His shoulders sagged, relief a living, blooming thing inside him. “Thank you. I can’t begin to tell you how much that means to me.”
“Of course. I don’t wish anything bad for you. We’ve all been through our own version of hell. I hope the gym is successful, and you can find some peace there.” She grabbed her purse off the couch.
Peace. Right. That was an impossible goal, but he’d settle for a few months in Austin working with Rivers at the gym so he could buy the RV and set up the next phase of his life. Time was the biggest gift he could receive. “Thank you.”
When she turned back to him, her expression had gone somber. “Just tell me one thing.”
He tucked his hands in his pockets, feeling more vulnerable than he had in a long time. She knew who he was—the horrible parts. It was like standing naked in front of her. “What’s that?”
Her grip on her purse strap flexed as if she were having trouble choosing her words. “Was the person I’ve been spending time with the real you? Or was the Lucas thing an act?”
The question caught him off guard. He searched her face, trying to figure out why she was asking, but her expression was frustratingly stoic. All he could offer her was the truth. “It was the person I wish I could be.”
A flicker of disappointment moved over her face and, after a second, she nodded. “Goodbye, Shaw.”
Goodbye. The word burned into his skin, leaving a tattoo of what-ifs behind. What if he had a different life? What if he’d never left home to pursue the Olympics? What if he’d never said those things to his brother? What if Long Acre had never happened?
But he didn’t. He had. And Long Acre could never be undone.
“Goodbye, Taryn.”
Chapter
Fourteen
The pink fingers of sunrise crept along Taryn’s worn floorboards Saturday morning as she sat curled up on the couch with her laptop. She’d managed to sleep all of about two hours after leaving Shaw’s place. She’d walked out feeling so many emotions that she barely remembered the long drive home. Anger that she’d been lied to. Embarrassment that she’d been so clueless. And then just deep, deep sadness. The kind of sadness that settled into her bones and made her feel tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
One night. Two people with guns. The violence of that one moment in time stretched out like cracks in glass—always splintering, reaching out further, touching lives in ways no one but the people affected ever thought about. To be honest, she had never truly thought about what it must be like to be a family member of one of the shooters. She’d considered the families through the academic lens—their history, mental illness in their genetics, known traumas, all the things that could give her a better picture of the shooter so she could design her program. But she’d never tried to step into their shoes.
What would it be like for a parent to see their child turn into a monster? What would it be like to be that monster’s brother? To know that someone you shared blood and history with had done something so horrible? Seeing Shaw last night, the anguish on his face, hearing how he’d basically shut down his life, she’d realized how shortsighted she’d been.
She recognized that despite her training and research, she’d dismissed the shooters’ families the same way the public had, her personal feelings coloring their image. Why should she waste sympathy on the people who had produced murderers? It was a sweeping and unfair assessment. She was a psychologist, dammit. This was what she studied. She knew that so many different factors went into creating a situation like Long Acre. Her entire program was based on the fact.
She knew killers could come from good families, that the parents weren’t always the ones to blame, that brain chemistry, environment, resources, social connections, other traumas, and so many factors played a part. The puzzle was both complex and complicated. She also knew Shaw didn’t believe any of that. She’d seen it in his face last night. The blame. He was my little brother.
For whatever reason, he believed he was at least partially at fault. Maybe he was. Taryn couldn’t rule that out. She didn’t really know him. But what if he wasn’t? That was what had kept her from falling back asleep this morning. That was what was twisting up her thoughts and making her head hurt. She’d learned in her life that her gut could usually be trusted, and everything was telling her that the man she’d met as Lucas wasn’t a bad guy.
However, she needed to separate out the positive feelings she’d developed for Lucas from the fake and be real about this. She needed to do her research. So after a long sip of coffee to rally her resolve, she forced herself to type a name into the search box. Shaw Miller.
The page immediately populated with hits. Not a Facebook or LinkedIn profile, not a blog or a personal website, but hit after hit of news stories and video clips. She felt a strange kinship seeing that. She and Shaw shared that internet reality. Even after all these years, even with her research credits and career, the search results on her own name wouldn’t be about her job. To the rest of the world, her life hadn’t gone on. She was a person frozen in time in a news story. A tragic character. An anguished face in a still shot. A flat picture on a page or screen.
Her eyes skimmed down the results. At the top were the story and video of the incident Shaw had mentioned—him attacking a reporter. The headlines were ugly: Killer’s Brother Explodes in Violence. Former Olympic Hopeful Thrown in Jail. Like Brother, Like Brother.
Taryn’s heart thumped a little harder. Her finger hovered
over the mouse, but she couldn’t click yet. Instead, she chose one from a competition he’d been in to qualify for the World Championships. The video wasn’t high definition, so the images were a little fuzzy, but she picked out Shaw quickly enough. His hair was military short, his nose straight and narrow, his face boyish but serious as he conversed with a coach. Shaw hadn’t been lying. He looked so different from this fresh-faced kid, one who had the whole world rolling out a red carpet in front of him. Beyond age, trauma wrote lines onto people that altered their appearance in subtle but significant ways. Tiny markers that said I’ve seen things I can’t unsee. She could almost believe the boy in the video and today’s Shaw were completely different people, if not for the eyes.
Shaw’s name was displayed on the screen along with the event he was about to do—pommel horse. Taryn watched in thrall as he walked over to the platform and strapped on the wrist supports, preparing. He was even more muscular then, youth and what had to be constant training making him look like human art. His expression was focused and intense as he stepped up to the pommel horse. After a visible breath, he reached out and grabbed the handles, swinging himself up and separating his legs to rock along the horse before twisting into an effortless handstand. Taryn held her breath in awe as she watched the routine, Shaw swinging his legs around and around at a speed that made her dizzy and moving himself over the apparatus like it was nothing. Strong. Elegant. Obviously gifted.
The announcers were commenting the whole way through. How good Shaw was. How talented. How he would be the favorite going into the Olympic trials if he did this well at the World Championships. During the routine, the screen split, showing Shaw’s parents in the stands. His mom, a petite woman with short brown hair and the pretty blue eyes she’d passed to her sons, was clasping her hands tightly to her chest, obviously nervous. His father, a big man with a shiny bald head, was gripping a little American flag but not waving it, his gaze focused on his son’s performance.
So much anticipation. So much hope. Looking like every other pair of parents who wanted the best for their kid.
Taryn’s eyes skimmed down to the date of the competition. A few months before the Long Acre shooting. The air left her lungs as if someone had pressed on her stomach. The people in the video had no idea what awaited them. This was what their Before looked like. Taryn had one of those, too—a Before.
She blinked, her eyes going misty for herself and the people in the video. She quickly swiped at the unfallen tears and closed the video. She didn’t want to see Shaw receive his medal, didn’t want to see the face of someone who thought he was going to the World Championships and then the Olympic trials, knowing he’d never get to either.
Plus, this wasn’t the whole story. She couldn’t just watch the Shaw who was shiny.