Page 21 of Lone Star Protector

“I’m sorry,” he said because he didn’t know what else to say. “If I could undo all of that, I would.”

“Same,” she was quick to say. “FYI, I never actually dated him. I want you to know that. I had coffee with him at a crowded place on campus, and he came to my dorm room once to chat and bring me takeout. He was all nice and…slick. Slick,” she repeated. “I can see that now. The slickness covering the slimy person beneath. What I don’t understand though is what made him snap like that when I told him I didn’t want to go out with him. I have no idea what made him turn complete asshole stalker and the vicious killer.”

Nash had given that plenty of thought, and he thought he had a theory. “I think it has to do with my mother and Bodie’s relationship with our father.”

He paused. Had to. Because it wasn’t easy recalling all this shit from his past.

“Bodie was very close to my dad,” Nash went on a moment later, and he took a turn to his place. “Ironic, since he was a sick, abusive bastard who beat my mother. Jericho, Slade, and me always tried to protect her. Not Bodie. He was always goading Dad on into keeping her in line when she’d mouth off.”

“Keeping her in line by assaulting her,” Caroline spelled out.

“Exactly. There was a dangerous misogynistic edge to both Bodie and my father. No respect for women. All whores, they’d say. Only good for one thing.”

Yeah, not easy to pick at this scab.

Even now, all these years later, he could hear Bodie and his father snarling out that to his mother and any other female who had the misfortune of crossing paths with them.

“My dad and mom were arguing, and he pushed her into the creek,” Nash explained. “I didn’t see it. Jericho did though. And he tried to have our dad arrested, but no one in the compound where we were raised believed him.”

Caroline stayed quiet for several long moments. “So, your father got away with murder.”

“He did,” Nash verified. “And I think Bodie always figured he could get away with it, too.”

She made a sound of agreement. “Is your dad still alive?”

“I don’t know,” he had to admit. Then, he had to admit something else. “I haven’t looked for him. He left the compound and disappeared.”

Many, many times Nash had considered tracking him down and making him pay for what he’d done. But the truth was Nash wasn’t certain he could confront the asshole without outright killing him. While the SOB deserved to die, Nash wasn’t a murderer. He wasn’t like the bastard. So, it was best to let sleeping dogs lie, at least until Nash was certain a visit like that wouldn’t land him in jail.

“I’m sorry,” Caroline said. “I guess we’ve both had our own life shitstorms.”

They had indeed. And it was impossible for him to shove aside that shitstorm now that he’d brought it back to the surface. That was the problem with shitstorms. They kept coming at you. Worse, by having this conversation with Caroline, her nightmarish memories were at the surface, too.

Or so he thought.

“Why didn’t you come back and see me after we danced and hung out at that party?” she asked.

Nash definitely hadn’t been expecting that turn in the conversation, and all he managed was a goofy-sounding “Uh.”

“We had a connection,” Caroline went on. “And don’t say we didn’t.”

No way could he say that. The connection had indeed been there, along with a boatload of lust.

Both were still lingering around, too.

Since Nash didn’t want to confirm that, he went with the obvious reason he hadn’t contacted her. “I stayed away because my brother nearly killed you.”

Caroline huffed. “It was my mother, wasn’t it? That was the real reason.” She stopped, muttered something under her breath that he didn’t catch before she added, “My mother was the reason I didn’t contact you,” she admitted.

Nash shot her a quick glance but didn’t question her on that. He just waited for her to continue. She did after she huffed.

“I didn’t want to cause a rift between you and your boss. Something that I’m doing now,” Caroline tacked onto that. “And I’m sorry. Probably not sorry enough though to put a stop to it.”

Thankfully, Nash didn’t have to respond to that since he took the final turn to his house, and they approached the security gate. He figured though that this conversation wasn’t over. Nope. Caroline apparently wasn’t going to hold back any of her feelings.

For now, anyway.

She might rethink those free flowing confessions once she was inside his place and had had some downtime to process everything that’d just happened. It had been an eventful hour and a half, that was for sure, and maybe it’d be the last of the eventfulness if Slade and the cops managed to catch Bodie.

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