Page 97 of Smith

“I’d chain your ass to the bed before I let you put yourself in danger. I’ve known you a week. I was with Rie for five years and did fuck all to make her stay, knowing she was headed straight back to that fucking dick. I watched her pack her bags, I gave her my credit card, and sat on my couch when she walked out the door. And I did it knowing as soon as she walked into her father’s house she’d catch his fist.”

I was reeling from the ‘chain your ass to the bed’ comment. I didn’t doubt it for a second. Hell, he’d moved me in with him and I was under no real threat.

“You’re wrong, Smith, you tried for five years to get her to stay. That’s not quitting.”

“I killed her mother, then I killed her, Aria.”

His declaration guttural. His voice so rough it was ragged and hoarse.

“You absolutely did not.”

“According to Valerie, I did.”

I felt my eyes get round and all the empathy I had for a girl who’d been abused and traumatized by a monster slid clear away.

“She said that? Those words came out of her mouth to the man who saved her?—”

“She’s dead, Aria, I think that’s the definition of failing to keep her safe.”

Failure.

Not enough.

Quitter.

Killer.

Prove.

It was not my proudest moment. I was so totally over it. Over the man in front of me—a good man, a hero, a man who sacrificed so much yet he could still smile and tease and be a good friend—standing there and saying the most horrific shit about himself. Standing there in front of me in so much pain it leaked from his pores and bathed me in his suffering. I couldn’t hold back my own fury.

“I can’t imagine what she went through. I’ve never had a man raise his fist to me, let alone my father. So I cannot ever know how she felt. I can’t know what that man broke in her. Buthebroke it, not you. I’m trying real hard here not to say something ugly about a girl who turned into a woman who had to live with the demons she lived with, but those demons don’t give her immunity. She doesn’t get a pass at lashing out at the only person in her life who loved her. And by lashing out I meanlying.”

“Not enough,” he huffed.

“Are you for real? How much more were you supposed to love her before she started loving you back?”

Smith went solid, totally and completely statue-still. This lasted seconds before he stumbled to the side and his thigh hit the armrest of my couch. Every jerky movement was painful to watch. But when his ass hit the arm, and he sat—not on his own accord, but rather under the weight of his grief and what he wrongly thought was his responsibility—my heart shattered.

It might’ve been unkind and insensitive but seeing that made me loathe Valerie Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Was.

I now fully understood Zane’s firm directive to forget what I’d overheard Ivy say. It was unfortunate timing—me calling Zane in the heat of the moment when my heart was breaking because I’d thought Smith had left. At the same time Zane wastrying to soothe me, his wife barged into his office and began ranting before she realized he was on the phone. She said the name Valerie. Zane’s growl alerted me, but it was Ivy’s profuse apologies that told me this woman was important. I knew I’d hit pay dirt when Zane insisted I ‘never say that bitch’s name to Smith’.

Obviously, I hadn’t heeded his command.

Now, I wished I would’ve gone about this a different way. Asked Zane more questions, though he wasn’t answering any of the ones I’d asked so he probably never would’ve given me more than what he’d given me—which was nothing.

“Smith?”

“I killed her.”

“How do you figure that?”

“I should’ve left…” He stopped, shook his head. “It’s just my fault.”

A flash of a conversation I’d once had with my dad popped into my head. “It’s easier to hold on to anger and regret than it is to admit you’re not God.” He was talking about his co-pilot who had given up his commission after a rescue attempt had gone bad. They couldn’t get to the landing zone to extract the unit after they’d taken on damage to the helicopter and had to turn back.

“You’re not God, Smith. There was nothing you could’ve said or done to save her from herself. But let’s play it out. You left her to her life and her father beat her to death sooner. Or, you left her behind and she found herself a husband who beat her because sadly, that’s all she knew. Or, she was there to see her father kill her mother. Or, the brother turned into his father and started hitting her. The day you met her, your life irrevocably changed, the course of your life forever altered. If you’d left her there, you’d still feel exactly how you feel right now. You’d blame yourself. No, you’d feel worse, because the man you are couldnever turn your back on such a thing. It would be so out of character for you, you wouldn’t be able to live with it. So, you got her out of a terrible situation and did everything you could do to give her better. The only good in any of this is a traumatized, badly abused girl had the unconditional love of a good man for five of the years she lived. You gave her that, Smith. It ended in tragedy but I’d bet those five years with you were the only ones she lived safe and loved. Blame yourself for that, for giving her something special, giving her time to breathe easy and know love. The other stuff isn’t yours.”

---