the kitchen, West gripped a beer in each hand. His eyes were darker than usual, reflecting the shadows underneath.
Beck cursed under his breath. “Seriously?”
“No need for a hissy, Becklina. These aren’t for me.” West handed a beer to each of them. “You’ve both earned a drink. And don’t even think about refusing.”
In unison, they claimed a spot at the table.
Jase clinked his bottle against Beck’s. “Congratulations. You got twelve numbers during tonight’s mission. It’s a new record.”
“Yeah. An all-time low. I must have been off my game somehow,” the guy said with a slight pout.
West rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Beck’s lack of success is not tonight’s top story. This just in—Jase has feelings for Brook Lynn.” He waved his hand around the center of the table. “Discuss.”
Feelings? Him? He slammed the bottle on the table with more force than he’d intended. “You’re wrong. I barely know her, but even if I did feel something—which I don’t and never will—I won’t go after her. That delicate Southern flower would cut and run the moment she learned the truth about me.”
West frowned at him. Beck patted his shoulder. Both radiated the ever-present guilt and sorrow he hated so much, as if they were to blame for even this.
He loved them, but sometimes he couldn’t stand to be in the same room with them. It hurt too much.
“Besides, if I wanted Brook Lynn, why would I be thinking about finding Daphne?” he asked. “Tell me that.”
“Daphne?” Beck shook his head, hanks of hair falling over his forehead. “Why the hell are you thinking about her? She left you when you needed her most.”
“Maybe I left her,” he said. He might have blamed her for their split at first, but then he’d gotten over himself and reviewed the situation through her eyes. His actions had presented her with a clear-cut choice: a life of misery with him or a chance at happiness without him. It wasn’t brain surgery.
West scowled at him. “You were forced to leave her.”
“No. No, I wasn’t. I chose to do what I did, and the decision cost me.”
Silence descended, tense, oppressive. Jase looked away from his friends, his gaze skipping over the room. Have got to finish repairing this place. It was time. They were settled in, and they weren’t going to move. Not again.
The yellowed wallpaper had what looked to be strawberries scattered in every direction. He’d already replaced the chipped and stained laminate counters with marble and the parquet floor with stone, only to stop. Some part of him recognized the house had become a metaphor for his life. Bits and pieces fixed up, the rest a crumbling wreck.
While a little manual labor would change the house, nothing would ever change him.
“Jase,” West said. “Forget about Daphne. We need to talk about the reason you won’t admit you’re developing feelings for Brook Lynn.”
Seriously. When had these two become such pusses? “I have no feelings,” he insisted. “I’m too screwed up.”
“We’re all screwed up,” Beck said. “But that doesn’t stop me from trying.”
“Boy-o, you haven’t been trying,” West said. “You’ve been plowing, sowing the proverbial wild oats.”
If people were clay, then the past was the pair of hands on the spinning wheel, shaping...shaping...misshaping. They’d each been dried and hardened damaged. The only way to change them now was to break them. But Jase had been broken before and had tried to glue the pieces of himself back together. Had suffered in ways he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. He was different now—worse.
He would not break again.
“Forget about me. You’re avoiding the heart of the issue, Jase,” Beck said softly, leaning back in his chair. “We all are, and it’s not doing us any good. So I’m just going to say it. Because despite the fact that we all did what we did together, we’ve never spoken the words aloud.”
A stilted pause as Jase shook his head. They hadn’t spoken the words aloud because he couldn’t bear to hear them.
“Nine years ago,” Beck continued, “we committed a terrible crime. The three of us. Together.”
Not ready to do this. Jase drained his beer then drained Beck’s. “Enough.”
The color faded from West’s face, but still he said, “We killed someone.”
Jase went still. Why were they doing this to him? As if he would ever forget.
West, looking haunted, said, “They deemed it voluntary manslaughter.”
“You refused to name names and testify against us to reduce your sentence,” Beck added, “so you were given the maximum penalty.”
“I know. I know all of this,” Jase snarled, his rough voice echoing off the walls. “Enough!”
Damn it, the girls.
He twisted in his chair to watch the door in the hallway. A minute passed...two...three... To his immense relief, it never opened.
He released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He never wanted Brook Lynn to discover he was an ex-con. A murderer. That he’d committed the crime not in self-defense but in white-hot rage.
“I expected the purging of the poison to make me feel better,” Beck said, slumping in his chair. “Instead I only feel worse.”
“Yeah,” West said, just as despondent. “That kind of sucked.”
Jase’s mind drifted to the hours before his entire world had come tumbling down...when he and the boys had been so hungover they’d slept the day away. Tessa had come barreling into the apartment, tears streaming down her cheeks, waking them. It had taken a while, but West had finally gotten the story out of her. She’d gone to a party with her girlfriends and one of the guys there—Pax Gillis—had followed her when she left and raped her in her car.
Even now, bile burned his stomach at the thought.
They’d gone after the guy and beaten him bloody, and it should have stopped there. But even after Pax passed out, their rage hadn’t cooled. They’d continued to whale...and whale...until finally stopping no longer mattered. The damage was done.
Even though Jase had paid for the crime—again and again—guilt had plagued him ever since, almost as bad as prison. Almost. Books and movies often tried to depict the horrors of life behind bars, but they weren’t even close to the reality. There was no privacy. Few privileges. Food he wouldn’t serve to dogs. Hour after hour spent with nothing but memories—and other inmates. Constant threats of violence...rape. Carving weapons in secret simply in an effort to protect yourself, all while living with the knowledge that years would be added to your sentence if you were ever caught. But what else could you do? Let someone shank you?
Been
