“I’m not sure I can do this,” she said.
“Right.” She’d seen his scars, and that changed everything. He rubbed his left hip and noticed a slight twinge of pain returning to his thigh. Heat suffused his face—what a moron he’d been, thinking she would welcome his kisses now—and he rolled away from her to turn off the lamp on his side of the bed.
“Scott.” Her hand landed on his arm.
He flinched but didn’t pull away. “What?” he asked, sounding more pissed off than he intended, watching her in his peripheral vision. She didn’t deserve attitude.
She crawled away from the headboard and sat cross-legged near his knees, facing him. With a deep breath, she said, “I have a scar too.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Falls Church, VA
Wednesday, 5:30 a.m.
VALERIE’S HEART SLAMMED AGAINST HER rib cage, beating out a warning.Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Scott’s expression changed from stony implacability to soft-jawed surprise in response to her confession. “From what?” he asked, his mouth turning down as he straightened and looked at her with those bright blue eyes.
She swallowed hard. The flash of a blade, fire-hot agony, blood dripping between her fingers. Her dad gasping for breath.
“Hey,” Scott said, pulling her back to the present. “Forget about it. You don’t have to tell me.”
“No. I want to.” She squared her shoulders and shoved the painful images back into the vault in her mind where they belonged. Fingering the bandage on her arm where she’d cut it at the gas station, she said, “I tried to stop the man who murdered my dad and…he cut me.”
There. It was out, and she’d managed to sound almost normal, even as bile rose in her throat. Would she ever be able to look back on that day without having a visceral reaction?
Scott clenched his fists and muttered, “Mother fucker,” under his breath.
She twined her fingers, dreading what came next. For several moments, the only sound was the rain pattering on the roof and wind slapping the screen against the window.
“So you’re a protector too,” he said, his words stopping her from lifting her shirt.
Her world tilted at his unexpected response. “What do you mean? I was too slow to react, and hekilledhim,” Valerie said, forcefully. “I failed.”
Scott gave a wry laugh. “Taking action is what counts. You called me a protector, but do you have any idea how many times my dad hit my mom before I finally stopped him?” His voice rose and darkened with self-contempt. “Do you know how many times I wanted to step in front of him but did nothing? And when I did finally grow a pair, I might as well have been a gnat fighting an elephant. Until I got my hands on his gun, I was worthless.”
Valerie’s heart hurt, even as his words began to heal something within her. Why was it so easy to have compassion for others but not ourselves? “You’re right.”
Scott’s eyebrows rose.
“Not about being worthless,” she added quickly. “About intentions. We both wanted to protect someone. My dad died anyway, but I did my best.” Believing that in the depth of her soul would take some more time, but she could feel the shift inside her as a physical thing, and despite their current circumstances, her body lightened. “And you eventually found a way, though I wish the boy you were had another choice.”
“Me too.” Scott’s gaze roved the bedcovers for several moments, unseeing. “My mom was relieved, but I think she was scared of me after that. After all, if I could kill a man, was I any better than Richard ‘The Dick’ Kramer? My sister hasn’t spoken to me since.”
No wonder he expected her to be frightened by him. The two women he cared about most had rejected him for taking the action that had saved them. For doing what came naturally to him. Not killing, as he thought, but defending others. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” He clasped both hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.
“You don’t scareme,” she said softly.
He dropped his hands and met her gaze, his eyes smoldering like blue fire, but he made no move toward her. She’d put him off before, and she’d let the conversation veer away from her ugly wound, happy for the change of topic. Except now they were back where they’d started. She craved his touch, but he hadn’t yet seen her scar, and she was unwilling to spring it on him in the heat of the moment.
Slowly, her eyes never leaving his, she removed her shirt and tossed it to the floor.
His breath left him in a rush as his gaze skipped over her naked breasts and snapped to the puckered line that slashed across her ribs from just beneath her right breast to her left pelvic bone. “Jesus,” he whispered.
She gripped her thighs to keep from covering herself with her arms or the comforter. “It’s ugly.”
