Page 55 of Beautiful Scars

"Had to what?" Colt rises, his usual warmth gone.

"She was dead." But the words aren't true. I thought they were but they're not. They sound different now.

"No, she wasn't. You realize what that means right? That, you left her there to die. Alone." Z's voice is frigid. "The girl you supposedly loved."

"I did… I do love her! I was barely eighteen! Cut me some slack!" The defense sounds hollow, ridiculous even to me. "I'd just found my mother murdered, and Sunny—" Her name catches like barbed wire in my throat.

"You weren't there. You didn't see her, how still she was, all the blood—" I close my eyes against the memory.

"I couldn't protect either of them. I failed."

"To say the least." Colt's quiet agreement cuts deep. "And then you lied to us about it."

"The threat was real." I grip the bar's edge, anchoring myself to this one truth. “None of this changes that. Garrett killed my mother. He tried to murder Sunny."

"Tried." Z steps closer. "She survived what he did. Survived being left for dead. By you."

The truth of it hits even harder spoken out loud. "I know."

"Know what?" Colt presses. "That you're a coward?"

Something snaps. I'm in Colt's face before I realize I've moved. "You think I don't know exactly what I am? You think I don't live with it every fucking day?"

"Back off." Z's grip on my shoulder is iron, yanking me away from Colt.

I wrench free, my words a low hiss. "Don't touch me."

"Or what?" Z's eyes are cold, emotionless, daring me to give him a reason.

"Everything I've done since that night has been about finding Garrett," I snarl. "About making him pay for what he did. To my mother, to Sunny."

"Sunny's alive!" Colt shouts. "She's been alive this whole time, a few hundred miles away, right under your nose! While we've been running ops and cracking skulls, she's been right here!"

The reminder that she's been so close, living as Angel makes my head spin. "I didn't know."

"That's your excuse for everything, isn't it? That's not going to cut it." Zane's contempt is palpable. "What else don't we know, Levi?"

The question hangs in the air between us. Seven years of partnership, of brotherhood, threatening to break under the weight of these stupid lies.

"Tell us everything," Colt says. "No more bullshit. No more half-truths. Everything."

"Fine. No more lies." I pour another whiskey, not sure I can get through this without it. "That night... I was supposed to be with her. It was her birthday. Her 18th."

"But you weren't," Zane prompts when I pause.

"No." Shame competes with guilt as I continue. "There was this asshole. Zack. He'd made it his mission to make her life miserable. He'd been threatening her, stalking her, pissing me off. I came up with a plan to get rid of him. Teach him a lesson." I laugh bitterly.

"That's where I was. That's what I was doing when…" I hang my head. "I was running late. I was supposed to be back, but I wasn't. When I got there, Garrett had already been there and left."

The memory of finding her, broken and bleeding, threatens to drown me. I grip the glass harder. "It was too late when I got there. Or I thought it was. Z. Colt. You have to believe me. It was bad. You know we've seen a lot. Done a lot. I've never seen anything that even comes close to what he did to her."

I drain the whiskey, my hands shaking as I set down the glass. Colt's question hangs in the air between us, the one I've dreaded. The one I'd managed to push into the back of my mind and bury.

"Why would Garrett go after them in the first place?" Colt's voice is calm but insistent. "It sounds like he waited. Like it was personal, not random like you said. There's more to the story. There has to be. I can see it."

I can barely breathe through the heaviness of my guilt. "You're right."

"Then tell us." Zane's eyes bore into me. "All of it."

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