I’ve lost the battle with the tears. I only realize it when my voice cracks, and I feel them sliding down my cheeks.
Felix stares at me, mouth falling open, looking so confused it only makes me madder. He’s the one who’s causing this, and now he wants to pretend he has no idea where my reaction is coming from.
“If you want to end it,” I snap, “just say you want to end it. Don’t try and freaking police me when I get to talk. If it’s over, say it’s over—”
He moves so fast, quicker than a man of his massive size should be able to. His athleticism sends me flying at me. Suddenly, his hands are on my shoulders, hauling me to my feet.
I barely have time to gasp before his lips crash into mine.
It holds the same passion as our first kiss, as our tongues magnetize, as our bodies begin to shift together, chasing some shared point of lust.
“I don’t want to end things,” he says, his lips close to mine. “That’s not what I’m talking about at all. That’s not what today was about.”
“Oh,” I whisper. “I thought…I just assumed….”
“No, mystery girl.” His hand moves softly across my back. “I need to tell you something. It might make you hate me. It might make you wish I had come here to break up with you.”
I place my hand on his chest, squeezing down, feeling his muscles, his security. “Nothing could make me want that.”
He takes a step back, his hands dropping away from me. It’s like he can’t have physical contact with me as he explains this, whatever it is.
Staring hard, he says, “Fiona, I killed my father.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Felix
Once the words are out there, I want to snatch them back. I never talk about this with anybody, for any reason.
I’ve not even let myself properly think about it in years, tucking it into a corner of my mind.
Fiona walks over to me, reaches down, and takes one of my hands with both of hers. That’s the only way I know I’m trembling, by her touch. Otherwise, I’d have no clue.
I feel so distant, disconnected, the same way I did that night.
The same way I did for so much of my life before I met Fiona.
“What happened?” Fiona asks softly.
I glance at her, looking messily gorgeous in her jeans and hoodie, her hair wavy down to her shoulders. She smells enticing, as always, with a deep comforting musk beneath it.
Everything about her screams that she wants me…but as deeply as I want her?
“When I was a kid, my old man was a real piece of work. He used to do horrible things to Mom and me. Hit us, stuff like that. Worse, to Mom, sometimes.”
I seize up, biting down, my body hurting as though I’m reliving the torment.
“Oh, Felix,” my woman whispers.
I don’t have it in me to turn to her. I know I won’t be able to stand the emotion on her face, whatever it is, and it might crack me completely.
It may tear me right down the middle, exposing me to the deep pain I felt as a child, the pain I’ve never let myself feel since.
“He was hitting my mom. I was nine. I didn’t even think about it. I just wanted it to stop. So I grabbed a knife, and I stabbed him.”
My words come out stilted, coming nowhere near to describing the true visceral brutality of it. Even I don’t let myself relive it in its vicious vivid detail, with all that blood and agony and screaming.
I’m shaking again, my body trembling. Fiona moves closer to me, wrapping her arms around my middle, squeezing onto me as though she knows how badly I need her support.
“I don’t hate you,” she says. “I could never hate you, and not for this. You were defending your mom.”
I let my lips fall against the top of her head, holding her in place so I can inhale her sweet scent. It washes around me, through me, bolstering me the same way her words do, the same way her presence does.
“You don’t?”
“No,” she says firmly.
“I’m a killer.”
“You’re a good person, and you protected your mom. And you were a child. I’d never hate you for this.”
Wrapping my arm around her, we stay like that for a long time. I cradle her against me and close my eyes, simply being in the moment. I’ve never been able to do this with anybody else, never wanted to.
“It changed me,” I say after a pause.
A warning alarm rings through my mind.
I’ve come far enough, telling her about Dad. I don’t need to pile this on top of it.
But Mom was right. Living with this is like living with a bomb trapped inside of me, ticking, and I know any second it could erupt.