Page 57 of Dirty Gambit

“Stop,” she gasped as if everything he’d said had physically hurt her. “Don’t do that. Don’t make me some victim. I knew what I was doing the night of the party. I planned it. It wasn’t random or chance, Jaxon. That was me.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” He turned away from her, shoving all ten fingers back through his hair as he made his way across the room to the window. “Do you think it’s not fucking with my head?” He faced her once there was an entire chasm of space between them. “I know what I need to do. I know that’s what a normal person would do, what my parents would do, but … I fucking can’t, Lena.”

The muscles along her jaw tightened, mirroring the trembling fists at her sides. Her eyes glittered in the fading light of day shining in from behind him.

“Then you’re an idiot,” she hissed. “You don’t know me. You have no idea the things I’ve done. I don’t deserve mercy.” She sucked in a breath that hitched in her chest halfway. “This is the only right thing to do for Jessie. Turn me in, Jaxon.”

“Why?” The single word was shredded through clenched teeth and curled fingers.

“Because it’s what I deserve.”

Jaxon frowned. “What?”

He watched her deflate. Her eyes closed as she slumped into the loveseat he’d vacated. Her face dropped into her hands before pushing back through her long tendrils.

“Lissa was five when we were taken from our parents,” she whispered. “We were together a year before they separated us. That was the last time I saw my sister.” Tears glistened across the surface of her eyes when she lifted them to him. “I tried everything to find her. I begged every social worker I had to let me at least visit, but when you’re a foster kid, no one gives a shit about what you want or how you’re feeling. You’re garbage they can’t wait to get rid of. So, I told myself I would wait until I was eighteen. I would find her, and we’d get an apartment together, and everything would be fine.” A stray tear traced the path down the side of her nose to cling to her top lip. Jaxon had to plant his feet to keep from going to her. “My thirteen-year-old, heroin-addicted sister died giving birth. She’d been dead for two years before I even found out and only because I went looking for her. She was just another unfortunate statistic, they told me.” The laugh that escaped her was short and brittle. “She died alone, scared and in pain, and I wasn’t there because I’d given up looking for her. I failed her just like our parents and the system failed her.” She scrubbed at the second unleashed tear with the heel of her hand, not seeming to register the motion. “Jessie is all I have of her.”

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured for lack of anything better.

Lena shook her head. “It’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault!” he barked without thinking. “We make our own choices, Lena.”

Her head came up, her turmoil a dark anger pinching her lips. “She was thirteen! I was supposed to protect her.”

“You were a child yourself!” he shot back. “Who was protecting you?”

“I was older!” She lunged to her feet. “I was all she had in the world and I stopped looking for her. I let her die.”

He was in front of her before he could fathom his own movements. His fingers curled around the soft flesh of her upper arms. The skin was warm and soft beneath his touch, but he pushed that aside to focus on her tear-stained face and haunted eyes.

“This is not on you, sweetheart,” he said gently. “None of it,” he stressed when she opened her mouth, denial at the ready. “You were just a kid.”

“But…”

He tightened his grip. “Look at me.” He waited until he had her gaze locked with his before continuing, “Not your fault.”

When her bottom lip quivered and a fresh rush of tears trickled down her cheeks, he didn’t think. He pulled her into his arms and held her tight when she broke apart against his chest. His fingers glided through her hair, along the curve of her heaving spine and back in rhythmic strokes. He brushed his lips against her temple where a vein pulsed.

When the sobs subdued into quiet sniffles, he pulled back a fraction to peer into her blotchy and ravished face. He swiped back loose strands of hair and brushed at the tears with his fingers. Her enormous, brown eyes so much like Jessie’s peered up at him, watching him with an open vulnerability he’d yet to witness in her. Each one was surrounded by sharp, wet spikes like the points on a star. Her nose was red, her cheeks flushed, but she wasn’t crying anymore.

“Okay?” he asked quietly.

She sniffled but nodded.

He gave her a small smile. “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a nap.”

To his relief, Lena broke into a smile. “That does sound nice.”

Deciding he was already royally fucked where she was concerned, Jaxon stroked back a lock of hair off her brow. His fingers lingered against her warm cheek. He stroked the spot with the pad of his thumb, following the satiny texture down to the corner of her mouth. Her smile slipped, but she didn’t pull away. She stayed in the confines of his embrace, stayed tucked against his chest with her fingers bunching his shirt at the waist and her chin tilted up to his. There was a trusting willingness there that closed a fist around his throat.

He knew he should pull away, knew he was tap dancing on thin ice, but her spell on him was stronger than his common sense. Her pull made him want to sayfuck it, and succumb. She made him want to be rash and wild.

“Are you going to kiss me?”

The question wasn’t teasing or seductive. It was said with the evenness of someone asking if oxygen was a real thing — which he wasn’t so sure about when he was having a hard time catching his breath.

“I’m seriously considering it,” he confessed.

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