“He knows my triggers and he backs off when we hit one. He accepts me the way I am. Believe me, Briony, if I could, I’d be different.”
“What happened today was a stupid mistake on my part, Jack. I put our baby in danger. I didn’t mean to, but I should have been thinking. I asked you to teach me. I want to learn. You had a right to be furious with me.”
“Babies,” he corrected automatically. “You’re damned lucky I didn’t turn you over my knee. I didn’t because you’re a grown woman and you’d probably take a gun and shoot me after, but I swear, Briony, you ever scare me like that again and I’ll risk it.” He pressed the heel of his hand to his pounding head. “Damn it, I know I would.”
Her fingers brushed his face. “You were so afraid for me-for us. Did you think I would blame you for being so angry?”
He could feel her struggling to understand what he was trying to tell her. He sighed. “My father was a very abusive man. He didn’t want to just love my mother-he wanted to own her. She belonged to him. She was his possession, and he became more and more jealous of anything or anyone-including her children.”
Memories flooded and he tried to hold them off, tried to keep from smelling the blood, Ken’s blood, his blood, tried to keep from feeling the beatings, so many of them they all blended together until he couldn’t remember not being beat. Broken bones, bruises, swollen faces, and hiding the evidence so no one would know. Moving constantly so no one would ever suspect, so none of them could make friends-so no one ever shared his mother, cared for his mother.
His fingers tightened around hers, his thumb sliding over the back of her hand. “I feel possessive toward you. I don’t like anyone else touching you or getting too close.”
Briony drew in her breath, frowned, thinking of Ken teasing her, laughing with her, and Jack sitting there looking so relaxed. “Tell me what happened, Jack,” Briony encouraged, because he had to get it out, needed to get it out.
“He got worse and worse, to the point where she hid us when he was drunk. He wanted us dead because we took her love away from him, because we took her time. She thought about us, tried to do for us, and God help her, she loved us. He was jealous even of his own children. Eventually she tried to leave him-for us-and he killed her.”
“Oh God, Jack. How terrible.”
“I walked outside the little shack she’d found for us and saw him standing over her with her blood covering him and the baseball bat in his hands. Ken had come up on him first and was covered in blood. He was still swinging the bat at Ken. Blood was everywhere, all over the ground, smeared on the steps, splashed on the walls, and Ken’s arms were broken-both of them.” Jack held up his hands. “I don’t even know how it got on me-probably when I jumped him to get him off of Ken, but I remember her blood on me, Ken’s blood.” He shook his head as if to clear his vision. “It was everywhere.”
She wanted to comfort him-soothe him, hold him in her arms-but there was no way to give a child comfort when he found his beloved mother murdered, and right at them moment, Jack was a young boy reliving his mother’s murder.
“I swear, I felt something in me snap, Briony. I told Ken to run, but he didn’t-he didn’t-he wouldn’t leave me.” He pressed his fingertips to his temples. “You can never wipe the memory away, no matter what you do. You can never forget the smell of blood, or the hatred in someone’s eyes. He wanted to kill us, and if he hadn’t been so greedy to make us pay-because of course it was our fault he’d had to kill her-he would have succeeded.”
Briony bit down hard on her lip to keep from allowing the small sound of horror to escape her throat. Jack was seeing every vivid detail, so much so that it was spilling over into her mind as well.
“He came at me so fast-he was always so fast-and big.” Jack looked at her. “Like me. Damn him to hell, just like me. Big beefy shoulders and arms-natural muscle, not from working out in a gym. He was strong. When he hit me, I knew he meant to kill me. She wasn’t there to stop him, and he was going to beat me to death with his bare hands. I tried to fight back, and instead of running, Ken jumped on his back to keep him off of me. Even with two broken arms, Ken tried to defend me. When I went down, my father kept hitting and kicking me, until I couldn’t breathe. I think he thought, with so much blood, and the sound of the breath rattling in my lungs and throat, that I was dying. He left me there, lying in my mother’s blood, and he turned on Ken. Ken could have gotten away, but he wouldn’t leave me.”
“Any more than you would have left him,” Briony reminded him.
“I don’t know how I got up, or where I found the strength to move, but my body had somehow separated from my mind. I didn’t feel pain. I don’t know if I was really breathing. Later, they said my ribs were caved in and it was impossible for me to stand, but I did. I could see Ken’s face, the tears running down through all the blood. And I saw him-the monster who ruled our lives. My world narrowed to him. I picked up the baseball bat and I took him out just the way I take out every other target-coldly, precisely, and quite thoroughly.”
“God, Jack.”
“I didn’t feel anything at all. I should have, he was my father, but I didn’t, Briony. I didn’t-and don’t-feel remorse or horror or even joy or satisfaction that he’s dead. I felt nothing then and I don’t feel anything now. When I line up a target, it’s always that same way. My mind separates and it’s nothing more than a job.”
She turned on her side, easing her body against his, sliding her arm around him. “You feel remorse when you’ve done something that hurts Ken-or me. I’ve seen it in you. You’re careful with both of us. Is that what you’re afraid of, Jack? That you won’t love the baby and that if I walked out you’d follow us and murder us? Is that really what you think you’d do? You’d try to stop us?”
“Babies,” he corrected automatically. “And I wouldn’t try, Briony, I would stop you.” He sighed, the sound more sorrowful than hopeful. “I wanted you to have a decent man.”
“You wouldn’t murder us, Jack. It’s unbelievable that you could conceive of such a thing. You wouldn’t. It isn’t in you. Of course you’d try to stop us if you loved us. Any man would. You are a decent man, you dope. You’re just a difficult man. There’s a difference. And has it ever occurred to you that you’re so afraid you’re like your father that you examine your motives way too much? People get jealous and possessive and some try to hold on too hard. You know your weaknesses and strengths. Maybe you’d go a little overboard to keep a woman you love with you, but you’d never harm her. Never, Jack. I don’t think it-I know it with absolute certainty.”