Page 54 of Before the Fall
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
I watch her draw her eyebrows in like she’s on the verge of crying, but no tears appear. She remains silent, either unwilling to tell me what’s on her mind or unable to.
Climbing off the bed, I walk around in front of her and try to meet her gaze, but she won’t look up at me. I sit down and take her hands in mine, and I can’t help but notice how small they are next to my hands.
“Please, Tia. Say something. Tell me you’re okay. Tell me what happened. Tell me to fuck off and leave you alone. Just say something. I can’t handle this silence.”
Her little finger on her right hand twitches against my palm, and then she falls still again. I don’t know what to do. She’s lost, and I can’t seem to reach her.
After a long while, I gently set her hands on her legs and stand from the bed. “I’m going to get you something to eat. You must be hungry.”
I have no idea if she wants to eat or not. I just need to do something or I’m going to lose my mind tonight.
As I walk across the room toward the door, I hear her finally say something in a tiny voice. “How do you do it?”
I don’t need to ask do what. I know. How do I handle seeing people hurt or killed and still go on?
Slowly, I walk back to sit next to her. “The first time I saw someone die, I felt like I was going to puke. I couldn’t show that, though, because Victor would have ridden my ass about it, so I pretended I didn’t give a damn about watching someone bleed to death in front of me. Then, the first chance I got, I went to the bathroom and threw up until I cried. He told me I’d get used to it, but I’m not sure that ever happens.”
She shakes her head and then looks over at me with tears filling her eyes. “I don’t know how I’m going to ever sleep again, Jaxon. He did horrible things to me, but I can’t handle knowing I’m to blame for his death.”
Cradling her beautiful face, I kiss her cheek damp from tears. “Tia, you aren’t the reason Victor Varens is dead. I need you to understand that.”
“If I wasn’t there with him, you all wouldn’t have come to kill him.”
I press my forehead to hers and close my eyes. “He died because of the things he did for his entire life. Tonight was just the final time he’ll ever hurt someone like you.”
She’s silent again for so long that I have to open my eyes. I see her staring at me and lean away.
“That’s the truth. I need you to believe that.”
Wiping her eyes, she asks, “What about you? What’s going to happen if someone decides you’ve done things that make you deserve to die?”
I take a deep breath as I try to think of an answer for her. So much of my world involves gray areas we all prefer not to dwell on. We chose this life and know what that means.
But Tia never chose this. She simply chose me, and this life came along with me.
“That’s always a risk for someone who does what I do. I’ve learned to accept that. I do things I have to live with for the rest of my days. Some are hard to justify. What happened tonight isn’t. Even if Victor had never done a bad thing in his entire life, just taking you and Kaia was enough to warrant what he got.”
I can’t bring myself to utter a single word about what he did to her down in that basement because it makes me want to kill him all over again. He hurt the most important person in my life. If I could have been the one to aim that gun and send that bullet through his fucking brains, I would have done it with glee.
That was Ryker’s job, though.
“I don’t know if I can do this, Jaxon. I love you. I need you to know that. But I don’t know if I can live in your world,” Tia says with so much sadness in her voice that my heart clenches.
I hate seeing her like this. I love her with everything I have, but if being with me is going to make her so unhappy, how can I do that to her?
She’s too sweet for me. She always has been. That I’ve had as much time with her as I have is a miracle.
Taking her hand, I press it over my heart and look into her eyes when I say the hardest words I’ll ever speak. “There’s never been anyone but you. There never will be. But I can’t make you stay where you can’t. That’s not fair to you.”
Her eyes open wide, and she asks in a shaky voice, “What are you saying?”
I swallow hard and say the very thing I’ve feared the entire time I’ve been with Tia. “I’m saying you deserve to be happy. If that’s not with me because of what I do, then I’ll have to accept that. I love you, Tia. You’re everything to me. It’s because of that I have to let you go if you can’t live in my world.”
“Let me go? I don’t understand, Jaxon. Why are you saying this?”
“Because I’m a killer, baby. It’s who I am. Now you’ve seen what I do, and my biggest fear has been realized because you can’t live with it.”