Heknew.
He lay back in the hot tub.“You did the right thing,” he quietly said.“I know you did.But I don’t agree with you doing it the way you did it, meaning lying to me and Peyton.And in a situation like this, an omission as big as the Grand Canyon is the same as a lie, Dewi.”
“I know,” she quietly said.
“I will get through this,” he finally said.“We’ll survive this.But I need time to process it and get to that place.Okay?”
“I understand.”
“I love you, baby.”He crooked a finger and she leaned in so he could kiss her.“I’ll be up in a while.”
“Love you, too.”
He felt her reluctance to leave him like this, but he needed this time alone to process.
Yes, Dewi absolutely was justified.Had he been there, he wasn’t certain he might not have killed Jacinta then, as horrific a woman as she was.
Their hands were clean, so to speak.
Jacinta made her choice, when it would’ve been so much easier to walk away and enjoy her rich life, creepy old husband or not.
But to actively want to harm people just because they fell outside her arbitrary standards of what was “normal?”
Yeah.The world was better off without that woman in it.
And the baby was, ultimately, better off.
And that wasn’t something he ever thought he’d think.
A couple of years ago, past Ken would be horrified by present Ken.
Killing people—yes, self-defense or justified, okay—but actually handling a gun?
He’d never even shot a gun, and only a few weeks into his relationship with Dewi he’d killed a guy everyone said he shouldn’t have been able to kill, unwittingly avenging the murders of Dewi’s parents and the attack on her while saving his life and hers.
He survived driving off the side of a fucking mountain and kept himself and Nami alive.
Okay, with a massive assist from Duncan, sure, but he hadn’t gotten them killed before Duncan showed up to help.And then, after Duncan set the trap to ambush their pursuers, Ken had shot the fuckers chasing them, executing them without remorse.
He’d killed Manuel Segura.Right there in their backyard, before they woodchipped his body.
Who the hell am I anymore?
Because now when he looked at all that…
It was just another day ending inY.It should’ve sent him hiding in a closet with his thumb in his mouth, and yet…
All this time, he thought he was just trying to adapt to the insane new circumstances of his life while remaining apart from it, just trying to adapt.Except he wasn’t merely adapting.
He was morphing into someone he didn’t recognize, and it was stupid that he hadn’t processed that before now.
I’ve changed.
And now, forced to confront that, he wasn’t certain if that was a good thing.
ChapterThirty-Eight
Dewi
