Page 132 of Finding His Redemption

He exhaled slowly. “It’s from the night I hurt Alexis. They sent a K9 after me. Ranger, a beautiful Dutch shepherd. He bit me and dragged me to the ground. I was still holding the knife.”

She didn’t flinch. Just let her palm rest lightly against his ribs, waiting.

“I don’t remember the pain,” he admitted. “Just the blood. Hers. Mine. All of it blending together in the snow.” His throat closed up, and he didn’t think he’d be able to continue. He never talked about that night. Hated to relive it.

But this was Nessie, and she deserved to know the whole story, not just what she’d read online.

He swallowed hard before continuing. “I’d taken so many drugs that night, I could barely tell what was real. Couldn’t feel anything. Not guilt. Not grief. Just this…rage. And emptiness.”

He turned his head to look at her. “I told Shane Ilikedit. Killing people. Said it was the only thing that made me feel alive.I wanted him to think I was a monster. I wanted him to kill me. Because the alternative was facing the truth.”

She leaned in and pressed her lips to the scar, and the simple acceptance undid him. “What was the truth?”

“That I was the one who destroyed my life. Not him. Not the Navy. Me. I was trying to punish Shane for not listening to me in Afghanistan. For leading us into that slaughter. I told myself I was punishing him formoving onwhen I couldn’t. But the irony was, he hadn’t moved on, either. For years, he lived off the grid, in a self-imposed exile, until Alexis brought him back to life.”

He blinked up at the ceiling, trying to breathe past the tightness in his chest. “That’s really what made me snap. Because he had that, had someone who cared enough about him to work through his demons, and I didn’t. That’s why I wanted to take her from him. I had every intention of dying that night, either by Shane’s hand or the local sheriff’s.” His voice cracked, and he covered his face with a trembling hand. “Jesus. I should’ve died that night.”

“You didn’t.” Nessie stroked his chest, up and down, soft and soothing. “And she didn’t either.”

His hand dropped back to the bed. “Barely. The knife nicked her carotid. She should’ve bled out in minutes, but Shane got to her in time and put all of our battlefield medical training to use. She lived. And I went to prison. Withdrawal hit me hard. My lawyer said I had so many drugs in my system, it was amazing I hadn’t overdosed. I was hallucinating for days. Couldn’t remember what was real or imagined…”

He’d told the story a dozen times to therapists, to the parole board, to Walker as they’d driven from California to Montana. But telling it to Nessie, feeling her warmth against his side as he laid bare the worst parts of himself, felt different, like confession instead of recitation.

“The hallucinations were the worst part,” he continued in a strained whisper. “I kept seeing Alexis everywhere. Sometimes she was bleeding, sometimes she was screaming. Sometimes she’d just stand there and stare at me with these dead eyes. I saw my dead teammates, too, all crammed in the cell with me. It was hell, so when the cops interrogated me, I confessed to every sick, twisted crime they asked me about because I thought they would kill me.” He scoffed. “The sheriff there mentioned the death penalty in passing once and I was all in. Wasn’t even on my radar that California no longer kills criminals. I just wanted it to be over.”

He went silent for a long moment and felt her hot tears fall against his skin. “You needed help, Jax. Not prison.”

“I got it eventually.” His throat felt like he’d swallowed glass. He’d never said those words out loud before—that he’d needed help, not punishment. That the system had failed him as much as he’d failed himself. “The prison shrink said I had what they call ‘moral injury.’ When you do something that goes against everything you believe about yourself, it fractures your soul. The drugs were just my way of trying to numb the pain.”

Nessie’s hand found his, their fingers interlacing in the darkness.

He sucked in a deep breath. “So, that’s the man I was. And now every time I pick up a knife, even to cut a damn apple, I remember the feel of her skin giving way. I remember the blood. I remember telling her she deserved it.” He closed his eyes, but it didn’t help. He still saw the whole thing playing out on the back of his eyelids. “I’d rather rip my own heart out than be that man again.”

“You’re not that man,” Nessie said. No hesitation. No fear.

“I don’t know how you can be so sure when I don’t even know if that monster is still inside me.”

She propped herself up and framed his face in her hands, making him meet her gaze. “Because I’ve seen you with Echo. A monster wouldn’t have been so patient with her.” She kissed him lightly at the corner of his mouth. “With Oliver. A monster wouldn’t take several hours out of his day to rescue imaginary pets.” Another kiss at the other corner. “With me. A monster wouldn’t have spent hours learning exactly how to touch me so I’d never be afraid.”

He stared into her warm brown eyes, searching for any hint of doubt or fear, but found only certainty. Only love.

She smiled and traced the line of his jaw with her finger. “I heard what Oliver said to you earlier, and I’m not going to lie, I’m a bit annoyed he beat me to it.”

His breath whooshed out of him in a shaky rush. “What?”

She straddled him and leaned down until her hair blocked out the world around them. “I love you, Jax,” she whispered against his lips.

He froze. His whole body went rigid, his lungs forgetting how to pull in air. Those three words—he hadn’t heard them directed at him in so long he’d forgotten what they sounded like. Forgotten what they felt like.

Too much. It was too much after Oliver’s declaration earlier, after the cats, after everything. The emotion welled up inside him, threatening to drown him.

“I don’t deserve it,” he choked out. His eyes burned, and he blinked hard, but it was no use. The tears came anyway, hot and humiliating as they slid down his temples into his hair.

Twice in one day.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried so much.

Nessie’s palm was warm against his cheek as she caught one tear with her thumb. “Let me love you anyway,” she whispered, then kissed the wetness from his skin, her lips soft against his cheekbones, his eyelids, the corner of his mouth.

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