Page 69 of Taming Liberty

“Jesus,” Lib whispers, squeezing my hand.

A tear slips past my closed lid, and I open my eyes and press the heel of my hand to my cheekbone to rub it away. “It was a decade before I drove a car again, and I’ve only gone home once since, five years ago for Luis’s graduation. My father’s never forgiven me for what happened, and I don’t blame him for it. I’ve never forgiven myself.”

“It was an accident,” she whispers and squeezes my hand again before leaning over the console toward me. “You were just a kid, Angel.”

I laugh dryly. “You’re the last person who should be making excuses for me.” I feel it when my face hardens, feel my muscles winding tight. I pull my hand away. “I know what I’ve done, and I know who I am. I’ve killed more than one person in cold blood. The lives I’ve destroyed due to my recklessness shouldn’t evoke sympathy.”

“Fine, maybe you’re right,” she says, frustration lying beneath the concern in her voice. “But I care about you. I don’t like to see you in pain, even if you think you deserve it.”

I turn to her and almost growl when another tear falls. I rub my face on my shoulder. “Why on earth would you care about me?” I spew with uncalled for anger.

“Because I do.” She huffs. “Trust me, I’ve tried to fight it.”

“Try harder.”

She travels her gaze over my face, studying me, seeing the shine in my eyes, the weakness showing through. “No,” she says, her voice low. “I’m not so sure I want to anymore.”

I look away from her, choosing instead to stare out the windshield. I was terrified of her rejecting me.Terrifiedof the look I’d find in her eyes when she saw me, the real me, the me before Sawyer, before the island, before my ruthless career.

Because before now, I could tell myself the island was the reason she’d never love me. I convinced myself it could be different in another life, one where I hadn’t forced her into a world of depravity. It’s one thing to reject me for what I’ve done, but another to reject me for who I am, and I could not fucking bare the latter.

Now, it’s out in the open. She isn’t rejecting me.

And I still feel just as guarded.

“Why are you pulling away from me?” she asks.

I don’t answer.

She falls back against her seat and sighs, letting several moments of silence pass before she speaks again. “What happened with Julia?”

Her voice is soft, the concern in it still thick. It’s starting to occur to me that she’s no longer asking for answers. She’s giving me the opportunity to purge, the way she did.

Another tear escapes.

I never knew how much I needed this.

“She did the best she could for a long time. No one in our family had money to help with a nurse, so she had to find work online while juggling taking care of a baby and her husband who could offer her no level of intimacy… It must’ve been lonely as hell.”

Lib nods in understanding. “So she cheated on him.”

I sigh. “If you can call it that, then yes. I know my brother, and he never would’ve wanted her to live a lonely life. She was the most important person in the world to him. You wouldn’t wish that on someone you love.”

I scratch my chin. “My family never understood that, but in their defense, it was bigger than an affair. She got pregnant a few years after the accident happened. It was an unplanned pregnancy, and the father didn’t stick around. Obviously, she couldn’t hide the infidelity from my family. My father basically shunned her, refusing to believe her first child was my brother’s, and my mother couldn’t convince him otherwise. I don’t blame him for most of his anger, but I do hate him for robbing my mother of a relationship with her grandchild.”

Lib brushes her fingers along my forearm, and I surprise myself by leaning into the touch. “But you still have a relationship with Julia?”

I put my hand over hers. “I care about her very much, but I don’t know that you could say we have much of a relationship. We don’t see each other, and we rarely speak. I help support her and her sons financially, and I see them as family just as much as my own blood. I send cards on the kids’ birthdays, and she sends a Christmas photo to an address in America where she thinks I live.”

“Why did you pretend to be her?” I can tell by Lib’s tone that she’s trying to tread lightly. It’s a fair question. I wish I had a good answer.

I close my eyes a moment and roll my shoulders. “This is going to sound pathetic…”

She tucks her hand beneath my bicep and uses her other hand to interlock our fingers. “I want to hear it anyway.”

“... I wanted to know what it would feel like to play a different part in that particular story.”

Her brows pinch, and her lips sink into a sympathetic frown. I look away.

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