Page 110 of Bet On Me, Daddy

“Drink. Then tell me the rest.”

Twisting the cap off with a vicious yank, he downed half the icy-cold liquid before continuing. “One night, she had to work late. I had tried to put my foot down about her late nights a couple of times, but it always ended in a fight. So when she called to tell me she had no clue what time she’d be getting off, I just told her I loved her and I’d see her later. Hung up on her without giving her a chance to say goodbye. To tell me she loved me too.

I ate dinner alone, then waited up as late as I could. Went to bed around eleven, after texting her goodnight. Woke up a couple hours later to the police banging on my door.”

“Jesus, Beckett. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Something dripped onto the back of his hand, and he stared at the wayward teardrop. When had he started crying? “She was still alive when I got to the hospital. Hooked up to a bunch of machines so they could keep her that way long enough for me and her parents to say goodbye. She’d fallen asleep on the way home, crashed her car into a tree. All because I didn’t do my job as her husband. As her Dom. I failed her, and she died, and it was all my fucking fault.”

“Well that’s a mighty big opinion you have of yourself there, Mr. Big Shot.”

Jerking his head up, Beckett glared at his supposed best friend. “You don’t have to be an asshole about it, Elias.”

“I’m just saying. That’s a really awful thing that happened and I can’t imagine how much it hurt. I know how I felt when I just thought I’d lost Silver and honestly, man, I’m impressed as fuck that you even survived.”

“But?”

“But, you’re not God, my friend. She didn’t die because you failed her. She died because we live in a broken fucking world and bad things happen to good people.”

“No.” An emotion he couldn’t quite name sat heavy on his chest, pressing in harder and harder with every breath. “No. It was my fault, Ice. I should have stepped in sooner, I should have made her take care of herself.”

Ice shook his head, sympathy Beckett knew he didn’t deserve shining in his eyes. “No. You want it to be your fault because you can’t accept that sometimes shit happens that’s just out of our control. Because if it’s your fault, if there was something you could have done differently, then you can tell yourself that next time,next timeyou just need to be harder, stricter, harsher. That if you just exert the exact right amount of control, you won’t ever have to feel that kind of pain again. And I hate to tell you this, man, but you’re wrong.”

Years of pain and memories he’d been doing his damnedest to ignore welled up inside him. Choking him. Suffocating him from the inside out.

Shoving up from the couch, he made for the door to the back deck.

Air. He needed air.

Salt air greeted him as he shoved the door open and he dragged in a deep breath, letting it fill his lungs. Closing his eyes, he let his head fall back, tilting his face up toward the sun.

For years he’d carried the weight of Grace’s death on his shoulders. Every step he’d taken in work, at the club, everywhere, had been directed by the guilt he’d felt for so long.

To have someone look him in the eye and say it wasn’t his fault, that he wasn’t responsible…

It should have been freeing. But all he felt was grief, as fresh and raw as the day he’d put her in the ground.

Because if it wasn’t his fault, if he really couldn’t have done anything differently to change what happened, then everything he was, everything he’d become since he’d lost her, was built on a lie.

“You okay, man?”

“No.”

“That’s okay.” Stepping up beside Beckett, Ice looked out at the ocean with him, watching in silence as the waves broke against the shore.

And with each passing minute, the grief eased a little bit more. Until it no longer felt like it would shred him to pieces with every breath he took. “I don’t know what to do.”

“About?”

“Everything,” he said with a short, bitter laugh. “You basically just told me that the entire foundation of who I am is wrong. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

“Gonna take someone a hell of a lot smarter than me with a lot more letters behind their name to tell you that. But if it were me? I’d start with an apology, and maybe a little forgiveness.”

“Ruby doesn’t need my forgiveness. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

Turning, Ice placed his hands on Beckett’s shoulders, his dark eyes filled with so much love and understanding it made Beckett’s chest ache all over again. “Not for Ruby. For yourself.”

Beckett

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