Looking back up at her, I finally saw what Jensen had been forced to live with his entire life. I knew the kind of hell he’d gone through, but until that very moment, I never really understood the depths of it.
“You’re sick,” I whispered, shaking my head in amazement. “You’re really fucking sick. You need help.”
“It’s true! It’s all true. Just ask him!”
“Get the hell away from me, Cordelia. I’m not joking. Leave now, or I’m calling the police.”
Finally realizing she wasn’t going to get any help from me, she spun on her fancy shoes and stormed off.
I opened the back door with shaky hands and I buckled my boy into his booster seat, promising him that I was fine, even though I was far from it.
My entire body trembled on the drive home as I replayed her words over and over in my head a million times.
He almost killed a man.
He nearly beat someone to death.
He’s dangerous.
As soon as I was parked in my driveway, I yanked my phone from my purse and hit the button I needed. It rang three times in my ear before my aunt answered. “Hey there, honey pie. How’s it goin’?”
“Caro, I know it’s really last minute, but would you mind coming over and watching Brant for me right now? There’s something I need to do. It’s an emergency.”
Her answer was instant. “I’ll be there in ten.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Shane
This was the first time I’d set foot inside the offices of Elite Security since they opened up shop months ago. It was housed in an old brick building that had originally been opened as a steel work front by bootleggers to move moonshine during prohibition.
The exterior still had that cool-as-hell old-school industrial vibe, but the inside had been completely redone. The walls were exposed brick, and the pipes were visible along the ceiling, but the main floor had been cordoned off into separate offices and rooms with walls made of brick and glass. At any other time I would have thought it looked awesome, but at that very moment, I was too frantic to appreciate the badass design aesthetic.
My eyes scanned my surroundings as I started toward the open reception area right up front. The woman sitting behind the curved wooden desk looked up at me with a timid grin. “Hello. Can I help y—wait, ma’am. You can’t just go back there! You need an appointment!”
She scuttled after me as I rushed down a hallway with offices and conference rooms on both sides. I passed one, catching a glimpse of Gage out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t stop.
“Jensen.” I called out.
“Ma’am, please. You really can’t do this,” the receptionist insisted.
“Jensen!”
Laeth’s head popped out of a room on my right, and he mumbled, “Oh shit,” as soon as he spotted me. I sensed him and Gage behind me, following to see what was about to happen, but I didn’t pay either of them a bit of attention as I continued to shout Jensen’s name.
Finally, he stepped out of the last office on the left at the end of the hall. “What the fuck is going—Shane? What are you doing here?”
“Did you almost kill a man?”
“Fuck,” one of the guys hissed.
Jensen’s stormy gray eyes filled with panic as he took a slow, measured step toward me. “Where did you hear that?”
“It doesn’t matter where I heard it from. I want to know if it’s true. Did you get into a fight at a bar and nearly beat a man to death?”
His throat worked on a thick swallow, the gray eyes growing desolate as he relied on a gruff whisper. “Yes.”
“And that’s why you left. Because Daddy pulled some strings and made the Army an option over prison time?”
“Shane, you have to believe me,” he started desperately, holding his hands out as he moved closer, like he was afraid I’d spook and take off running. “I’m not that guy, I would never—”
I took a step back from him, unwilling to let him touch me. “I know that, you idiot!” I shouted so loudly I could have sworn the glass all around me rattled.
Jensen rocked back on one foot in shock. “Y-you do?”
“Of course I do! I spent more than four years with you. I slept beside you. I had a kid with you! You think I didn’t know the kind of man you were back then?”
“Then . . . if you aren’t scared of me, why are you so upset? Why’d you just move away from me?”
I threw my arms out wide. “Because I’m pissed! You took five years away from me, away from us, when all you had to do was tell me the truth!”
“Okay, I gotta say, that is not the reaction I expected,” I heard one of the guys say from behind me. I jerked my head around and glared at both of them.
“You two can feel free to fuck off at any time.”
“Christ,” Gage grunted. “They’re perfect for each other.”
Before I had a chance to let them have it, Jensen grabbed my arm and started pulling me toward the room he’d just come out of. “You guys are a fuckin’ pain in my ass,” he growled at his friends. “Go do some work.”
As soon as we cleared the threshold, he slammed the door closed and spun me around, backing me up against it and caging me in with his hands on either side of my head. “Sunshine, if you’ll just give me a chance to explain—”
I scoffed, giving his massive chest a shove and ducking under his arm so I could move across the office, putting some much-needed space between us. “A chance to explain what? Why you didn’t trust me with the truth all those years ago? Is that what you want to explain, because I’m all ears.” I crossed my arms and cocked my hip out, closing myself off to an approach with that one move.
“I was scared, Shane. I’d busted my ass to prove to you that I’d changed, and in a handful of minutes, I destroyed all of that.”
“Stop,” I said, lifting a hand to cut him off. “I don’t want to hear your self-loathing. I want the truth,” I demanded. “All of it. Tell me everything right now, Jensen, or I’m walking out that door and this”—I waved my hand in the space between us—“us, it’s over in a way there’s no coming back from, ever.”
He cleared his throat and reached up to massage the back of his neck. It would have easily endeared me to him to see him so nervous if I wasn’t heartbroken and infuriated all at the same time.
“Do you remember that day, when I came home in such a bad mood?”
“Of course I remember,” I clipped. “It’s been burned into my brain for years.”
He nodded, looking completely crestfallen as he said, “Well, I was in that mood because my father had come by the garage earlier that day to let me know what a piece of shit I was, and that I’d never be able to give you and our baby a good life. I shouldn’t have let him get to me. I should have talked to you. Fuck, I should have done a lot of things different, but I didn’t. I came home and took it out on you.
“After you and I got in that fight and you left, I went for a drive and ended up at some shithole bar outside of town. I was fucking trashed and pissed off at myself for how I’d treated you, so when this guy bumped into me, I started talking shit. I kept at him until he took the first swing. He might have been the one to throw the first punch, but I was the one who started it. It was my fault. Something in me snapped after that.