“What happened next?”

Connor raises his head, his dark gaze flickering. “I killed that motherfucker. I beat him with my bare hands until he was dead, and then, I beat him some more. That’s what happened.” There’s not even a semblance of remorse in his tone. He’s not sorry. Not one iota. “And I hope he’s rotting in hell.”

I close my eyes, letting Connor’s hurt and anger wash over me, absorbing it as my own. Sitting up on my knees, I crawl in his lap and meet his gaze, rubbing my hand across his stubble-covered cheek. His eyes are red from the tears he’s fought as he swallows hard. His hurt is prevalent. He’s weighted down with it. “Let me share this with you. Let me carry some of it, Connor. You’ve carried it too long, baby.”

He lies back, pulling me with him. My back is against his front, my body curved and fitted perfectly to his. He rocks into me, and I find myself pushing back, meeting his body. His hand finds my breast, rubbing it as he nuzzles my neck with his nose.

“I love you, Connor,” I whisper.

Gently, he pulls me to my back and climbs on top of me, slipping inside of me. He doesn’t speak, not with words anyway, but every touch tells me exactly what he wants me to hear.

He loves me too.

When I wake the next morning, Connor is beside me, lying on his back staring up at the ceiling. “What’s wrong?” I ask, my voice hoarse.

When he turns his head to look at me, his dark stare is riddled with worry. “What happened?”

I turn on my back and stare at the ceiling as well. Taking a deep breath, I do my best to tell him everything I can remember.

After I had left Mary-Anne, I ran across the street, afraid McKenzie was acting terribly to Mr. Jenson. After the way she behaved to him that weekend we kept all of the kids, I thought maybe she got into it with him. The Jenson’s house is on a bit of a hill, so I hiked it up the driveway. I could hear McKenzie shouting and some clinking, like tools being dropped on the floor, but I couldn’t see them because the Jenson’s garage doesn’t face the front of the house. So I ran around the side, and the bay door was open. Neither of them noticed me when I entered. Mr. Jenson had some kind of metal poker . . . like a fire poker . . . and he was jabbing it at McKenzie. She was screaming at him to let her go, but every time she made a move for the door, he tried to stab her. He’d always seemed so feeble and slow, but when he was going after her, he moved like a young man.

“What was McKenzie yelling at him?” he asks as he takes my hand and squeezes it.

“She was calling him a sicko.”

Connor’s brows furrow and then he says, “What happened next?”

He went ballistic and was swinging the poker around trying to hit her. I tried to grab him and pull him off, but he shoved me. He turned and swung at me, and I fell trying to dodge it. He raised the poker above me, and I was scrambling to get away, but he fell . . . right on top of me. McKenzie had hit him over the head with a wrench, and his head was gushing blood everywhere. I shoved him off of me and got to my feet; I was a wreck. He was lying there, bleeding out, gasping like a fish out of water.

McKenzie and I stood on either side of him, facing one another, the wrench still in her hand, hanging limply at her side. “I was eleven when he raped me,” she said, calmly. “Told me never to tell anyone or he’d kill you and my parents.”

My gaze shot to hers, my heart in my stomach. “Mary-Anne snuck over here while I was in the shower. When I came downstairs, your front door was open, and I knew exactly where she went. I came to get her. She was eating a damn candy bar while he had his hand up her dress.”

I collapsed to the ground right beside him. This man had violated both of these young girls on my watch. I trusted him. I thought he was a good man. I even scolded McKenzie for being so rude to him.

“I swear, Demi,” she cried, a sob breaking loose from her chest. “I’m not lying.”

Tears trickle down my face as I speak, my voice raspy with emotion. “He hurt them, and it’s all my fault.”

“No, it isn’t,” Connor speaks softly, rolling to his side and wiping my wet cheeks with the bed sheet. “These fucking creeps are good; they’re sociopaths. They know how to act and make everyone think they’re trustworthy. The feeble old man act was probably part of it. How could anyone think a man who can barely walk be capable of abusing a child like that?”

“I should have known, though.”

Demi,” he whispers. “This wasn’t your fault. Tell me what happened next.”

“Wipe that wrench off,” I instructed her, my calmness surprising even me.

“I’m going to go to jail, aren’t I?” she cried as she wiped at her nose.

“That’s not going to happen,” I told her. “Wipe that down good and go.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, panicked.

“Go, McKenzie,” I ordered.

She finished wiping down the wrench and put it back on the table. She looked down at him one last time, then to me. “Should I—”

“Go.”

When she left, I was still kneeling beside him, his mouth still moving as if he was trying to call for help. If I had just left him, he probably would have died from his head injury, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

My gaze meets Connor’s, and his expression is stoic. “I pinched his nose and covered his mouth with my hand.”

I remember feeling something snap inside of me as I suffocated Mr. Jenson; the realization that I was taking a life, killing a man. It changed me, rightfully so. Before I was me, Demi Stevens, regular everyday person. At that moment, I was a soon-to-be murderer. But right now, reliving it, sharing the play by play with Connor, I feel no regret.

“And that’s when I came in,” Connor says.

Mr. Jenson, even with his head injury in his subdued state, began to struggle as he fought for oxygen. I laid half of my body over him in an attempt to hold him down but holding his mouth and nose were difficult in my position. After a few minutes, he stopped struggling and stilled. Collapsing against him, my head thunked against his chest, exhausted by the task. When I managed to look up, his mouth hung open, and his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

He was dead.

I had killed him.

“Over there,” I heard McKenzie yell just before Connor and Dusty rushed in through the bay door, stopping dead in their tracks. They looked at me, then at each another, both wearing a ‘what the fuck?’ expression.

“Go back to the house with Mary-Anne,” Connor yelled over his shoulder. I knew they were there, but I couldn’t speak as I pushed myself off of the corpse in front of me. His head injury was so severe, there was blood everywhere, and I slipped in it as I attempted to stand, only to fall and cover myself in it, which panicked me even more.

“You fell hard,” Connor notes. “It scared the shit out of me.”

“I hit my head on something,” I state it more than ask it as I touch the sore spot on the back of my crown.

“Tool bench,” he states.

“The next thing I remember is waking up on the gurney.”

“We have to see Wendy and Jeff. Obviously the girls haven’t come forward with what that old fuck did to them, or we would have been questioned about it by now.”

McKenzie was frantic after she hit Mr. Jenson over the head. I have no doubt she’s lied about everything, terrified she’ll go to prison for murder. No matter what happens, I’ll take the heat for all of this—after all, I did kill him. But the most important thing is that the girls get help, counseling to help them cope and understand the feelings something so horrendous might make them feel. My heart aches as I think of McKenzie; the years of carrying the pain around must have been unbearable.