Page 55 of Teach Me
She nodded. “We’d only been dating a few weeks, off and on.” Mostly off. Even then something just hadn’t clicked, but every time she saw her parents, they asked about “how things were progressing” with Brit. “I was pretty much a basket case after that, couldn’t focus on anything. He just…stepped in. Took over. I didn’t have to worry about anything, not at first.” She pushed her half-eaten food away.
“Jess.” Conlan hesitated, opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated again.
“What?”
“Did you know that Rebecca Wellsley, Brit’s fiancée, lost her father right before they started dating?”
The scent of the food was making her sick. Blindly she stood, needing to get away, needing to get ahold of herself. She refused to throw up. She was stronger than that.
“No, I-I didn’t know that. She…she had family somewhere, I think. She moved after they broke up. I remember my mother telling me about it when I first started dating him.” She waved a vague hand. “I don’t remember where. Maybe she can tell us something?”
When she reached the bar, she turned to face him. Conlan was already shaking his head. “I wish she could, Jess. But that’s not an option.”
“Why not?” She couldn’t do more than whisper, couldn’t get the question out past her strangled vocal cords.
“Because we can’t find her. She’s missing, and Jack believes…I believe…she might be dead.”
Jess’s knees buckled, forcing her to grab the edge of the bar. Con was across the room in an instant, his strong grip holding her steady, grounding her in a world she couldn’t understand. “No, that can’t be right. He couldn’t have…”
“Did he ever mention her?” Con asked.
“No.” Shaking her head made the spinning room speed up, but she couldn’t stop, just kept shaking and shaking and shaking. “He…he never brought her up. He—”It isn’t true.But it was. “You think he’s done this before, that it…it didn’t—” Staring into his eyes, she saw the truth blazing back at her. “Oh God, you think he might’ve killed my parents.”
Conlan dragged her hard against him. His grip went tight, almost bruising, and it scared her even more, not because he hurt her, but because it told her without words that her guess was right on the money—and that it scared the shit out of Conlan too.
“No!” It was the cry of a mindless animal. Jess fought it, fought the pain and the terror and Conlan’s grip, banging her fists against his solid chest and keening for release—from the idea that Brit had killed her parents or from Conlan, she didn’t know. All she knew was the overwhelming wash of agony. It doubled her over, forced her forehead into his shoulder, her wide-open mouth against the caging muscles of his arm as she screamed and screamed and screamed. And still the mind-blanking terror remained.
How long she was lost in the dark, drowning in the turmoil, she didn’t know. When she surfaced, every muscle shook, hurt, every breath scraped her lungs like shards of glass. Over and over and over she heard the words “my fault,” the voice broken, mindless, unending. The sound was so painful she wanted to soothe the person uttering it, but she couldn’t find them, couldn’t stop the agonizing repetition.
“It’s not your fault, Jess. It’s not.”
A sharp hiccup escaped at the realization that those broken words were hers. Her fist banged against Con’s collarbone. “It is,” she sobbed. “Don’t tell me it’s not!”
“I have to.” Despite the blows, Conlan was right there with her, in the line of fire, absorbing her hits and her tears and her grief without thought to himself. His arms held her half-bent body against him. Through her crying, the ragged sound of his breathing, his voice was clear. “I have to tell the truth. This wasn’t your fault.”
“It was!” She twisted, but Con’s grip might as well have been made of steel for all the give it had. “Three people are dead! Rebecca’s father might be a fourth. Who knows how many more, huh? She—my parents—they’re gone! Because I was too stupid to realize the man I was dating was an abuser and a murderer.”
“We don’t know that, baby,” Con crooned. “We don’t know. We’re just speculating. We don’t know.”
“You do.” She could hear it in his voice. Still, some part of her felt how badly he wanted to make this right, wanted to hide her away from the pain, not just with his hold or his body, but by saying whatever he had to, to get through to her.
Even so, she couldn’t accept the lie. She wished she could, wished it so much she shook with it. Her fists wrapped in Conlan’s shirt and shook him too. “I depended on him when my parents died, cried in front of him, kissed their dead cheeks—and he killed them. Because of me!”
“No, baby. Don’t.” Clasping her cheeks, he forced her to look into his sorrow-darkened eyes. “Please don’t.” He kissed her, soft and bittersweet. “You’re killing me.” He kissed her again, loved her with his words and his mouth and his touch until the tears died away, and even then he rocked her in the silence, the two of them slumped together, dazed in the aftermath like shipwreck survivors.
Long moments passed before he spoke again. “All victims blame themselves, Jess, but it’s not your fault. It’s that bastard’s fault. He did this to you, to them, not you.”
Turning her head against his shoulder, she met his eyes wearily. “And how many more people will he do it to? You? Jack? Steven and Cris and their unborn child? Who else has to pay for Brit to have me? Because if it’s between me and them, I’ll walk out that door right now and never look back. He won’t hurt anybody else but me.”
A snarl twisted Conlan’s lips. “Never!” He shook her hard, one quick jerk. Her head flopped like a speared fish. “You aren’t going anywhere that asshole can get his hands on you. He won’t hurt anyone else—not you, not me, not Cris and her baby. No one!”
“You don’t know that!”
“Yes, I do.” He forced her close, every inch of her against every inch of him, his arms crushing her ribs until she thought they would shatter. “I do. I know. I’ll keep you safe, baby, I promise, no matter what.”
She didn’t deny it, didn’t want to. But they both knew that when this moment ended and they had to face the light of day, there were no guarantees. The future held nothing but uncertainties until Brit was gone.
Chapter Twenty-One
