I suddenly feel sick.
My mother did this.
She’s the reason for the bombing. She’s the reason an entire community is underwater and why I’m standing here with the man whose entire family was annihilated.
The destruction Marina Serrano caused is unfathomable. I want to cry. I almost open my mouth and blurt out the truth, but I swallow the confession at the last second, because I’m terrified he’ll look at me differently. Kallister told me they’re not my sins to carry, but it feels like they are.
“I’m so sorry, Gray.” My voice breaks. I hope he attributes it to shock, and not the hot stabs of guilt in my gut and the agonizing burning in my throat. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because it’s in the past. I don’t think about the past.”
No, I realize, he doesn’t like to think about anything that causes him pain. He’d probably ground his own emotions if he could.
“Then why are you telling me now?”
He makes a disgruntled noise.
“What?”
“I don’t want to say his fucking name right now.”
I furrow my brow. “Whose name—” I stop, my frown deepening. “You mean Cross?”
“This whole time,” Gray starts, “I’ve been sitting here, jealous of the captain because he had his hands on you. Wanting to kill him for having a part of your heart—”
I hide a smile at the raspy growl I hear in his voice.
“The thing is, I can’t expect to haveanypart of you when I don’t give you a single thing in return. So I’m changing that,” he says simply. “I brought you here tonight to show you a part of myself that I’ve never let anyone else see.”
I almost stop him, because I’m scared that if he knew who my parents were, he wouldn’t want to share a damn thing with me.
But at the same time, I want to be here for him. He’s kept his emotions in for so long. He deserves that release.
“You asked why I don’t speak to her. My aunt.” His shoulders set in a tense line.
“What did she do to you?” I ask softly.
“It’s not what she did. It’s what she didn’t do. She stood by and let my uncle beat the shit out of me. Almost daily.”
“Oh my God.”
He shakes his head, eyes flashing with betrayal. He looks so wounded, so incredulous that anyone could do that. I get it. Grayson Blake is the kind of person who would throw himself between an abuser and their victim. He’d never stand by and watch.
“After my parents and sisters were killed”—he gestures to the watery graveyard below us—“my aunt and uncle were all I had left. The network sent us to the valley, set us up there. I didn’t know them well.” He scoffs. “Now I wish I never met them. My uncle, Taylor, was a boozer. I never saw him without a bottle of something in his hand. Usually grange. He didn’t care that I was a kid. I think he preferred it. Meant I couldn’t fight back.”
My heart aches for him. “Did he hit Jenni, too?”
“Before I got there, she was his punching bag. I became his new toy. He’d beat me until I was unconscious.” Gray’s voice sounds hollow.
I reach for his hand, squeezing it tight. “Why did nobody step in?”
He lets out a low, bitter laugh. “Because he would heal me afterward.”
“He was a healer?”
“Yeah. Taylor worked at the base with Fiona. He would beat me to the edge of death and then fix me up so nobody could know what he was doing.”
I swallow. Knowing that someone could be that cruel makes me sick to my stomach. “Did you try to tell anyone?”
