Chapter 22

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Smith was wrecked. No, not wrecked—annihilated.

I'd never seen a man or woman look so utterly destroyed. His agitation filled the room to the point of stifling. Tension seized his body. His tall frame rigid. His features harsh and furious. He was in absolute agony and I didn't know how to stop it.

Worse, it looked like I wasn't going to get the chance when he turned, his direction clear—the front door.

"Don't leave."

"You got what you wanted." His sneer was ugly and hateful and made me cringe.

"What is it you think I want?"

Smith's torso swung back, his brows pulled tighter, and his fury became tangible—it was its own living, moving entity. So intense and foreboding I could taste it.

And it scared the hell out of me. I didn't believe for a second Smith would ever touch me in anger. I wasn't even afraid he'd turn his anger on me and use his words to slice me to shreds. No, my fear was for him. He looked like he was about to come out of his skin. Or better yet, he wanted to.

"Aria—"

"What happened to…" Thankfully, I caught myself before I said Valerie's name, something that for whatever reason was a hard no, and quickly covered by saying. "your ex and her mom wasn't your fault. You didn't push?—"

" I happened to them. Me ." He jabbed his finger at his chest. "I should've left it alone."

He couldn't mean that. Leaving it alone meant leaving a girl to her abusive father.

"Left it alone? You mean, leave the girl you loved to get beat? Is that what you're saying? You , the man you are, should've left her to her life? You could no more turn a blind eye to someone being hurt as you could be the one who caused the harm."

"You have no idea?—"

"Bullshit. Bull-fucking-shit, Smith Everette. There's nothing you can say that will ever convince me you should've or could've walked away from that girl. I don't know what happened to make her go back to that man but I do know it wasn't your fault."

Smith's mouth curved up into a sardonic smile so obnoxious I wished I'd never seen it.

"I quit, that's what happened. I was fed up having to beg her to stay. I was tired of spending weeks talking her into staying with me for it only to last a few months, then we were right back to it. The merry-go-round was fucking exhausting. I was new to the teams, busting my ass at work trying to prove myself, then I went home at night and had to prove myself to her. Prove I was good enough, prove she was safe with me, prove I loved her. It never ended. And she never gave up trying to get her mom to leave and come live with us. I was all for this. What I wasn't all for was the fallout of those calls. After she talked to her mom, she spiraled. Weeks getting her back. A month, two if I was lucky, of living life. And that's all I was doing—living life. Not living my dream, not living happily with my girl, not living knowing I had a sweet, pretty girl at home waiting for me. Living life worried when the shitstorm would hit. And when the last one hit, it was a fucking tsunami and I fucking quit trying to convince her to stay."

I hated that for him more than I hated he grew up with a mom that didn't love him the way he deserved to be loved.

"You can't hold someone hostage?—"

"I'd chain your ass to the bed before I let you put yourself in danger. I've known you a week. I was with Rie for five years and did fuck all to make her stay, knowing she was headed straight back to that fucking dick. I watched her pack her bags, I gave her my credit card, and sat on my couch when she walked out the door. And I did it knowing as soon as she walked into her father's house she'd catch his fist."

I was reeling from the ‘chain your ass to the bed' comment. I didn't doubt it for a second. Hell, he'd moved me in with him and I was under no real threat.

"You're wrong, Smith, you tried for five years to get her to stay. That's not quitting."

"I killed her mother, then I killed her, Aria."

His declaration guttural. His voice so rough it was ragged and hoarse.

"You absolutely did not."

"According to Valerie, I did."

I felt my eyes get round and all the empathy I had for a girl who'd been abused and traumatized by a monster slid clear away.

"She said that? Those words came out of her mouth to the man who saved her?—"

"She's dead, Aria, I think that's the definition of failing to keep her safe."

Failure.

Not enough.

Quitter.

Killer.

Prove.

It was not my proudest moment. I was so totally over it. Over the man in front of me—a good man, a hero, a man who sacrificed so much yet he could still smile and tease and be a good friend—standing there and saying the most horrific shit about himself. Standing there in front of me in so much pain it leaked from his pores and bathed me in his suffering. I couldn't hold back my own fury.

"I can't imagine what she went through. I've never had a man raise his fist to me, let alone my father. So I cannot ever know how she felt. I can't know what that man broke in her. But he broke it, not you. I'm trying real hard here not to say something ugly about a girl who turned into a woman who had to live with the demons she lived with, but those demons don't give her immunity. She doesn't get a pass at lashing out at the only person in her life who loved her. And by lashing out I mean lying ."

"Not enough," he huffed.

"Are you for real? How much more were you supposed to love her before she started loving you back?"

Smith went solid, totally and completely statue-still. This lasted seconds before he stumbled to the side and his thigh hit the armrest of my couch. Every jerky movement was painful to watch. But when his ass hit the arm, and he sat—not on his own accord, but rather under the weight of his grief and what he wrongly thought was his responsibility—my heart shattered.

It might've been unkind and insensitive but seeing that made me loathe Valerie Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Was.

I now fully understood Zane's firm directive to forget what I'd overheard Ivy say. It was unfortunate timing—me calling Zane in the heat of the moment when my heart was breaking because I'd thought Smith had left. At the same time Zane was trying to soothe me, his wife barged into his office and began ranting before she realized he was on the phone. She said the name Valerie. Zane's growl alerted me, but it was Ivy's profuse apologies that told me this woman was important. I knew I'd hit pay dirt when Zane insisted I ‘never say that bitch's name to Smith'.

Obviously, I hadn't heeded his command.

Now, I wished I would've gone about this a different way. Asked Zane more questions, though he wasn't answering any of the ones I'd asked so he probably never would've given me more than what he'd given me—which was nothing.

"Smith?"

"I killed her."

"How do you figure that?"

"I should've left…" He stopped, shook his head. "It's just my fault."

A flash of a conversation I'd once had with my dad popped into my head. "It's easier to hold on to anger and regret than it is to admit you're not God." He was talking about his co-pilot who had given up his commission after a rescue attempt had gone bad. They couldn't get to the landing zone to extract the unit after they'd taken on damage to the helicopter and had to turn back.

"You're not God, Smith. There was nothing you could've said or done to save her from herself. But let's play it out. You left her to her life and her father beat her to death sooner. Or, you left her behind and she found herself a husband who beat her because sadly, that's all she knew. Or, she was there to see her father kill her mother. Or, the brother turned into his father and started hitting her. The day you met her, your life irrevocably changed, the course of your life forever altered. If you'd left her there, you'd still feel exactly how you feel right now. You'd blame yourself. No, you'd feel worse, because the man you are could never turn your back on such a thing. It would be so out of character for you, you wouldn't be able to live with it. So, you got her out of a terrible situation and did everything you could do to give her better. The only good in any of this is a traumatized, badly abused girl had the unconditional love of a good man for five of the years she lived. You gave her that, Smith. It ended in tragedy but I'd bet those five years with you were the only ones she lived safe and loved. Blame yourself for that, for giving her something special, giving her time to breathe easy and know love. The other stuff isn't yours."

Suddenly, Smith was on his feet. Then just as suddenly, he was across the room yanking me to his chest. I had yet to recover from my cheek hitting his pectoral when his arms went around me and he was squeezing the air out of my lungs.

"I can't stop," he whispered to the top of my head.

"Can't stop what?" I wheezed.

"Blaming myself."

"Smith—"

"If I do, I have to admit I couldn't save her."

And there it was—my dad was once again right.

"And admitting you couldn't save her means what?" I managed to get out even though his arms around me were so tight I was surviving on minimal oxygen.

"I don't know."

I believed he didn't know. He'd lived so long blaming himself, that the thought he wasn't responsible was probably too foreign a concept to comprehend.

"You need to give the blame to its rightful owner—Valerie's father. He's to blame. He took her from you, Smith. He took her mother from her."

"Fuck," he snarled.

I felt a tremor roll through his body.

I wrapped my arms around him and held on.

"Fuck." This time a rasp that chilled me to the bone.

I held on tighter.

"I'm not good enough for you, baby."

Baby.

The relief that swept over me would've taken me to my knees if Smith wasn't holding me up.

You're more than good enough for me.

I didn't say that. Instead I said, "How about you let me decide that."

We stood like that for a long time. Smith didn't share his thoughts but sometimes his arms would tense for a second, get super tight, then the tension would ebb back to tight.

I had no idea if it was mission success but I had a feeling I'd won this battle. That wasn't to say there wouldn't be more. I figured with a man who loved as deeply as Smith did, who had taken on what he had at a young age, who had held on to the pain and regret of his perceived failure for many years, this wouldn't be the last battle I'd have on my hands.

It wasn't until my stomach rumbled that Smith spoke.

Six words that gave me hope.

"I need to feed my girl."