My eyes flared. “I was just going for a run.”
“Thatwas not a run.Thatwas trying to escape the hounds of hell.”
She had no idea how close to the truth that statement was. No idea how the nightmares had come back with a vengeance when I suggested she stay in her bed while she was healing.
Pain streaked across Sutton’s face. “Talk to me, Cope. Don’t shut me out.”
Agony swirled anew, a fiery burn taking root for a reason besides running. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” Sutton’s voice got quiet. “Please, don’t lie to my face. If you want us to leave, I get it. You probably look at me differently?—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I snapped.
Sutton’s hands curled into fists, her fingernails digging into her palms. “You’ve barely touched me since the hospital. You watch me like a hawk but haven’t even hugged me.”
Fucking hell.
“It’s not you,” I ground out.
She let out a soft scoff. “Let me guess. ‘It’s not you, it’s me?’”
“You didn’t do a damn thing wrong. What happened is no one’s fault but Roman’s and those other animals. You didn’t deserve any of this. Not a damn thing. You fought for Luca, for yourself. You were smart and got free. Worked hard to build a good life for you and your boy.”
Sutton’s beautiful eyes glittered with unshed tears. “Then why have you been putting up all these walls?”
“I don’t deserve you,” I croaked. “I’m not good for you or Luca. I put you at risk.”
Her whole face transformed then, empathy filling her expression as she closed the distance between us. “I thought we’d been through this.Idecide what I deserve and what’s good for me.”
“You don’t understand.” My throat felt like it was on fire. “You don’t know.”
Those turquoise eyes searched mine. “Then tell me.”
I saw it then. This was the only way. The truth would send her running. So, I spoke the thing I’d buried for seventeen years. “I killed my dad and brother.”
34
SUTTON
Cope’swords echoed around the room like a cannon shot, reverberating off the walls and bleeding into me. I stared up at the man I knew I was falling for. There was only one word to describe his face: ravaged.
“What?” I whispered, not wanting to add to the weight of his statement.
“I. Killed. Them.” The words sounded torn from his throat. As if someone had ripped them free and left a bloody trail in their wake.
“It was an accident?—”
“Was it?” He cut me off.
“Cope.” His name was barely audible, but it was all I could get out.
“We were coming home frommygame. They wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for me.”
“That’s not?—”
“Stop,” he bit out. My mouth snapped closed, and Cope went on, almost as if in a trance. “It was winter. Got dark early. It was only 7:30 at night, but it was pitch-black. We were drivinghome on one of those two-lane roads, Dad and Jacob in the front, and Fallon and me in the back.”
Cope wasn’t seeing me now; he was somewhere else entirely. Back there, on that day. “We’d lost, and I was in a shitty mood. Took it out on Fal, needling her about something stupid. She snapped back at me, and we started fighting in earnest. Yelling about who would get Jacob’s room when he moved out that summer to go to college. It was so stupid.”
