Page 88 of The Truth You Told

“On something he loves?” Callum asked.

“Yeah.”

“Killing people,” he said, straight-faced.

“Come on,” Shay said on a laugh. “Everyone loves something.”

“Language,” Callum said after a moment. “I don’t understand how he uses it. But he loves it.”

Beau had never excelled at English. She wasn’t sure why she had that thought, but it popped into her head, fully formed.

“Do you ever start seeing killers in the people you love?” she asked.

He sat up at that. “What?”

“When you profile someone, do you start finding those characteristics in the people around you?”

“Sure, it’s natural,” Callum said, and Shay relaxed. That’s what she’d thought. “Why? Who do you suspect?”

Shay coughed, hating that he was so perceptive. “No one.”

“Come on,” he said, and then half tackled her to the ground, his fingers finding her soft, ticklish spots. She laughed until she gasped and cried uncle.

“Sometimes, I think I could fit the profile,” she admitted, a half-step admission.

“You’re thinking about Max,” he said, because she’d never been able to hide anything from him. Although, apparently, in this she could. Because she was no longer worried about her sister.

It was her other sibling who concerned her.

“No,” she said quietly. “Not like you think. Not like Beau thinks. Not like Max thinks.” She paused, trying to decide if she should confess to her past transgressions. “I did something bad once, though.”

Callum made an inquiring sound.

“I found a box ...” Shay waved that away. The details didn’t matter. “Anyway, I freaked out. I visited her psychiatrist completely out of the blue and semi-forced the woman to deal with my panic attack about Max hurting someone.”

“Oh, babe,” Callum murmured.

“I’m not proud of it,” Shay cried. “I thought Max might end up ... I don’t know. There are school shootings every day now, it seems.”

“But she’s never displayed anything like that,” Callum reasoned. “Which is what I’m guessing the psychiatrist said as well.”

“Yeah, you got it in one,” Shay admitted. “I just get a little weird about Max, I can’t help it. She’s so cold sometimes that it makes me want to start researching sociopathy.”

“She’s not a sociopath,” Callum said.

“How do you know?”

“Because she loves you,” he said easily. “Very much so. In a way that’s not self-serving at all. That girl would go to war for you.”

“I would kill for you,”Max had said. Shayhadbelieved her. But there was something different about hearing it from Callum’s perspective.

“Did you know there’s a warrior gene?” he asked.

Shay squinted over at him. “No, but that sounds far more romantic than it probably is.”

Callum huffed out a laugh. “It is not romantic at all. The gene predisposes people to violence. Which, of course, during our medievaldays would have meant the person was thriving. Hence, there’s still people who have it. But it can lead to ... well, serial murder, among other things.”

“I would kill for you.”

---