Page 44 of All Our Ghosts

I pull back from him. “What did Watson mean earlier? About you seeing your parole officer?”

“Kade, it’s late and–” Holden sighs as he tugs himself from my grip to stand from the bed, ready to run, ready to shut down on me.

“You told me you would tell me everything, so tell me.” Our eyes meet and I’m fully ready for the pushback. My hands tense around the edge of the bed but my heart is calm because, even though hesitation rolls off of him now, I know I’d run too given the chance.

His eyes search mine. I need to know what the hell I’ve gotten myself into. Cole won’t tell me the truth, especially after tonight. The look he flashed me earlier makes me want to crawl into a hole and a part of me wonders why he’s so disgusted at the fact that I’ve spent the evening with Holden.

“Kadence.”

“Youpromisedme.”

His head drops with his gaze and I can feel the air between us become thick with our warring secrets. Tired blue eyes lift and find mine again only this time there’s a hint of vulnerability that wasn’t there before. It makes me wonder how deep the pain is rooted within him.

“I don’t want you to think of me differently,” Holden rasps, strained and tight.

“I’m not going anywhere, Holden, no matter what you tell me I’m staying right here.” I point at where my feet are planted in the carpet. He stares back at me like he’s expecting me to change my mind. I won’t because no matter how many red flags keep popping up in front of me, being with Holden makes me feel like a moth to a flame.

“I got out of prison a month ago.” His tongue rolls over his bottom lip as he looks away and lets out a breath I didn’t realize he was holding in. “And about two years ago I killed someone.” Holden’s voice trails off as he studies me for a reaction. I don’t know what to feel.

“Killed?” I hear myself ask as my toes grip the carpet to keep myself steady.

He nods with a distant look in his eyes. “It was an accident. Wrong place, wrong time.”

“How did it happen?”

“Kadence, it’s not important how–”

I shake my head, holding out my hand to stop him. “It’s important to me.”

He takes a deep breath and clears his throat before nodding. “We were out on a run and had almost just made it back here, but it started storming.” Holden pauses. “The group stopped at a bar and this guy just kept…fucking egging us on.”

The more he explains, the more my body feels on fire and nausea rolls over me in waves.

“He started shoving West, playing it off like he was messing around, but the more the night went on and the more the bar kept feeding him drinks, it got worse.” He pauses again and I can feel his eyes on me.

“Keep going,” I choke out, looking up at him with tear-brimmed eyes. “Please.”

I need to know.I need to know he's not the same kind of monster I've dealt with for years.

Holden nods once more as I close my eyes. The bed dips down next to me but there’s a distance between us that I hate and need all at once.

“The guy was belligerent and didn’t know his left hand from his right. At one point a punch was thrown, West was on the ground and the guy was getting dragged out by the bouncers. No one really fucks with us, especially when there’s three or four with cuts on. But this guy…didn’t care.”

He sighs again. “When we left he tried to ambush us. He went straight for West as soon as we went outside. Cole pulled the guy off of West and then he turned on Cole, pulling out a knife.”

I finally get the courage to glance up at him as his voice trails off again. “And that's when you stepped in.”

Holden nods. “I tried to disarm him but the knife caught my thigh and I hit him in the nose to get him off of me.” His voice starts to shake as he speaks, his chin trembles when he dips his head. “I didn’t mean to hit him so hard.”

“You were just defending yourself,” I finally say after a moment of silence that falls between us, “defending Wyatt.”

“That’s not how the courts saw it,” he states as he shakes his head. “I had only been out of the army for a year; they deemed my hand's weapons because of my combat training, and a flat palm to the nose is deadly.”

I take a deep breath, wiping away the few tears that had begun to fall. I don’t know why I’m crying. He hadn’t meant to kill that person. He was defending himself and his family.

“I spent eighteen months at Stockton and the night I got back Cole and I had a meeting with Sheriff Stokes. Watson was supposed to be there.” Holden sucks in another breath, pausing as I begin to put the puzzle pieces together.

“That was the night Becca died,” I finished for him. The tick in his jaw tells me all I need to know. Watson is somehow responsible for Becca’s death and Holden hasn’t known for sure until his threats tonight.

---