Page 195 of Saving Her

Pity takes over her beautiful face. Such sickening, unwanted pity.

I can’t look at her when she stares at me like that.

I don’t want sympathy. I don’t even want acknowledgement.

“Obviously, they weren’t the best parents,” I say through clenched teeth. “But my scars are nothing in comparison to my brother’s. He bore the brunt of their abuse.”

“That’s why you’re always helping him?”

“I help him because he helped me for years. He made sure he was the main target whenever my folks went on a rage bender. He kept me alive through childhood and has far more scars to prove it. Mental and physical.”

He grew accustomed to fucking up for the sake of saving me. It was his routine for so long the habit followed into adulthood.

“How long did the abuse last?” She approaches, stopping within arm’s reach.

“Benji was willing to risk living on the streets for as long as I can remember. He only hung around because I was too much of a chicken shit to leave. But as soon as my seventeenth birthday arrived, I forged my parents’ signature and signed up for the Navy. I was out of there and never looked back.”

“And Benji? What did he do?”

“Whatever he could to survive. He got a job. Rented a shitty apartment and kept his head above water with the money I sent him each payday.” I meet the sickening pity still heavy in her gaze. “Is that enough insight? Do you feel better now?”

“Please don’t ask me that.” She wraps her arms around her middle. “If I would’ve known what you were hiding I never would’ve made demands.”

“I didn’t tell you, Pen, because I haven’t told anyone. Not child services when they came to check on us. Not the few friends I had as a kid. Not a single soul since I left that fucking house and never looked back.” I shove from the bed and bridge the distance between us, untangling those arms to place them on my waist. “Nobody knows. I don’t even think Benji told his wife.”

“I feel horrible.” She speaks into my chest. “I never should’ve said anything.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure you would’ve found out soon enough. I can’t keep shit from you.”

She sinks into me, her cheek to my shoulder, her warm breath on my neck. “Where are your parents now?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, my childhood never existed.”

“But from your childhood you became a protector. You became a SEAL—”

“I became a SEAL because it felt good to create havoc for the right reasons. To be someone who was the best of the best instead of a cowering little kid who made his brother take his beatings. They were the first family I ever had.”

“And then you lost them…”

“I did.” I shrug. “But I gained a new one here. These guys have my back, even though they act like pricks most of the time. This job wasn’t a hard transition, even though I never would’ve guessed it beforehand.”

“But you went from doing good to bad.”

“Did I?” I pull back to look down at her. “I saved you, after all. Doesn’t that make me a little bit good?”

She winces. “Yes. Of course it does. I didn’t mean…”

“Killing heartless criminal assholes isn’t something I feel guilty about. Sometimes people deserve more than a jail cell. I don’t lose sleep thinking about the bodies I’ve buried.”

She stares up at me for long moments of contemplation. No agreement. No response.

“Does knowing more about me make you feel any better, shorty?”

She swallows and swipes her tongue over her lower lip, the sight fucking tempting. “I’d be lying if I said no.”

“You sure I didn’t scare you?”

Her lips pull in a half-hearted smile. “Again, I’d be lying if I said no.”

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