“Caine, stop. Stop!” Emma yelled, already knowing what he was going to say.
But he said it anyway. “—we killed them both.”
“Oh,” she moaned, her head spinning. Or maybe the floor was tilting. She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Not when the man she loved was revealing his past to her as if it were a weapon and landing such shocking blows.
“That’s not all you ought to know about me, though,” he said, his voice sounding like it came from a stranger. “Hell, no, there’s more.”
Emma pressed her hands to her ears. She knew it was childish, but she could hardly breathe for the massive weight sitting on her chest. She needed time to process. To calm down. For him to calm down.
It didn’t stop him and he didn’t calm. “Let’s see, I’ve taken money, food, and shelter before in exchange for sex. But, I mean, it can’t surprise you that much that I’m a dirty slut given the way I fuck. And most of the time these days I only fuck strangers, even couples, I meet online. Until you.”
Why was he taking the amazing connection they’d shared and trying to twist it into an ugly thing? Her stomach rolled. She refused to bite, just absolutely refused to allow him to make her question it, too. Even though, damn him, the pain just left of center in her chest proved that his barbs were hitting true.
“You’re trying to hurt me, Caine McKannon. You’re trying to hurt us. And I’m not going to stand here and take it.” She made for the steps.
He grasped her by the arm and hauled her back against his chest. “I’m just coming clean with you, Em. Finally. And you have to hear this one more gem about me. It’s the best one yet, I promise.”
“Let me go,” she rasped, losing against the sting of threatening tears. She really didn’t want to cry in front of him.
“It’s about a sweet, innocent little angel named Grace. Just six years old. Same as your kids. Looked up to me like I could protect her from anything.” His voice cracked, and her brain latched onto that one little show of an emotion other than rage. Latched onto it hard even though it probably meant nothing.
But she turned, and the shift made them both stumble until he was pinning her against the wall at the foot of the stairs. “How old are you in this story?” she managed.
He ignored her. “Except, as sweet, innocent angels do, she misjudged me. Believed in me when she shouldn’t have. And then there was a fire.”
Oh, God. She couldn’t believe this was how she was going to find out what he’d been through. “How old, Caine?” she asked again, the first tear falling.
“House parents both smoked in bed. One lost his life to it.” He shrugged. “Deserved it, too. But he wasn’t the only one. You see, the flames engulfed that whole side of the connected duplex where the girls’ room was. And Grace, she hadn’t escaped because she was hiding a cat in her closet. A cat I knew about and helped her hide.”
Grace…oh, Grace. The tattoo on his chest. The pressure from the tears that needed to fall almost choked her, but still she asked, “How old?”
He shook her. “That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I told her I’d save her, but the flames blocked the stairs. And the only other way out was the fire escape that had been broken for a long time because our so-called fucking caregivers were abusive cheapskates who only spent money when social services was coming for an evaluation. It took me forever to convince Grace to climb out because she refused to leave the cat behind, but finally the stray crawled out the window on its own. By then the room was filling with smoke and flames. The fire moved so fast. So fast, Em. We couldn’t breathe. I picked her up and made her hold on tight to my neck, and then I climbed out the window. I knew where to step. Where the old iron was weak and where it was solid.”
He gasped in a breath, and the words turned into a scary, hollow monotone that broke Emma’s heart more than anything else she’d heard.
“T-there was this weird moan from inside the house, and then suddenly fire shot out through the windows. My shirt and hair caught fire. Grace screamed that her arm and leg…” He choked on the words. “I misstepped.” The sound that came out of him was unlike anything she’d ever heard from another human. “The grating gave way. We…we fell. Two stories. I was supposed to protect her. I told her I would. She…she l-landed under me. B-beautiful little Grace…”
Emma threw her arms around him, her face wet with tears she could no longer fight. “Listen to me, there’s no age at which that would’ve been your fault, Caine. Someone else’s carelessness set the fire. Someone else’s negligence failed to fix the fire escape.”