Jace didn’t answer right away. When I was certain hewouldn’tanswer, I started to climb to my feet.
“I killed my uncle,” he finally said, his voice so low I barely heard him. “Why did you go after Richard Jennings?”
I stilled at that, because I knew what he was doing. If I wanted him to share something painful with me, I’d have to do the same with him. I was reeling from his blunt admission about killing his uncle, but as desperate as I was to know more, I really didn’t want to tell him my own truths. He’d pretty much told me that anything between us was dead in the water, so what was the point of learning all of the things that made him who he was? I’d only just end up falling even more in love with him. And as soon as he found out that I was still hiding more shameful secrets, he’d look at me with disgust.
I had no clue how long we sat there for as I tried to come to terms with what he wanted.
“Caleb—” he began, but I put my hand up.
“I can’t do this face to face,” I said.
Jace hesitated and then reached behind him to turn the lights off. “Come here,” he murmured as he reached for my hand. I kicked off my shoes and then followed him as he lay down on the bed. I settled my back against his front and breathed in a sigh of relief when his arms came around me in a frighteningly familiar hold.
How the hell would I ever be able to go back to sleeping by myself after all this?
We lay there for a while as the storm quieted. Lightning occasionally illuminated the room, but the thunder had moved off into the distance and the boat was rocking gently back and forth, proof that the winds had started to die down. Jace didn’t rush me, for which I was grateful.
Since I needed a few more minutes to gather my courage, I took a risk and asked, “Why did you kill your uncle?”
Jace didn’t call me out on the fact that it was my turn to answer his question. Instead, he said, “Remember how I told you my sister and I were sent to live with him and my aunt when our parents died?”
I nodded. “Before you went to live with your grandmother.”
“That’s right. I’d just turned fifteen and Maggie was five. My uncle and aunt moved into the house my parents had built on the same plot of land where the lodge was located. I thought it was because they wanted to make things easier on us, but I learned later they’d lost their own house to foreclosure a few weeks before my parents died. My uncle had lost a lot of his money in risky investments in the stock market. I don’t think my father ever realized how low my uncle had fallen. The will had been written several years earlier when my father and my uncle were still on good terms and I’m sure, like most parents, they never thought they’d actually need any of that stuff, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said in agreement.
“My uncle was a mean son of a bitch, even before he got custody of us. But it got really bad when he moved in. He didn’t stop at just calling us names or saying mean shit to us. He was particularly hard on Maggie, probably because she was so little and just kept asking for her mom and dad.”
“What about your aunt?” I asked.
“She wasn’t any better. She wasn’t gutsy enough to hit me, but she’d slap Maggie if Maggie did something she didn’t like. I did my best to take the brunt of both their anger, but I couldn’t be with Maggie twenty-four seven. She hadn’t started kindergarten, so she was stuck at home with my aunt during the day when they first came to live with us. It wasn’t unusual to come home and find her hiding in her closet in tears.”
My heart broke for Jace and his sister. “Did your grandmother know?” I asked.
“No, my uncle was smart and used my love for my grandmother to keep me in line. One of the reasons my grandmother hadn’t fought my uncle and aunt for custody had been because she was showing early signs of dementia. It wasn’t bad, but there was no way to know how quickly she’d go downhill. My uncle constantly threatened to have her put away in one of those places that just tied the patients to the bed and left them there all day in their own filth. I knew he’d do it, so I never said anything. When kids and teachersat school would ask about the bruises, I’d pass them off as a result of my natural klutziness and they’d laugh it off.”
Jace took a beat and then said, “It all changed about a month before I turned seventeen. I came home from school and found my uncle hitting Maggie. She’d spilled some paint on the couch. I pulled him off her and he turned on me. I don’t know what made that time so different, but it was. I could see it in his eyes. He began beating the shit out of me. At some point, my grandmother and aunt arrived home – my aunt had taken my grandmother to a doctor’s appointment and she was joining us for dinner that night. Anyway, I didn’t even know they were there. I guess that they were screaming at him to stop, but he wouldn’t. His hands were on my throat. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see because of the blood pouring into my eyes from where he’d split my head open. I started to lose consciousness and I knew I was going to die. My grandmother tried to grab him to pull him off me, but he pushed her away. She fell and hit her arm on the edge of the fireplace. She was screaming in agony because the fall had broken her wrist.”
I could feel Jace trembling behind me as he spoke, so I began rubbing my fingers over his where they were resting on my chest.
“I lost it. I don’t know how, but I found the strength to fight back. I managed to reach the fire poker and I hit him with it. He let me go. He was on his hands and knees, yelling at me that he was going to kill me. My grandmother was crying, Maggie was in her arms, her lip bloodied and her face covered in bruises. My aunt was just screaming at the top of her lungs. All that and hestillkept saying he was going to kill me… us.”
Jace’s voice began to crack. I pulled his fingers up to my lips and pressed a kiss against them. “It’s okay, Jace. You’re safe now,” I reminded him.
He sucked in several deep breaths. When he’d calmed, he continued. “I just started hitting him with the fire poker over and over again. Even after he stopped moving, I kept hitting him with it. His blood went everywhere. On me, my grandmother and Maggie, the walls, the floor. And I just kept going. Even when I fell to my knees because I couldn’t stand any longer, I still kept hitting him.When the cops showed up and took the poker from me, I kept swinging my arms like I still had it. I only stopped when they put me in cuffs.”
“You were arrested?” I asked, completely sickened by what he’d been forced to endure… and do.
“No charges were pressed. It was a clear case of self-defense. Maggie and I went to live with my grandmother. My aunt left the state – we never saw her again.”
Thank God for small favors.
“All three of us – me, my sister, and my grandmother – went to counseling, but it wasn’t like any of us could unsee that night.”
“You really think your grandmother and sister were afraid of you after that?” I asked.
“Not all the time. But if I lost my temper or raised my voice, I could see it in their eyes. Just this brief flash and then it was gone. But I knew in that moment they were remembering that night. I couldn’t blame them. Before the fight, I wouldn’t have thought it possible that I could do something like that to another human being.”
