“Fuck!” he rasped. “You were so damn young. I wanted to kill him.”
“But you didn’t,” I murmured softly.
It was weird being so close to Cole.
There was nothing romantic about it, but it was somehow…intimate.
He shook his head. “There’s no way you can ever know that for certain. That intelligent brain of yours must tell you that me killing my father is a possibility.”
I lifted my hand between us and touched the left side of my chest. “I know it here,” I said firmly as I placed my hand over my heart. “And it does make sense in my brain, too. You and Asher weren’t even home when it happened.”
Asher and Cole had found their father’s body when they arrived home at the end of the day.
“Allegedly,” he reminded me. “There was no video evidence to prove our alibis. I could have slipped away from school, or Asher could have left work at some point to kill my father.”
I rolled my eyes. “Doubtful. You and Asher would have been missed. You were in high school, and people verified that you were there that day. You didn’t live close to the school, so it would have meant a long absence if you’d traveled to your home and back. You would have missed at least one class, and youwould have been missed by your teacher. Asher was working in Billings. He would have had to take a very long lunch hour to drive home and back. The police would have noticed that.”
He finally let out a long breath and put a little bit of distance between the two of us.
“I didn’t kill him,” he finally admitted in a graveled voice. “Not because I wasn’t capable of it, but because I didn’t want to destroy my entire life for scum like my father. Asher promised me every day that we’d be long gone as soon as I graduated from high school. I held onto the fact that Asher and I would be starting a whole new life once we could get our freedom.”
“Millie said her husband asked you if your father was abusive, and you always said he wasn’t. That wasn’t the truth,” I guessed.
“Nope,” he affirmed. “We were afraid of our father, and he threatened us from the time we were little if we ever told anyone about what happened at home. Asher got the worst of it. I think he protected me as much as he could, but he’s never admitted it.”
Cole rubbed the back of his neck like he was uncomfortable talking about his past.
I didn’t want to keep pushing him for more information. He’d shared a few very personal things with me, and I was certain those were things he rarely shared with anyone.
But I had to ask one more question. “Did you get in trouble that day when you protected me?” I queried softly.
I hated the thought that he’d paid for protecting me, but I wanted to know the truth.
“Nothing painful,” Cole said reassuringly. “The physical abuse stopped once Asher and I hit our teens and we were big enough to fight back. We were used to the drunken rants. They didn’t even faze us. We’d been listening to them as long as we could remember. It was our normal.”
My heart squeezed hard inside my chest.
How sad was that? No kid should grow up in a toxic, abusive household like that. Drunken rants and violence should never be a child’snormal.
My heart hurt for the childhood that Cole and Asher had never gotten.
They’d never gotten the chance to be children.
Their younger years had been all about fear, pain, and survival.
It had been traumatic when I’d lost my parents right after my eighth birthday, but I’d had Keith to make me feel secure. And my childhood home had been a place of comfort for me because of the constant love that had been part of my girlhood. I’d always known that I was safe as a child.
Tears filled my eyes, and this time I was unable to blink those tears back. They spilled onto my cheeks as I looked up at Cole, wishing his entire childhood could have been different.
Having the town turn against Asher and Cole after what they’d been through as kids just made me livid.
The fact that they’d had to flee to a different state to get any peace in their lives after their horrible childhood was damn tragic.
Cole took a step forward and gently swiped a tear from my cheek with his fingers. “Don’t cry for me, angel,” he grumbled. “I’m not worth it, and I’ve been all grown up for a long time.”
Before I could think about it, I wrapped my arms around his muscular body and held on tight, giving him one of the hugs he should have had as a kid. “You’ve always been worth caring about, Cole Remington,” I told him adamantly, my head resting on his shoulder and my palms pressed against his back.
I felt his muscles tense for a moment before he finally relaxed and wrapped his arms around my body.
