Taryn gripped the railing of the platform but didn’t say anything.
Shaw looked back at her. “I saw red. I yanked my brother out of the car like a goddamned lunatic and pushed him into the dirt. In front of his friend, I told him he was just a pathetic kid who was having a tantrum, trying to get everyone’s attention.” His jaw flexed, the memory still fresh in his mind. “I told him that if he wanted to be noticed so badly, then he should stop whining all the time and do something worth noticing.” He met her gaze, knowing he was ruining this but unable to keep lying to her or letting her think he was some helpless victim in all this. “So he did.”
Taryn’s eyes were big, and her hand pressed over her mouth.
He looked down. “A few months later, the shooting happened. The world noticed him.”
Shaw steeled himself for her reaction, braced himself for her anger. He’d been the trigger for what had caused so much pain and loss in her life. He’d put the idea in Joseph’s head. So when she took a step toward him, he almost wondered if she was going to push him off the platform. But instead, she stopped in front of him, heartbreak on her face, and wrapped her arms around him, putting her cheek to his chest. “Oh my God, Shaw.”
He stood stiffly, not knowing what to do. He kept his arms at his sides and closed his eyes. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve told you the truth sooner. I should’ve…”
She squeezed him tighter. “I’m so sorry you’ve had to carry that with you.”
He shook his head, tears burning his eyes. She didn’t get it. “I set him off. I caused it. It was my fault.”
She leaned back and looked up, her head already shaking. “Oh, Shaw. No. That’s not…” She touched his face. “You didn’t. Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“No. This is just more of their crime, the other insidious way they victimized everyone,” she said, ire in her voice. “Leaving behind a long list of people who are left to question themselves forever about what they could’ve done differently. I told you. I think about opening that door all the time. Rebecca embarrassed Trevor and blamed herself for what he did for years. Your parents probably question every parental move they ever made. And you, you reacted to something your brother did with the sole purpose of angering you. He was trying to provoke you. He was creating his own justifications that the world was against him.” Her eyes flared with determination.
“Every indication shows that Joseph was already past the point of no return in the year leading up to the shooting, the antisocial behavior cropping up in all these little ways. His destruction of your property? Just another sign. He’d planned for Long Acre a lot longer than a few months before. You didn’t make it happen. No one thing made it happen. The wheels were already in motion by then.”
&nb
sp; Shaw stared at her, listening to her impassioned speech and not believing it. He’d told her what he’d told no one else in this world, not even Rivers, and she was absolving him. Just like that? No. He didn’t deserve a pass. “I should’ve seen that he was in trouble. I shouldn’t have been so damn full of myself.”
“We all should’ve looked harder. That doesn’t mean we’re to blame,” Taryn said fervently. “That’s a big reason why I’ve worked so hard on my program. There are signs so many of us—parents, teachers, doctors, classmates—could’ve caught. But we didn’t know what we didn’t know back then. You can’t blame yourself for that. How many brothers get in fights every day? You had no reason to think your fight with him was any different than any other run-of-the-mill sibling spat. You didn’t know he was already a ticking bomb.” She put her hand to his chest. “You were just a kid back then, too.”
Shaw shook his head, tears finally escaping. “You can’t do that. You can’t just wipe that slate clean. I hurt him. I let him down. I let everyone down.”
Empathy pinched her features, and she wrapped her hand around his neck, pulling him down to her. He laid his forehead against her shoulder, and the anguish washed through him in a flood. He hadn’t sobbed in years and the sensation felt painful and foreign.
Taryn caressed his hair, pulling it loose from the rubber band, whispering soothing words as if he were a child and not a grown man who towered over her. “It’s not your fault,” she whispered. “Let it out and let it go.”
He knew she was probably in therapist mode, but right now, he didn’t care. Something about the way she was holding him, the whole-cloth acceptance of what he’d told her, broke something open inside him. The grief he’d walled up for so long was busting through the seams.
He lost track of how long they’d stood there, but eventually, he lifted his head, feeling emptied out and a little lost. He looked down at her, a surge of something powerful and pure rolling through him. This woman was…everything. “What am I supposed to do with you?”
Taryn had been crying, too, and she smiled through shiny eyes at him, wiping at his cheeks and then kissing him gently. “Just be you. I happen to really like that guy. Even with his cheesy inspirational quotes.”
He smiled, some of his brain coming back online. She was giving him an out, a way to gracefully step away from the sobbing mess he’d just become. He probably should joke back, but the truth slipped out instead. He pulled her against him and sat his chin on her head. “I adore you.”
She melted in his hold. “Shaw?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“After dinner, can we run by the guitar store?” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder.
He leaned back and looked down at her. “The guitar store?”
She gave him a tentative smile. “Yeah. It’s time I try to write that song. Just for me.” She wet her lips. “I think it’s time we both take back what’s been stolen.”
He stared down at her, so many scary feelings running through him that he was sweating. But for the first time in his adult life, he let himself feel everything fully and didn’t feel guilty about it. “I agree. Let’s do this.”
* * *
Taryn’s phone buzzed in her pocket as she scanned the acoustic guitar selection at the local music store. She pulled the phone from her back pocket and frowned when she saw the message appear. Her parents inviting her to dinner.