He fished a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shook another out. His hands trembled as he lit it, the flame catching on the second try. He picked up the bottle again but didn’t drink from it, just held it as if it were something solid to anchor him. “When she looked at me today, there was fear in her eyes. My own mother was afraid of me.”
“I’m so sorry,” Johanna said softly.
He took another swig, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “And maybe she should be afraid. Maybe everyone should.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I killed a man.” He turned to look at her then,his eyes challenging her to flinch, to show disgust or fear. “When I got arrested, everyone in town just nodded like they’d been expecting it all along. Like, ‘Of course the Callahan boy turned out bad. Look at his crazy mother.’”
She held his gaze steadily. “Walker told me a bit about what happened.”
“Did he tell you I beat a man to death with my bare hands? That I couldn’t stop hitting him even when he was down?” Boone’s voice was low, dangerous. “Did he tell you the woman I was ‘saving’ testified against me? Said I was the aggressor?”
“Crystal.” Boone nearly spat the name. “That was her name. I knew her from high school. She was dating this guy, Vince. Real piece of work. I saw him grab her by the throat, shake her. She was crying, begging him to stop.”
He paused, took another drink, then set the bottle down again, more carefully this time. “Something in me just snapped. I pulled him off her, and then... I don’t really remember much after that. They told me later I wouldn’t stop hitting him. That I kept going even after he was down.”
His shoulders hunched forward, as if he could physically fold in on himself. “Then Crystal starts screaming that I attacked them. That Vince wasn’t doing anything wrong. She testified against me. Said I attacked them for no reason. Said her boyfriend never laid a hand on her, that I was the violent one.” He laughed, a hollow sound. “She was scared, I get that now. Scared of what would happen to her if she told the truth. But at the time, it felt like...”
“Like a betrayal,” Johanna finished for him when he couldn’t.
“Yeah.” He wiped his palm across his face, and she pretended not to notice the moisture it left behind. “And now everyone in Solace looks at me like I’m some kind of monster. Even the people who’ve known me my whole life. They crossthe street when they see me coming. Like I might just snap and kill someone else for no reason.”
Johanna let the silence stretch for a moment, measuring her response carefully, all too aware that the wrong words now would cause him to rebuild his walls. She’d already gotten more out of him in the last few minutes than she thought possible, which told her he’d needed this. Despite all of his bluster and protests to the contrary, he’d needed someone to talk to.
“That’s what happened,” she said finally. “Not who you are.”
Boone’s head jerked up, his eyes flashing between anger and desperate hope. “What’s the difference?”
“All the difference in the world.” She shifted to face him. “What happened that night was terrible. But it doesn’t define you. Not unless you let it.”
“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to live with it.”
“No,” she acknowledged. “But I have my own mistakes to live with.”
He scoffed. “Did you kill someone?”
Nick.
It hit too close to home, and she let Boone see the truth of it in her expression. “I might as well have. Someone I cared about took his own life, and I was partly responsible for the circumstances that led him there. I carry that with me.” She touched her chest. “I’ll always carry it with me, but it’s not a weight that has to crush me. It took me a long time to realize that, but I’m trying not to let it define me anymore.”
“How?” The question seemed to surprise him as much as it did her, a crack in his carefully constructed armor.
“By forgiving myself. By understanding that one moment—even a life-altering one—isn’t the sum total of who I am.” She paused, weighing whether to share more, but she’d alreadycome this far.‘You can’t unsaddle halfway,’ as her grandpa always used to say. “And by finding purpose again.”
Boone was quiet for a long time, staring at the now nearly empty bottle. If that had been even half full when he started, he was going to have a hell of a hangover in the morning.
The cigarette had burned down between his fingers again. He took one last drag before crushing it out.
“I don’t deserve forgiveness,” he said finally.
“Who says?” she asked. “God? Because I hear He’s big on the whole forgiveness thing. Crystal? Honestly, what does it matter what she thinks of you? From the sounds of it, she has her own demons to battle. The town? Your uncle? The same goes. You could be sainted, and they’d still see you as the troublemaking Callahan boy.”
He flinched as if she’d struck him, then his face hardened. The vulnerability she’d glimpsed was gone, replaced by a wall of anger.
“Me.” He shoved to his feet and glowered down at her from his considerable height. “I’m the one who says. I say I don’t deserve forgiveness.”
“Exactly.” She looked up at him and offered a soft smile. “That’s exactly it. You’re the only one holding yourself back, Boone. Nobody else. Once you forgive yourself, the rest will fall into place.”
