Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Don't Valerie me, Smith! This is your fault!"

Her sob tore through my soul.

"I told you this would happen! I told you! You killed her."

"Smith!"

"Valerie, please ? —"

"I'm going home."

"That's not safe."

"With me gone it wasn't safe for her. Now she's dead because of you. I never should've listened to you.

"Brother!" Coop's slap on my back brought me back to the present.

Fucking hell .

"I'm good," I lied. "Sick as fuck at what was in that box, but I'm good."

"You went somewhere just now and it has nothing to do with that box."

He was right but I'd never admit it.

"Do yourself a favor. As much as it's gonna kill you, let Kira handle it."

Cooper wasn't stupid, not by a long shot. So him letting me off the hook was just that. He allowed my non-verbal stay-out-of-my-business to stand.

"Right."

Without another word he left me alone in the bedroom.

Fuck.

I scrubbed my hands over my face in an attempt to vanquish the images of a sobbing, angry Valerie before she left me. It worked. The images of her crying vanished, but like always they quickly morphed into her lying crumpled on the dirty carpet, beaten to hell.

That was the image I couldn't erase.

The one that never went away.

The one that haunted me and broke my mind.

Fuck .

"Yeah, Kira, thanks. And sorry again, sweetheart," I said into my phone, my eyes glued to Aria sitting cross-legged on my couch with her plate resting on her lap.

"Let's just say I'm praying the prints come back as George Jr."

"I get that."

Fuck, did I.

Kira had run the images through her facial rec software. There had been twenty-two poloids that were in perfect condition—likely because they hadn't been exposed to UV—ten different girls. All of the girls were within a year of George Jr's age. Meaning, if he'd taken those pictures, and all of the girls had been consenting, well…that put a different spin on it. If the prints matched George Sr. that was something else entirely. Either way, I was still grateful she had taken over and run the pictures.

"The team's staying in Virginia one more night and will head down to Newport News to pay George a visit before they come home."

That was an hour drive farther south before they turned around to come home. But the conversation that needed to be had was best done face to face.

"Good call."

"That's all I got but I wanted to make sure I gave it to you as soon as I could." There was a weighted pause and I braced. "Listen, Smith, I know those pictures?—"

"I'm fine. Not the first time I've seen shit that skeeved me out and gave me a bad feeling. But it was the first time I could pass something sensitive like that off to a woman so I didn't feel like I was victimizing a victim. So, again, I appreciate you taking over."

I was acutely aware, Aria was watching me closely and listening to every word. I was also acutely aware she'd been walking on eggshells since we'd left her house.

The fucked-up part was, I couldn't fix it without explaining she'd done nothing wrong. I couldn't explain the memory she'd triggered—a memory without explaining Her, and that was never going to happen. I rarely thought the woman's name and it'd been at least a decade since I'd said it out loud.

"They weren't?—"

Obviously her husband had told her about my shutdown and now she was trying to make me feel better.

"Sweetheart, they were. For an adult man with a moral compass they were that bad."

"I wasn't going to suggest otherwise," she huffed. "I was going to tell you they weren't degraded, so we got good prints. We'll know by tomorrow."

Shit. Of course she wasn't going to be insensitive about mostly nude teenage girls.

"Sorry—"

"It's been a shit day. Go spend time with Aria. We'll see you in the morning."

With that, she disconnected, and since Aria was openly staring at me waiting for me to fill her in, I did just that. Then I picked up my plate of pork roast she'd cooked in my air fryer and commenced eating.

Aria did the same.

It took her a few minutes to pluck up the courage to address the elephant in the room. And when she did, she was way off base.

"I shouldn't've wussed out."

"What?"

"If I'd just pulled up those planks and opened the box you wouldn't've saw what you saw."

Fucking hell .

"First, you didn't wuss out. We had no idea what was under there. The smart thing to do was exactly what you did—let me look first. And even if it was you who found the box, I still would've had to look."

She didn't look convinced and I had no way of reassuring her so I changed the subject.

"Your dad okay?"

"I didn't tell him about the pictures," she admitted. "His squadron is in the middle of high powers and I didn't want to lay more on him. But he talked to Zane earlier and one could say your boss has a big mouth so he had a lot of questions about you."

Jesus.

Fucking Zane .

"What kind of questions?"

"The kind that included wanting to know your full name, last duty station, rate, rank, and your last LPO."

I wasn't sure why Aria was smiling but I was glad for it.

"You should see your face right now." She laughed. "I'm kidding, he already knew your rate and rank because Zane informed him. All he asked me was if you were taking good care of me. I told him you were and I was safe, then spent the rest of the time bitching about having to replace perfectly good drywall since Zane told him about that, too. He was relieved no more letters had been delivered. Then he told me about work, bitched about a new pilot who thinks he's the next Maverick, meaning his ego is writing checks he's not capable of fulfilling, and he's pissing off the two female pilots, who in my father's words can and will eat him for lunch, so after speaking with the females and them asking for permission to put the hotshot in his place—which my father gave—he's confident they'll knock him down a few pegs."

Jesus, the woman barely had taken a breath.

"I could tell he was worried but he trusts Zane, and by extension, you. That doesn't mean he didn't put in for leave. But you know how that goes."

I sure as hell did.

Hurry up and wait while your request chit went up the chain. Though the Captain was a few links higher than I was so his wait time wouldn't be as long as an E-nothing Sailor.

"Bet you'll be happy to see your dad."

Her face gentled and she waited until she finished chewing and swallowed before she said, "Totally. My dad's not just my dad, he's my best friend. After my mom died we were both lost. Thankfully, instead of us each being lost on our own, we rallied and depended on each other." She stopped and shook her head. "Sometimes I feel guilty for leaving when I did. He still had months on his contract. I wanted to wait for him to get new orders but he insisted I didn't delay college. Selfishly, I left. I was in a hurry to start my life. I was in a hurry not to be under Uncle Sam's strict rules. But now I wonder if it was the right thing leaving him alone, you know?"

No, I didn't know. I had a shit father who by the time I was a teenager I barely remembered. And a mother who was more concerned about drinking herself to death than she was taking care of her boy. She'd finally succumbed about a year after I left for the Navy.

"Is your family close? I mean geographically."

Fuck .

I knew that was coming.

My brain was working double time trying to come up with ways to dodge her question and it was coming up blank.

Christ .

I was doing this.

"My dad bailed when I was a kid. I didn't see him much growing up and my mom died before I turned nineteen."

Compassion. So much of it had leaked into her features I felt like a fraud. I didn't deserve that sympathy.

"My mom died a week before my seventeenth birthday. Drunk driver on base."

Her mom died at the hands of a drunk and mine was a drunk.

"You miss your mom," I gently said.

It wasn't a question but she still answered, "Every day."

"I don't miss mine, baby. She was a shit mom and an even worse human. I can see you losing your mom marked you—you loved her, you miss her. All I felt was relief when I got the notification. I didn't go home. I didn't claim her body. I didn't clean out wherever she was living or claim her belongings. I can't say I was happy. What I can say is I felt relieved it was over. No more middle-of-the-night calls, drunk off her ass to yell at me about something I did when I was five. No more worrying if she was going to get behind the wheel drunk. No more getting calls from jail asking me to bail her out. She was a thief, a liar, and a horrible person. She was all of those drunk or sober. I can't say much about my father except I'm grateful he stopped coming around when he did. It's arguable which one of them was worse—the wife-beating asshole or the woman who got drunk, got in his face, and beat him. It was all-around dysfunction."

After I'd shared more than I'd intended, Aria had lost the sympathy and looked downright disgusted.

I understood that look. I saw it every time I looked in the mirror.

Total disgust.

Regret and self-loathing of the highest order.

I came from shit. Then I'd turned into shit.

"He hit your mom," she seethed.

"Yup. And she hit him."

"They hit each other in front of you?" she all but screeched.

I didn't know what to make of her outrage so I said nothing.

"That's…that's…terrible," she spat.

I still had nothing to add. But the angrier she got on my behalf the harder I found it to breathe.

"My parents loved each other. They loved me. They were good parents, my dad still is. My mom rarely raised her voice. When I did something wrong she'd talk to me, explain why I couldn't or shouldn't do whatever I'd done. My dad talked to me and watched movies with me. When he was gone on deployment he wrote me letters and called. My mom taught me to be proud of my father's service, the sacrifices he made being away from us. She did that by example. She never complained, she never argued with him when it was time to leave. I'm sure they fought and argued but they never, ever did it in front of me. So, yes, I miss my mom. Every day, ten times a day, I think about her and wish she was here. My dad's my best friend. So I cannot begin to understand what it was like growing up with two worthless assholes and them being horrible to each other and to you. What I can say is I hate that for you. I hate more that your mother was the type of woman who would make her son feel relief instead of sadness at her passing. I hate that—not for her, she didn't deserve your sadness—but you sure as shit deserved a mother to mourn."

My breath was coming in short choppy pants I could barely cover by keeping them shallow.

There may've been a time when I'd deserved that—a good family, a nice home, a mom who showed me love the way Aria's had. But I stopped deserving it when I fucked up and caused three people to die because of my stupidity and selfishness.

"Aria—"

"I get it, you don't want to talk about it. I wouldn't either. So we're moving on. How'd you like your pork?"

I couldn't help it. There was nothing funny about her mom dying and my parents being wastes of spaces, but the way she spat out her curt question had me busting a gut.

By the time I got my hilarity under control, she was smiling.

"Good call using the air fryer," I told her.

"And you doubted me," she clucked.

I had doubted her.

But the more time I spent with her the more I began to realize I shouldn't. That realization led to me wondering—if I told her the truth, the reason why we'd one day have to end this—if I could keep her as a friend. If we could still have this—hanging out eating dinner together sharing a closeness only true friends had.

I doubted it.

But damn if I didn't hope.