Page 91 of Final Exit

Her eyes widened. “No. You can’t know.”

“Why not? Because I’d feel differently about you if I did? Because I wouldn’t want you if I knew what happened after your parents died and you were placed in foster care? That you made friends with another foster girl in the same home. And that you found out she was being abused.”

“Wendy,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “I told them, anyone who would listen. And the state came and investigated.” She fisted her hands at her sides. “She was so scared, too scared to tell the truth. So when they asked her about what I’d said, she lied and told them I was making up stories. They left her in the home and moved me to another home. I didn’t help her. I wasn’t strong enough to make them see what was really happening.”

He smoothed her hair out of her eyes. “You were eleven. You didn’t fail her. The adults in that home, her social worker, they were the ones who failed.”

She shook her head.

“Then there was Samuel,” he whispered, stroking her cheek. “He was bullied at school. You stuck up for him, ended up in the hospital.”

“I failed again. Interfering only made it worse. And I was declared too violent to return to that school. The government put me in a school for troubled kids.” She laughed bitterly. “I had to defend myself. They picked on me, called me names, put bugs in my food. I had to defend myself.”

“I know, sweetheart. You were strong. You did what you had to do.”

She ducked away from his hand. “Stop acting like I’m normal, like I’m not defective and violent and... just stop. I beat up a kid at that school, broke his arm, his nose, gave him a concussion. I could have killed him.”

“But you didn’t.”

She raked a hand through her hair, shoving it back off her shoulders. “I was an idiot. I ran away and did what a normal kid would never do. I joined the freaking militia. Is that in your reports, too, Kade? I was a gun-toting, radical, crazy person trying to stick it to ‘the man.’”

“You were trying to survive,” he said, still with absolutely no judgment in his voice, in his eyes. “Your parents were killed and the government never found the killer. They threw you into the system. But instead of putting you in a loving foster home, they stuck you in a bad one. When you told them about the abuse, they punished you instead of the abuser. And when you stood up to bullying, once again the government stepped in, placing you in a facility for juvenile delinquents where you had to fight out of self-defense. Bailey, good grief. You’re a poster child for the kind of background that makes a person desperate and easy prey for groups like the militia. Hell, I might have done the same thing in your circumstances. No, scratch that. I probably wouldn’t have even survived.”

He grasped her shoulders, making her look at him. “You got mixed up with some lunatics and did what you had to do to survive. And when the government came down on the militia, that’s when someone else preyed upon you again. Someone from EXIT offered to get you out of a possible prison sentence if you joined their organization. You were eighteen. Almost half your life you were used, abused, trod on, and forced to fight for your very life. Is it any wonder that when EXIT offered you a chance to break the government’s own rules, to give the finger to traditional law enforcement and fight for justice for the common man, that you jumped at it?”

“You don’t get it, Kade. I’ve killed people.”

“So have I. As part of my job, when I had to.”

“That’s just it. I didn’t have to. I wasn’t upholding any laws. I got an EXIT order and I enforced it, took people out. That’s not something you can just look at and say it’s okay. I’m not the good person you want me to be.”

“Are Mason, Devlin, and the others bad people?”

“No.”

“They were Enforcers, too.”

“I know, but—”

“But nothing,” he said. “People are complicated, Bailey. They make choices for a variety of reasons. But when you boil it all down, you and the others killed people who needed killing. There. I said it. Does that shock you? Mr.Law and Order agrees that the people you’ve killed weren’t the types of people who should be walking around on this planet, breathing the same air as you and me. I bet if you asked any cop out there, any decent, law-abiding citizen in this country that if they knew what they knew now, and could take out those terrorists before they took out the twin towers, they’d do it. Hell, I’d stand in line for the privilege.”

His hands shook as he cupped her face. “I want the EXIT program permanently shut down because of the potential for abuse. Because it scares me that someone can be judge, jury, and executioner without oversight, without their peers reviewing the evidence first. I don’t want to risk innocent people being killed because a maniac twists the program to their own purposes. But, sweetheart, if Faegan, or anyone else, threatened you in any way, I wouldn’t hesitate to take them out. I would be judge, jury, and executioner if I knew that was the only way to ensure your safety. Call me a hypocrite, but that’s what I would do.”

He traced her bottom lip with one of his thumbs, making her shiver.

“Ask me, Bailey.”

She swallowed.

He kissed her, a light brush of his lips against hers. “Ask me.”

“I can’t.”

He lifted her onto the railing and stepped between her thighs, his heat causing a delicious shiver to run up her spine. He pressed a kiss against one cheek, the other, her forehead. “Ask me.”

His hands speared into her hair. His body pressed intimately against hers, letting her know how much he desired her. His voice was thick, almost a growl when he said again, “Ask me.”

She shuddered against him, gripped his shoulders, and looked deep into his beautiful blue eyes. “Does my past matter?” she whispered. “Can you forgive me for the choices I made? In spite of everything that I’ve done, can you... can you... love me?”

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