Page 108 of Power
If he turned out to be someone I should never have trusted, I’d never ever try again.
“I’d rather stand,” I said, bracing myself.
A night breeze rustled through my hair, the horses making snickering noises that felt inappropriately cheerful for the moment.
Jace chewed on his lip but nodded.
“When I was in college, I found out that my mom had cancer.” His voice grew rougher. “The night I learned her treatments were failing, I was at a bar with Marcus that served underage kids. I was twenty, below the legal drinking age, and I don’t remember most of that night, but I do remember drowning my anger with alcohol.”
He moved to the nearby tree, twisting a branch between his fingers until I thought it might snap, just like my composure if this conversation continued in the direction I feared.
“I remember coming to on the ground, staring up at the sky, wondering what the hell I was doing, sleeping outside in the middle of the night. That’s when I heard the hiss of the engine and saw steam rising from the crunched hood of the car. I had been ejected when it hit a tree.”
“Were you hurt?” I asked, already stepping toward him.
Jace shook his head. “Your first question shouldn’t be if I was hurt, Scarlett. It should be if I hurt someone.”
My mind attempted to catalog his words, unsure if I really wanted to hear whatever he was about to confess. Some truths changed everything. Some truths couldn’t be unheard.
“I had a head injury,” he said, his voice flat. “So, the paramedics prioritized stabilizing me. By the time the police came to talk to me, they had already gotten a statement from Marcus, who took the fall. He claimed he was driving that night.”
“Was he?”
Jace shook his head, not meeting my eyes.
“In the hospital, he told me what happened. He said I was belligerent and beside myself at the bar, that I had gone to my car to drive. I don’t remember leaving the bar. I don’t remember being in that car.”
“I don’t understand. If you crashed, why did Marcus say he was driving?”
“He didn’t know how much longer my mom would live, and whatever time I had left with her, he didn’t want me to spend it on trial or in jail. So, he took the rap.”
I tried to reconcile this with what I now knew about Marcus. Had there been a time when he was actually decent? How could a man who took a criminal fall for Jace be the same man who hurt me tonight? How could both men inhabit the same body?
Then again, look at my dad. Charming. Funny. Violent. Dangerous. Loving. People weren’t simple creatures with on/off switches for good and evil.
“But a few days later, circumstances changed,” Jace continued, his voice tight. “We hadn’t just hit a tree; we had hit another vehicle. At the time, the woman driving didn’t have life-threatening injuries. But she had a complication. A blood clot went to her lungs and killed her.” His voice lowered. “So, Marcus was charged with vehicular manslaughter.”
“Oh my God.” I drew my hand to my mouth.
“I tried to recant my statement to take responsibility. I went to the police station. I called a lawyer. I did everything I could, but they didn’t believe me. They thought I was just trying to cover for my best friend.”
My mind was reeling. A woman died? Because of Jace’s terrible decision? I was glad he at least confessed to the police because I didn’t know that I could have respected him otherwise. But still, he was responsible for a death.
And Marcus had saved Jace from certain prison?
“Did Marcus go to jail?”
“Almost. I went to my uncle and confessed everything. He secured the best lawyers in the country who, somehow, managedto make the problem go away. But that only left me with more guilt.” Jace’s shoulders slumped, appearing to recognize how much this reinforced the talk we’d had in the rain. “I sank into a deep depression after that,” he continued. “Ashamed that while my mother was fighting for her life, I had gone out drinking and caused someone else to die. And I was ashamed that we had used our wealth and connections to get away with it.”
Oh God. And then I threw things like that in his face outside the restaurant about the privileged not suffering consequences. No wonder he’d looked so destroyed by that talk.
He took a ragged breath. “If the police had listened to me, if they had charged me instead of Marcus, I would’ve surrendered to whatever punishment they sentenced me to. But I couldn’t let Marcus spend his life in prison because of my mistakes.”
He looked at me, his eyes haunted. “I never even told my other friends about it at the time. I was so disgusted and ashamed. I didn’t want anyone to know my darkest secret.”
This was a lot to digest. That poor woman—someone’s daughter, maybe someone’s mother—gone forever because of one reckless night. That family left with a gaping hole no explanation could ever fill. Cold fury and disbelief warred inside me. How dare he get behind the wheel? Grief-stricken or not, drunk or not, it wasn’t just a mistake. It was a selfish, devastating choice that cost someone everything.
My throat tightened. Part of me wanted to scream at him, to make him feel every ounce of that family’s pain. We all had a responsibility to ensure our actions didn’t hurt others. No amount of guilt or subsequent good deeds could ever bring that woman back.
