Page 32 of You for Her (The Edge of Retaliation 2)
Eight of them.
Eight.
I make a pained sound and grip my chest; it feels like my whole world is crashing down around me at the news. The horror that poor girl lived through makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me want to scream, just to stop the feelings tormenting me right now. How she even breathed a day after that, is beyond me. That poor girl, living through that with nobody on her side, nobody to protect her.
I see her face in my mind again, the broken eyes, the sympathetic smile she gave me. She didn’t want to die. She had no other choice. She would have sat alone, scared and sick, wondering how the hell she was ever going to get out of the nightmare she was reliving over and over. She would have thought that no matter what she did, she would never be happy again. She thought it was the end of her road.
The end of her story.
Tanner doesn’t move.
He doesn’t speak.
He just stands there, his hands by his sides, no doubt feeling the exact same things I’m feeling right now.
“She got HIV,” I whisper to myself, loud enough for Tatum’s eyes to swing to me. “She got HIV from them, not only did she go through the worst hell imaginable, she was going to have to live with it for the rest of her life. Her short life. Oh, Celia …”
Tanner turns and looks at me, really looks at me. His eyes scan over me, and he murmurs, his voice low, “She stepped out in front of your car.”
It’s not a question.
More like he’s finally realizing that he was wrong. All this time.
He was wrong.
So fucking wrong.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, she did.”
His eyes scan over my face, and then he murmurs low, “Are you happy now?”
His question stuns me.
Shocks me.
Am I happy now?
I thought I would be. I thought bringing the truth to light would make me feel so much better.
But I don’t feel better.
I feel so much worse.
The truth is a dagger that’s just twisting our pain deeper.
“No,” I whisper.
“You went on about the kind of monster I am, for doing what I did. Guess what, Callie? You just became the same kind of monster.”
His words are like a knife to the heart.
A horrible truth I can’t bear to face.
My hands go over my chest, and clutch tightly, as if hanging on will keep my heart from leaping out and shattering.
He turns, walking past me and past Jo, straight out the front door. Everything in my body screams at me to go after him, to help him, to make it better, but I can’t. I can’t move. I can’t think. Tatum calls out after him, but Garrett steps in, glaring down at the man on the floor. “Leave him,” he growls, low. “Leave him be.”
Tatum stands, his face bloodied, his body trembling from rage, and shock and probably guilt and pain at what he’s just put his best friend through. Then his eyes swing to Jo. She’s looking at him, like she’s utterly heartbroken, like she truly didn’t see him for what he was until now.
“He’s my brother, Jo,” he whispers, his voice broken. “I had to help him.”
“You didn’t have to lie,” she says, her voice trembling. “You didn’t have to let my best friend go down for it. You didn’t have to encourage Tanner to torment her. You didn’t have to do anything you did, Tatum. You chose to. Now get out of my house. Get out. Please, get the hell out.”
“Jo …”
“Get out!” she screams.
Tatum looks to me, and for the first time, I see true regret in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Callie.”
Then the two of them leave.
I turn to Jo, and a tear rolls down her cheek.
I rush over, pulling her into my arms.
“Celia,” she whispers.
I clench my eyes shut, fighting back the pain that bursts forth.
“Poor Celia,” she sobs.
Yeah.
Poor Celia.
She didn’t deserve any of this.
10
“ARE YOU SURE THIS IS a good idea?” Jo whispers as I pull on my coat.
“I have to go, Jo. I can’t…I just can’t not.”
“He’s angry right now. He’s broken. He’s damaged.”
I nod, zipping up my coat and grabbing my phone and purse. “I know he is, but I want to talk to him now it’s all out in the open. He called me a monster, and…I didn’t like it. Maybe he’s right. What I just did to him was brutal, and made me no better than him and his little plan. I never thought of that, and now it’s all I can think about.”
Jo shakes her head. “I think you’re playing with fire, honey. If you go to him, he’s going to say and do a lot of things you’re not willing to hear right now.”
“I’m going,” I say, reaching over and grabbing her shoulders, squeezing. “I’ll call you later.”
