What had started out so well had ended so badly. It was hard to remember that shining beginning sometimes. He’d spent years telling himself he never should have proposed, and he sometimes forgot how he’d imagined having a life with her. Kids, grandkids, the whole works. It was difficult for the good not to be buried under the onslaught of ugliness.
“Please tell me she wasn’t selfish enough to do it while you were there. Tell me someone else found her.”
“Someone else found her.” Which always made it a little bit worse. It had been three days before anyone had noticed that she wasn’t around. He’d seen pictures of the scene, had forced himself to look at how the flies and the summer heat had gotten to her body, how the bullet had caved in one side of her skull, how her blood and brains had dried in dark splatters on their bathroom walls. How her blood had pooled around her in the tub. He’d made himself look at what his choices had wrought. “Even that made a point, didn’t it? All the way to the bitter end, I wasn’t really there for her. I was deployed overseas, and I didn’t give her what she needed or wanted.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Selina’s grip was almost painful on his hand, pulling him out of his memories.
“She blamed me, though. It’s hard to ignore that. And part of her reasoning was true.” He winced. “I didn’t even make it home in time for the funeral. She’d left a suicide note for me to find in our safety deposit box. Along with her wedding ring. Before she blew her brains out with one of my pistols.”
“Oh, fuck me.” Her jaw clenched hard enough that the tendons stood out on her neck. She shook her head as if she had no other words for him. And, really, what could she say? What could anyone say? Nothing would ever make it better.
Selina stood and came around the table to cup her hands around his face, her dark gaze compelling. “It was not your fault. You didn’t put a gun to her head and you sure as hell didn’t pull the trigger. I want to hear you say it out loud, Jack. It wasn’t your fault.”
Her fierceness made something snap inside his chest, made hot moisture burn the backs of his eyes. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“A part of me ...” He cleared his throat, looked down, and scuffed his shoe against the floor. “A part of me will always wonder if things might have gone differently for her if she’d chosen another guy. Some nice nine-to-five office stiff who would come home to her every night and push her into therapy when or if things ever got bad. She could always blow me off because I had one foot out the door. Once I was gone again, she didn’t have anyone there to try to get her help.”
“If she had wanted help, it would have been available to her. She didn’t want it.” Selina’s voice went soft, her fingers still curved around his face. He snagged them with his hands and brought them to his lips to kiss them. He ran his thumb over her knuckles, and shook his head.
“Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll never know now.”
And that was the worst part, the speculation, the second-guessing, the never knowing. He’d learned to let go of some of the guilt, because he’d done what he thought was best, but in the end, Heather was dead. And if he’d been there for her, maybe she wouldn’t be. If he wasn’t who and what he was, she might still be alive.
He couldn’t take that kind of responsibility for someone’s happiness like that again. He wouldn’t. With Selina, he had some small amount of hope that he wouldn’t have to. She’d managed to survive whatever had put the shadows in her gaze, and maybe he could help her with those. Maybe since she was a cop, she could handle being with someone who had the same lifestyle.
Maybe. Maybe not. He’d never know unless he tried, so no matter how terrifying the prospect, he had to see what came of this. He had to know if his wife was right—if he really was incapable of giving a woman what she needed in a relationship or if he’d crash and burn a second time. Until Selina, no one had even come close to making him want to go another round with real relationships. All he knew was that when it came to her, he wanted more. He wanted everything. And even letting that thought form in his head was enough to break him out in a cold sweat.
But he’d be a fool to let go of something this good without a fight.
Selina sat in Jack’s office, her laptop plugged in before her, a stack of papers at her elbow while he worked on his half of the desk. After telling her about what had happened to his wife, he’d helped her clean up breakfast, kissed her good-bye, and drove back to his place to get dressed for work. He hadn’t said much since he’d arrived at his office, just went to work sorting through the massive amounts of information they’d found about their many victims. It was late afternoon, and they’d worked in silence all day. Companionable silence, but still.
She wasn’t sure how to take it. Silence now after he’d gone from insisting they were dating last night to telling her about his wife blaming him for blowing her brains out this morning.
What a selfish bitch. The thought was reflexive, as was the spurt of anger that ripped through her on Jack’s behalf. He was a good man, and he had absorbed too much responsibility for Heather’s weaknesses. But to blame him for all her unhappiness? To put all her shit on him when she was unwilling to seek some help ... what a selfish bitch. Selina knew it was a horrible thought to have about a dead woman. There were probably a lot of extenuating circumstances involved—law enforcement had taught her nothing if not that there were a million shades of gray in the blame game. Things were rarely black or white, right or wrong. But she’d still like the chance to bitch-slap the little sorority girl.
Sighing, she tried to refocus on the case. This was what she should be living and breathing right now, not worrying about Jack and his painful past. He didn’t seem to want pity or even sympathy. He’d never even told anyone about his wife’s suicide note. He’d carried that guilt around for decades.
She could relate. And that was the crux of the problem for her, wasn’t it? She could relate to everything with Jack. He drove her crazy, he made her think, he made her question herself and what she took for granted just by being himself. He was dangerous, just as he’d said about her. Why ... why did she have to find him now?
Her foot bounced against the floor as she tried to keep her thoughts from going in sickening circles. Focus, Selina. Focus on the damn case. She didn’t have time for man drama. Pinning her gaze to the screen in front of her, she got back to looking for any Magickal who might have been in all of the cities where the murders had taken place. Jack was doing the same. Every now and then, she glanced up at the lineup of victim photos on the walls. Every time they put another one up, she felt sick to her stomach. The ones from New Orleans weren’t even there. Yet.
A tiny voice in the back of her mind told her to tell Jack about her cousin. He’d told her about his wife, so he’d understand how she felt. He’d understand why she had to stay on this case, why she had it to see it through. She hoped. “Jack ...”
“Yeah?” His blue gaze moved from his computer to her face. “Did you find something?”
She shook her head, her heart thumping against her ribs, her palms slick with sudden sweat. She opened her mouth to give him more of herself than she’d given any man in close to forever.
“Damn, that’s some gruesome décor you’ve gone with, Laramie.” Delta’s drawl preceded her through the door, a stack of paperwork clutched haphazardly in her arms. She dumped it on the desk, several sheets spinning out to scatter on the floor, which she bent to retrieve. “This came for you guys, and I’ve been working on coming up with a better profile for your vampire. If you’ve got a few minutes, I can go over it with you.”