Page 134 of The Risk Taker
I look at her, at her flushed cheeks and wild hair as she gnaws on her lower lip in concern. She got in the way of me punching Callum in the alleyway that night, not considering her own safety. And now she just squared up to my brother like a little hellcat, spitting and clawing because she didn’t like the way he was speaking to me.
But he was right. Every word he said was right. Iamselfish. I let my anger that day endanger my mother’s life. And as a result, she died.
The only thing I couldn’t stomach hearing was the way he spoke to Jude, insinuating she was nothing more than some pussy I used to fight off my boredom.
When in reality, she’s my everything.
“I can’t believe he said those things to you. Is that what he’s been like since last night?” Jude asks, her attention fixed on my bloody knuckles.
“No. That’s the first time he’s spoken to me. He’s been avoiding me.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
We walked out of there one hour ago. They all tried to get me to stay. Talked to me. Pleaded with me. But no one physically stopped us. My father looked stricken, but Halliday rested her hand on his arm and said something to him that had his shoulders dropping as he watched us leave.
We took a rear exit to avoid the press who were camped outside the building, and we jumped in a cab. Jude forgot her bag in the rush. Denver told her to pack one under my family’s orders.
They wanted her there with us all where they could control press access.
Maybe they were worried she’d talk, and our family’s secrets would be out there for the world to see.
“At least Sullivan is being honest. Everyone else is too quiet, too… They’re not fucking saying anything, Jude. No one’s mentioned my mother or said her name. Not once. And my father’s acting like it’s a miracle that I’m back. He even used that word. They’ve got Frank preparing to spin some bullshit story to the press about me having amnesia all this time.”
“I don’t understand. Why would they force you to disappear like that, then pretend it never happened?”
“I don’t know. It’s as if they’re denying the past three years ever happened. I’m here in…”
I look down at my designer shirt and Brioni suit pants and grimace. I’ve gone back three years to the guy I was then. But I’ll never be him again.
“They won’t talk about it… it’s like they want me to live a lie. That’s what I’ve been doing the past three years, pretending I’m someone else. I can’t… I can’t do that anymore.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” Jude agrees, placing the first aid kit onto the coffee table, but keeping my hand in her lap, stroking it.
I scrub my other hand around my jaw, my head pounding.
“I want the truth. I want them to tell me why they let me get away with it if they believed it.”
“Believed it?”
“If they think I killed her,” I say.
Jude’s hands shoot to her mouth, and she blinks at me, her eyes glassy.
“What’s wrong?”
She lowers her hands and they’re shaking. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you say theythinkyou killed her. Not that you did.”
A strange sensation pulls low in my gut.
She’s right.
“It’s okay to forgive yourself. And it’s okay to have been wrong about it all,” she says, studying my face.
I shake my head, struggling to make sense of the tangled mess inside it.
“You’ve made me think about it, that day… I… You have so much trust in me. Telling me I’m a good man, and?—”
“Youarea good man. Every part of me knows that. It wasn’t your fault.”
