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“I don’t believe that either.” This time I cross over to him and take the drink from his hand.
His eyes glint with a spark of green fire as he pours himself another.
“I hated you. Not because you shot my uncle and wanted him dead. Not even over Dad. I don’t… I don’t think you’d have done it.”
“I would have.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
He doesn’t answer.
“I hated you,” I say, “because you lied to me. You betrayed me. You should have told me what happened, who you thought killed your mom. But you didn’t trust me enough to help you.”
“Would you have?”
I think about it. “Yes. Even if it was just to prove you wrong.” I rub my eyes and take a swallow. “Amelia’s okay. She’s messed up, but she’s staying with some friends. She’s not ready to go home and live with Dad. Her father—uncle—father… he wasn’t her birth father, but he raised her. Uncle Grant deserved that bullet, and if you killed him, I wouldn’t have blamed you.”
“Christ, you would have.”
He’s wrong, I’d have probably blamed myself, and as he looks at me, a muscle twitching in his jaw, I think he knows that.
“But the thing is, I also fell in love with you.”
“I’m not good, Baby Red.”
My heart throbs hard with that. It’s a slip of the tongue, but I’ll take it.
“I’m not a good man.”
“Did I say I wanted a good one?” I swallow hard. “Why didn’t you kill Grant?”
“Amelia had been through enough.” The words are so glib, I crash down again.
“And my father? If he’d been to blame, would you have pulled the trigger?”
He slams his glass down and stalks off, but there’s no way he’s getting off that easy. I follow and he spins to face me. “Do you want fucking blood, Scarlett?”
“I want the truth, and then I’ll go away.”
“Promise?”
I blink back the tears that blur my vision and sting my eyes. “Yes.”
He breathes out. “I’d planned to kill him. I knew it would hurt you, leave you broken and then I…” He stops. “Then I found I couldn’t do it. I was driving like a maniac to get to you at the warehouse and I just knew. I’m not going to say I didn’t want to shoot him. And it took everything I had not to shoot your fucking uncle dead. So many crimes against my mother, you, Amelia. And he hurt you.”
Malone’s mouth twists into something ugly and violent, and all I want is to smooth it away. “He fucking hurt you. No one, no one gets to put hands on you and live. No one.”
“The other man?—”
“I know what he did now. But he deserved to die because he also hurt you. And he hurt Amelia. Crimes, Scarlett, always need to be paid for.”
“You—”
“Yeah, I told you I’d let others touch you, play with you, fuck you. But I didn’t mean it. Not a word. Fuck, even if I meant it, I think if they physically tried, I’d have cut them down. As I said, I’m not a good man.”
I nod, tears slipping down my face. I swipe them away angrily with the back of my hand. Then I put the drink I took from him on a nearby table, turn, and stumble toward the front door. I try to find my bag, but my vision is blurred, and suddenly I’m in strong arms.
“Don’t fucking cry, Baby Red. I’m not worth it.”
