Chuckling, I smiled at her mention of faith. I’d never had much belief in faith in anything—not people, not religion, nothing. But Abbi made me want to believe. Whatever I thought about faith, I believed her. From the moment I first saw her, I wanted to be the kind of man who deserved her. I wanted to protect and care for her and erase all the ugliness she’d seen.
But now with one stupid mistake, any future I hoped to have with her was in danger. If only I hadn’t lost my temper and fallen back into what I’d always been.
A monster.
“I have faith in you, angel. Everything else in this world, no. But you make me believe.”
“Then believe in me because I know we’ll be okay.”
As she pulled me into the kitchen to feed me after my night in jail, I couldn’t help but admire how well she was handling everything that happened. I’d left her crying, and little over half a day later, she seemed able to be strong enough for both of us. She never ceased to surprise me with how tough she actually was. So gentle and kind, Abbi had a survivor streak in her I loved.
She cleared the table of all the dirty dishes and stood at the sink with her back to me. “I would do anything to make sure you’re happy. You know that, Kane, don’t you?”
Her shoulders hunched slightly as she spoke, and a spike of regret ran through me for what I’d done. I stood and walked over to her, wrapping my arms around her waist to pull her to me. “You make me happy just as you are. You don’t have to do anything else.”
Turning in my hold, she looked up at me and I saw something in her eyes. Fear. “I would, though. I would do anything to make sure you were happy.”
I pressed my forehead to hers and confessed what I worried about as I sat in that jail cell all night. “Are you afraid of me now?”
She shook her head, but I knew the look of fear and I saw it in her eyes.
“Angel, I would give my life for yours. Do you know that?”
“I know. And I would give mine for yours, Kane.”
I kissed her, loving the taste of her lips after a night away, and whispered against them, “Don’t say that. I don’t ever want you to feel like you have to give up anything for me.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I couldn’t think of anything last night but you stuck in jail because of me. Tell me to go away and I will. Then whatever it is that’s inside me that makes men want to hurt me will be gone from your life.”
Her words made my chest feel like someone was pressing down on it hard. “Don’t say that, angel. You aren’t the reason that fuck did what he did and I reacted the way I did.”
She cradled my face in her hands and frowned. “You aren’t like him, Kane. Don’t mention the two of you in the same way.”
Whether I was as bad as Jethro didn’t matter. I knew what I was and I couldn’t pretend any differently. “I told you the first night we made love you should leave, but now I can’t bear to think of you not in my life. My demons are still inside me, though, Abbi. I can’t change that.”
“I’m not afraid of them. The only thing I’m afraid of is not having you in my life. I can take anything else your demons want to do to me, but not that.”
I took her by the hand and led her upstairs to our bedroom. Abbi sat on the bed quietly watching me undress to shower. I didn’t want her touched by my night in jail any more than she had to be. We said nothing because there was nothing more to say.
I was who I was, and she’d accepted me.
The hot water streamed over me, but it couldn’t take away the truth of what I’d done. I was home for now, but how long that would last I had no idea. Jessup had warned me that some jail time was likely because of my past record. The thought of my rage hurting Abbi for months or years made my heart ache.
Hanging my head, I sighed at the pain of missing her already.
“Kane, are you okay?”
I looked up to see Abbi standing on the other side of the glass shower door just like she had that first morning after I’d taken her back to my apartment. Choking back the mix of regret and sadness I felt just thinking about leaving her, I nodded.
“I’m fine.”
She opened the door and stepped in. “You’re torturing yourself over this, Kane. Don’t.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Only one other person had ever made me regret who I was, and I couldn’t bear thinking of Abbi facing the same fate as her.
Her hands held my face, and she looked up at me with those blue eyes so sweet that she could have asked for anything in the world and I would have done anything to give it to her.
“I love you. I hate seeing you so torn up over this. You don’t believe things are going to work out, but I know they will.”
“I love you, angel. I want to believe. I do. But that’s never been a strong part of my life.”
Abbi stepped under the water and kissed me. “I believe, so I want you to believe too.”
Pushing her hair back, I gazed down into that beautiful face that had enchanted me from the first night I met her and smiled in spite of my fear that someday soon I’d be locked up without her and the sweetness she brought to my life.
I kissed her as I silently begged for forgiveness, hoping whatever she believed in would let me stay with her.
“Do you remember that first night when you brought me back to your apartment at the club? I’ve wondered since then why you have DO NO HARM tattooed there right below your belly button.”
I dried my hair with a towel and cracked my neck. Throwing the towel on top of the hamper, I sat down on the bed next to her and leaned back onto my elbows. She turned to face me and stared down at the tattoo.
“If it’s too painful to talk about, that’s okay. I was just curious.”
Taking a deep breath in, I closed my eyes and thought about the night I’d gotten that tattooed on my body. “It was one of my first nights out of jail and I found out Holly had taken her own life. Her letters to me had gotten darker and darker as time went on, and then finally they’d stopped, but I was helpless to do anything from in there. The memory of what that man had done to her had tortured her until she couldn’t take it anymore, and I wasn’t there to be strong for her. She turned to drugs to erase the pain, and then finally one day, they took her away.”
Abbi leaned over and kissed me softly on the cheek. “You don’t have to go any further.”
“Do you know that there wasn’t a day when I was growing up that I didn’t hear my mother tell me why I was named Kane? She used to tell me that I was meant to hurt. That hurting was who I was.”