

“There won’t be a next time. It was an
accident for shit’s sake.” I reached out but he yanked his arm away
before I could touch him. “How can you not see what I see in
you?”

He backed up a step. “You keep hoping I’m
someone else. Trying to pretend I’m something I’m not. I’m a frog,
Lane. I’ve always been a frog and I always will be one. If you
don’t get away from me now, I’ll kill the life you have in you
right now.” His hand lifted up as if he was going to touch me but
then stopped. “I love the life you have in you, Lane. But I’ll end
up taking it away, destroying it, turning you into a person you
don’t want to be.”

“That’s bullshit.” I shook my head. “You keep
telling yourself it could never be good, it could never be
great
. Well, guess what. It is. You are. You’re great and
you’re not broken and you won’t hurt me. The only person you’re
hurting is yourself. Over and over in some stupid, useless kind of
penance. And it will never end because you’ll never let it. You’ll
punish yourself until there’s nothing left to punish. For something
that’s never been yours to pay for. You aren’t your father.”

His lip curled in distaste, probably because
someone was finally throwing the truth in his face and he couldn’t
avoid it, ignore it, or find something to distract him from dealing
with it this time.

Why is someone else’s pain so much worse than
your own sometimes? To see someone you love punish themselves and
think they deserve it?

“You shouldn’t have given me a second
chance.” When he straightened and ran his fingers through his hair,
I knew he’d stopped listening.

“If I hadn’t, I would be sobbing on the floor
because you wouldn’t have been there to stop Kevin. And no one
would be here for me, taking care of me and letting me know I’ll be
okay.” My body tightened as I tried to hold it together long enough
to say what I had to say. “And no one would be breaking my heart
because they won’t believe they’ll be okay, too. Because we can
make sure you are.”

He shook his head. I swear, if his prick of a
father wasn’t already dead, I would have given the bastard a prize.
If his goal had been to truly fuck up his son’s thinking, he’d
won.

“Damn it, Carson!” I shouted. “I’ll give you
a second chance and a third and as many as it takes. Because you’re
not a frog. You’ve never been one and never will be. Stop punishing
yourself before there’s nothing left of you. Because then there
will be nothing left for me to love. And I want to love you.” I
paused and took a breath that softened what I asked for next.
“Please let me love you.”

His whole body trembled, fought itself, maybe
because he couldn’t decide which way to go. I didn’t know what else
to say, how to convince him that he wasn’t who he thought he was.
He’d saved me and I wanted to return the favor. I just didn’t know
how. So I waited for him to do something, anything that would tell
me where he stood, where I stood, where
we
stood.

I wasn’t leaving. But
he
was.

“I can’t,” he said, pushing off the wall and
heading for the door. “I’m sorry, Lane. I’m really, really sorry.
Lock the door behind me. Make sure you call the police and get a
restraining order against your ex.”

I knew I’d watch him walk away eventually,
but I didn’t think it would be like this. “Carson, please. Don’t—”
My last word was severed by the slamming of the door. I stood
there, undecided, unsure. A minute later, I flipped the deadbolt.
There was a much bigger chance that Kevin would come back than that
Carson ever would.

I found my phone under a workbench, slumped
into a chair, and called the police. But what Kevin had said kept
ringing in my ears.

Carson
did
have a lot more to lose
than he did. How could I hurt the person who’d done so much to help
me? I hung up after the first ring.

And then I cried more than I’ve ever cried
before.

I was in love and it hurt and it wasn’t going
to stop. Because I would never give it up. Because he was worth
everything.

My misery didn’t want company. It wanted time
and attention and things to consume. So I let it. Finally, I’d
proven myself to be just as much a bastard as I’d always known I
was, just as much as my father and all the fuckers that came after
him.

One problem, though. I couldn’t get Lane out
of my mind. I couldn’t stop seeing her, tasting her, remembering
how soft her skin was. I could’ve sworn I heard her voice, saying
things I wished were true. I even went shopping for a new bed
because mine was too big and too empty and I couldn’t sleep. But
mattress salesmen aren’t very sympathetic to guys who almost lose
it in their showroom. Good to know.

I couldn’t even
look
at my bathtub
because all I saw was her smile, and all I thought about was how
happy that stupid fucking porcelain bowl made her.

So I let myself suffer, knowing how much I’d
let her down. I don’t know if it was ironic or poetic, but as bad
as that hit was, as much as I hated myself for it, that wasn’t even
the worst thing I’d done. The one before this was the thing that
set everything in motion. Biggest fuck-up ever. What I’d been able
to deny until now.