I got clean.
There was no more using, of substances or people. I quit cold turkey, took my happy ass to rehab and therapy. I had made great strides toward becoming a better person. I didn’t look twice at boys that were going to be trouble and I avoided men that were going to disrupt my self-improvement at all costs.
Until I literally fell into Ben’s arms. He was on an entirely different level than any of the guys I’d messed around with before crashing into his life.
He wasn’t a bad boy…he was a man that just admitted to being bad. He was dangerous. He was quietly threatening and menacing…even though none of it was directed toward me. I had no problem imagining him doing really bad things in a place he wouldn’t give a name to. It made the fact I was alone with him and at a severe disadvantage because of my injury crawl uneasily across my skin.
“How can you miss a place where someone tried to kill you? How can you miss a place so violent?” My voice shook a little bit but he didn’t turn around from his task.
“It’s all I know.” He said it without a hint of remorse or regret. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’?”
He finally glanced over his shoulder at me and frowned at the expression on my face. I knew I was watching him like he might pounce any second but I couldn’t help it. I felt like prey with its paw caught in a trap. “Yeah. I think I’ve heard something along those lines before.”
He nodded and turned back to the pot he was methodically stirring. “It’s true. Whatever you’ve had, whatever you’ve tried…none of that compares to how instantly and wholly addictive power is. All you need is a little taste, just a hint of it on your tongue, and you’re a goner. Soon it’s all you can think about. All you want is more and more. Before you know it, you’re doing anything, even things that turn your stomach and make your mother disown you to get your hands on more of it.” He looked over his shoulder at me once again and I sucked in a breath because his eyes had shifted from the color of clouds to something sharp and deadly. “I don’t think your story and mine are so different, Pop-Tart.”
I swore under my breath and pushed back my wayward hair. “Mine doesn’t have someone angry enough at me to slit my throat, Ben.”
I watched as he lifted a hand to that raised and still-healing scar. It was almost like he had to touch it in order to remember that it was there.
He let his hand drop and his eyes practically sliced into me as he emotionlessly told me, “Made a lot of really nasty people mad during my fall from grace and I managed to take a solid handful of them down with me. It was only a matter of time before one of them found a way to make sure I knew just how mad they were. Like I said, par for the course, which is why that new leaf is looking pretty good. I just had to get my head out of my ass and realize it. I’ve been spending a lot of time feeling sorry for myself lately.”
“You have to be accountable for the choices you’ve made, even the wrong ones.” That was something that had been made startlingly clear when I tried to get custody of Hyde and was turned down flat because of my past mistakes. No one else had done those things, only me, but I wasn’t suffering from those choices alone.
He turned from the burner and sauntered over with a chipped bowl in his big hands to where I was still taking up the entire bed. The plume of steam coming off the top was very inviting and he suddenly didn’t seem as scary tasked with something so domestic and mundane.
He handed me the soup and leaned back to loom over me with his arms crossed over his chest. I blamed the lingering effects of the concussion for the way my gaze drank in the sight of his shirt straining against thick muscle. My mouth watered and it had nothing to do with the yawning emptiness in my stomach.
He was really too attractive to be sequestered out here in the wilderness alone. That seemed like a crime against womankind.
“Being accountable for your actions, that mandate include your sister too?”
I almost dropped the soup all over the bed. The spoon hit the side with a clink as I glared up at him. “What are you talking about?” Other than telling him Xanthe had passed away I was sure I hadn’t mentioned anything else about her. That was a wound that wasn’t going to heal and talking about her was like poking at it with a stick.
His frosty gaze narrowed on me and his chin lifted, giving him an air of superiority that grated. “You messed up. I more than messed up. But your sister…she did something she can’t ever take back and it hurt a lot of people. You risked your pretty neck to drive all the way up here, in horrible conditions, to put the blame for her actions on a stranger. Where is her accountability? Where is the knowledge that she was the one responsible for the choice she made? Not you, and definitely not whichever MacKenzie she fixated on.” He shrugged. “Denver is usually where you connect when you fly into Montana, so it could have been any one of the brothers. All of whom are happily married and never would have looked at your sister that way as it is.”
I sucked in a breath through my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut. He knew too much. Saw too much. I felt like he was peeling back my skin and looking directly at my soul.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” It came out on a whisper that sounded like it had been shredded by razorblades.
He ran his thumb along the edge of his lower lip and watched me without blinking. This was not a man you messed with, and every second spent in his company drove that fact home.
“You talked a lot when you were out. Mumbled about finding your sister in the bathtub. You seemed pretty stuck on the fact that if whichever man your sister was infatuated with had paid her some kind of attention, she wouldn’t have taken her own life, but you’re sharp, Pop-Tart. You know if it wasn’t one of the MacKenzie boys, it would have been someone else. You can’t blame anyone for the choice your sister made.” He took a step closer to the bed and leaned down so that he could put his palms flat on the mattress. His eyes bored into mine and I could feel the heat of his breath as he quietly stated, “That includes yourself. When your head isn’t rattled and your heart isn’t hurting, you’ll be able to look back and realize you’re so fired up to blame one of those boys because it takes the blame you’re feeling for not being able to save her off your shoulders.” I gasped and scrambled to keep the soup from spilling as he pushed up and off the bed. “Some people are beyond saving. It sucks, but it’s true.”
I hated him. In that moment, all I wanted was for this man who admitted to doing bad things and being a bad person to be in the ground, and for my sweet, simple sister to still be breathing. It wasn’t fair. Even if he’d saved my life.