Chapter Twelve

      JAIVEN WATCHED LOUISE smile tremulously as she eased back from their kiss. She looked so unbearably fragile he felt as if she might topple over if he breathed too hard. She might break apart. It had taken guts to tell him her history. All that stuff.

      More guts than he had, since he’d held back from baring his own soul. He’d started small, telling her he was a school dropout. Big deal.

      He hadn’t had the balls to tell her the whole, awful truth. He didn’t have a tenth of the courage Louise had shown tonight. And now that she’d told him all of her stuff, his own history felt like a millstone around his neck. Both of their necks. Because how could he offer Louise the comfort and love she so desperately deserved and needed, with both of their pasts? She’d been abused by a man. He’d killed a woman.

      Telling her the truth would be breaking her trust. Hiding it from her was just as bad.

      Damn it, he had no idea how any of this would work, and yet he knew he couldn’t walk away. He needed her too much. And she, for the moment at least, needed him.

      Louise took a deep breath as she scrunched the tissues up and tossed them in the trash. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “For showing me so much grace and understanding.” She swallowed, smiled. “And for accepting a ton of emotional baggage.” She pointed a finger at herself, still smiling, if a bit shakily. “Complicated, thy name is Louise.”

      “We’re all complicated,” Jaiven answered gruffly. He certainly had his own emotional baggage. What a term. He pictured his life like a bunch of shabby trunks that should be tossed in the Hudson River.

      If only it could be so easy.

      “So what now?” she asked, her smile still there. Still shaky.

      “Tell me what happened. How you got out.”

      She started to sit down in the armchair he’d vacated, but he held his arms out and with her smile turning just a little self-conscious she came to him. He hauled her onto his lap, needing her there.

      She didn’t speak for a little while, just rested her cheek against his chest so he could feel her soft breath, her heart rate slow. He slid one hand into her hair, stroked it softly.

      “I don’t think I’d have done it on my own,” she said finally. “I thought about it, but I was too scared. Not of Jack, actually, because I was pretty sure if I walked out he’d just shrug and find someone else. I was never really that important to him.” She was silent again, seeming to process her own words, before she continued. “I was scared of being alone. Of facing the world without a safety net, even a crap one. Jack had chosen me, even if he didn’t ever act as if he really liked me. That meant something to me, stupidly. To be chosen. Accepted, even if I really wasn’t.”

      “I know how that feels,” Jaiven said quietly, and she twisted around to look at him.

      “Do you? How?”

      He blew out a breath, knowing he needed to come at least a little clean. Maybe if he gave her the truth in small pieces, it wouldn’t seem so terrible.

       Yeah, right.

      “I was kind of a screwup as a kid. Not great academically. Messing around. My parents didn’t have the time of day for me, and I couldn’t really blame them. And then my father died when I was twelve.”

      “He did?” She looked shocked, and Jaiven hadn’t even told her the rest of it. “How?”

      “My parents ran a bodega, and he was shot during an armed robbery.”

      She looked even more shocked. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

      “Yeah.” He shifted under her, so unbearably aware of what he was not saying.

      “So where did you look for acceptance, Jaiven?” she asked quietly, and his breath caught in his chest because in that moment it felt as if she saw him so clearly.

      And yet not at all.

      “After I dropped out of school…” He paused, instinctively tightening his arms around her, as if he were afraid she’d scramble off his lap. Leave him. “I joined a street gang.”

      She stiffened slightly, but that was all. “Not a smart move, I’m guessing,” she said after a moment.

      Talk about understatement. “Definitely not.”

      “I guess that didn’t please your mother.”

      “To say the least.” His chest burned with the knowledge he was keeping from her, and yet he forced himself to continue. “Especially because the gang I joined was responsible for my father’s death.”

      She didn’t say anything, and he couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t bear to see the revulsion and judgment he knew had to be on her face.

      Then he felt her hand on his face, cupping his cheek just as he’d cupped hers. “Oh, Jaiven.” There was so much sadness in her voice, so much compassion. He felt the sting of tears behind his lids and rapidly blinked them back. “How did you get out?” she asked softly, and he felt a thousand emotions twist like knives inside him: hope and grief, gratitude and guilt. Because she was acting as if he’d been as much a victim as she had, and he damn well knew he hadn’t been.

      “I didn’t get out,” he told her, his voice rough. “I got sent to prison.”

      “Oh, no.” He looked at her then, bracing himself, but all he saw was sadness. “That must have been terrible. How old were you?”

      “Seventeen. But I was a criminal, Louise. I did—I did a lot of bad things.”

      “And pulled yourself up out of it, Jaiven. If you’re not going to judge me for the mistakes I made, then I won’t judge you.”

      “It’s totally different.”

      “Maybe.” She didn’t fight him on that one, which made him strangely glad. He didn’t want her rose-tinted view of his past. He wanted reality, and yet even now he couldn’t make himself tell her the whole truth. “But in some ways,” she continued, “we’re a lot alike, Jaiven. We both had lonely childhoods. We both went looking for love and acceptance in the worst place to find it. We both feel guilty for making a bad choice.” She paused, reaching up with her other hand to frame his face and look in his eyes. “We both want to move on.”

      “Sometimes I don’t know if I can,” he whispered, and she nodded, leaning forward to rest her forehead against his.

      “Then we’re alike in that, too.”

      They remained that way for a long moment, silent, the only sound their mingled breathing. Then he eased back and asked, “So who helped you to get away from your husband?”

      “A woman who saw me with Jack,” Louise answered. “I was working at the diner, the same one where we met. I’d dropped out of school to work