“Stop!”

I turned to face her, expecting to be met with a look of disgust. “What?”

“Stop putting yourself down. I can’t take it.” Aly glared at me with a mixture of irritation and compassion in her eyes. Tears formed in them as I watched.

I couldn’t look at her anymore; my eyes returned to being laser-focused on the view without really seeing it. “You saw my brother that night? We’re twins, obviously. Our whole lives, we did mostly everything together. Especially since our parents died.”

A small gasp escaped Aly’s mouth, making me want to stop and kiss her instead of telling her the truth.

“It’s okay now,” I said with a small shrug. “Not really, but I’m used to it. What you need to know is I’m responsible for their deaths, and for years Lane covered it up.”

I faced my one-woman jury as I spoke the last part. Her green blouse billowed in the breeze as her eyes closed, and I had no clue what she was thinking.

“Aly, talk to me, I’ll tell you more. I’ll tell you everything . . . everything I’ve never told anyone before, but you got to give me something.” I’ll say it all and you’ll run the hell away from me and find someone deserving of you.

When her hand reached over and squeezed mine, I took that as a sign to continue.

“We had this sitter, Shirley, and she was tired and lay down on the couch, so we were left to do our own thing. Lane played with his Legos, but I went outside and started messing around with the car, pretending I was my dad. He had a classic Chevy Nova that he loved to work on. So I loosened the lug nuts like I’d seen him do, pretending to rotate the tires, and then I didn’t tighten them back up enough, I guess. The next day, my parents took my dad’s car for a ride and the wheels spun out. The authorities blamed the wet roads and the leaves.”

Aly squeezed my hand tighter, her thumb dipping into my palm and rubbing soft strokes, her silence both encouraging and scaring the ever-loving shit out of me. When Lane and I talked, we screamed and punched. I’d never experienced this quiet attention before, except maybe from Doc Wells, but this was a different kind of listening.

“Shirley told us not to tell anyone about the car after it happened. That we could go to jail.”

“That’s not true!” she blurted.

“We know that now, but it doesn’t matter.”

Like the tough girl I knew her to be, Aly tucked her finger under my chin and brought my eyes to meet hers. “It wasn’t your fault, Jake.”

“That’s what everyone says. My shrink, and Lane and his wife, Bess. I don’t know. I was nine. Maybe I should’ve known better?”

“No, you shouldn’t have. You were a kid! Not someone who would know better.”

I didn’t know how it happened, but I felt my head drop to her shoulder, seeking comfort in her even breathing and calm gentleness.

“We were doing mostly fine until last year when Shirley appeared out of fucking nowhere and wormed her way back into our lives through Bess. Now she’s gone, but it’s too late for us to do anything about her. The statute of limitations in Ohio, where we lived with our parents, is twenty years. So I’m fucked up, and will be for the rest of my life. There’s no absolving what I did, Aly.”

The longer we talked, the more wound up I had become until my every muscle felt strung taut to the breaking point. I was practically vibrating with tension when her hand came to my thigh and rubbed long, soothing strokes up and down my corded muscles.

“Jake, you’re absolved. You have been since the moment it happened because you were nine and this adult Shirley was in charge—not you or Lane, but Shirley. And yeah, it sucks that it’s too late for her to answer for it, but you need to move on.”

What happened next, I couldn’t help. I grabbed my tumbler and tossed back some liquid courage, and then I leaned in and ravaged her mouth, pushing her hard into the back of the sofa. My lips, hard and firm, pressed into hers, stealing from her what I coveted: innocence, truth, power from intelligence. They took all of it, drinking the best out of Aly.

It started as needing a taste, just one small sip from her, but I couldn’t stop. I pushed myself over her as I kissed her, letting my hands and imagination roam, thinking of more. More Aly. All of Aly. In the wake of all my madness, my cock was rock hard and jutting into her soft stomach, seeking what I was afraid to request out loud.

A moan made its way up from my chest and I tore my lips away for a second, allowing it to make its way out. “I just needed a taste, a little of your goodness,” I whispered into her cheek before grabbing her mouth with mine again.

My mind was barreling through what my body wanted to do to the woman in front of me, all legs and hair and heart, when she pulled away.

“Jake, stop for a moment,” her lips mumbled along mine.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push that fast.” My forehead naturally fell onto hers by some type of magnetic pull.

“That’s not it. Why did you say one taste? Is that what this is about? A fling? A one-night thing?”

I shifted and my hand found its way to her lower back, pulling her tight, almost on top of me. “Don’t you want to leave after what I said? I’m a monster. That’s why I work out, because that’s all there is to me—strength. If I didn’t exhaust myself in the gym several times a day, what other types of damage would I do?”

Her lips settled on mine as she gave me a soft, lingering kiss full of meaning, but not lust or passion or the need to fuck. Pulling back, she said, “Jake, you’re not a monster. You were a child. Not even a teenager.”

My fingers found their way up and down her back, drifting from the nape of her neck to the waistline of her pants, itching to dip inside.

“Jake,” she whispered, “my dad was the victim of a terrible crime. A hit and run. He wrapped his car around a pole when my mom was pregnant with me. He’d gone out to meet a buddy for a drink and never made it there. For years, she didn’t know what happened. I grew up with my mom telling me it was a random accident. That’s what she thought.”

Aly inhaled and let out a deep sigh, her breaths hitching with emotion. “Then years later, we found out he was into some mob guy for money, and the accident was supposed to be a warning. They thought my mom knew and would cough up the money, but she never came forward. They didn’t come see her until the statute of limitations on his murder was up. Those thugs sat in our living room and waved a gun at both my mom and me.”

Tears streamed down her face and I placed a finger over her lips. “Aly, you don’t have to do this now if you don’t want to.”

She shook her head. “There’s a point. That statute was up and there was nothing we could do. I wanted to blame my dad, but my mom told me, ‘Aly-girl, he made a mistake and borrowed money from the wrong people, but that doesn’t mean he deserved death.’”

Turning to me, she grasped my chin and looked deep into my eyes, demanding my attention. “He was absolved of his part, Jake, just like you. You were doing something wrong, but it wasn’t right for Shirley to tell you to lie. You’re already absolved.”

Aly

Although the night shrouded our bodies in darkness, the faint moonlight illuminated our faces, making it impossible to hide our true emotions. Jake looked like I felt—rocked to the core. Now he knew why I was relentless at pursuing justice, insisting that the truly guilty be punished, but most people didn’t know my motives. And likewise, now I understood the sadness and conflict that lurked deep within his blue eyes.

Why did it all feel so right, and yet so dirty? I should despise who he was, what he’d done and who he’d become, but I didn’t dare. Somewhere inside me a switch had been flicked on with this man, and I didn’t want to power it down. Not yet.