But I had to continue.

“One night, I awoke to my mom’s screams. I didn’t have any rules against checking on my mom, so I made my way down the hall. My dad had pulled a gun on her, and she was begging him to come back to her. She just kept yelling, ‘Come back to me, Mike.’”

My throat seized as a vision of my mother cowering on the opposite wall hit me like an arrow to the heart. I could still see my father standing threateningly next to the dresser, telling her that he couldn’t save her, that he hadn’t been able to get her out. I imagined my ten-year-old eyes growing wider and wider, knowing what I was seeing but not believing that it was happening.

“I ran out to cover my mom, not wanting anyone to get hurt, but all I did was startle my dad. He freaked and fired without warning. I ducked, trying to pull my mom down with me, but she was already gone.”

Ari gasped behind me, and in that second, I was glad that she couldn’t see the tears welling up my eyes.

“He shot her in the chest twice.”

“Oh, Grant, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, coming around to my front and holding me tight to her.

“The gunshots broke my dad out of his stupor. He saw my mom dead, and he blamed me.”

“What?” Ari asked, pulling back to look at me.

“If I hadn’t jumped in the way, it would have been like every other nightmare. Nothing would have happened.”

“You don’t know that!”

“She’s gone! It doesn’t matter!” I roared.

She shrank back, and I immediately regretted taking my anger out on her.

“I’m sorry, Ari.”

“It’s okay. What happened to your dad?”

“He pistol-whipped me, and I blacked out. The neighbors had heard the gunshots though, and they called the cops. I was taken to the hospital, and my dad was taken to jail. He got an attorney to claim that he had PTSD, so instead of first-degree murder, his sentence was reduced to manslaughter with the option for parole. I moved in with my aunt and uncle on my mom’s side, the Duffies.”

“So, the dog tags,” Ari said, holding them out from herself. “They belonged to your dad?”

“Yeah.”

“How could you wear them all the time?” she asked.

“I told you once, they remind me of the man I want to be. And I want to be nothing like my father.”

“You’re nothing like him,” she told me simply.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve seen the man you hide from the rest of the world. You would never be careless with your family. You love them fiercely, even the ones who aren’t blood.”

I said the words that I’d been holding back for years, the words I believed to my very core, “I could have saved her.”

“You were ten years old. You should have never been in the position to have to save her. It’s not your fault.”

I wanted to believe those words so badly. But thirteen years of convincing myself of the opposite just wouldn’t go away.

I could have saved her. I’d never forgive myself. I’d never forgive him.

Chapter 30: Aribel

Whatever I’d thought Grant was going to tell me…was nothing compared to what he’d just revealed. We all had skeletons in our closet, but this wasn’t a skeleton. This was a body bag and a twenty-plus-year jail sentence. This was uprooting his entire existence to move in with his aunt and uncle. This was thirteen years of guilt weighing down on his shoulders.

No wonder he had hidden this from the rest of the world. Yet, I couldn’t imagine hiding this, being all alone in my grief, not having anyone to lean on. The fact that he was as normal and stable as he appeared was a miracle. Experiencing something like this could have done a lot worse to him than turning him into a callous playboy.

I felt a newfound respect for Grant blossoming. He’d survived so much, and while it was clear he was still in pain from it, he had risen above what had happened to him. He had friends who would kill for him, a younger cousin who adored him, and legions of adoring fans.

And he was here…with me.

“So, that’s my story,” he said. His eyes looked off in the distance as if he was still lost in that tragic night.

“You made it through a lot and without any help. I mean, you didn’t even go to therapy or anything, right?”

Grant scoffed. “Therapy was the bottom of a bottle and a warm pu**y.”

“That sounds like you. How did you survive when you were a kid though?”

“My guitar. It saw me through all the hard times,” he told me. “My guitar and the tags.”

I sighed as he mentioned the dog tags that were still hanging around my neck.

I slowly pulled them over my head. “Grant, I don’t know if I can keep wearing these.”

“What?” He looked astonished that I would even think of taking them off after he’d given them to me.

“I don’t think you or I should have a constant reminder of what happened. I think you should just…let it go.”

I knew it was easy for me to say. I hadn’t been there thirteen years ago. I hadn’t experienced what he had gone through. I had no idea what it would be like to see my mother die right before me, to see my father sent to jail, to feel the guilt that had clearly sunk into Grant at an early age.

“I can’t let it go,” he said the words like an insult. “I…you don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t,” I said, not letting him rile me up for once. “I could never understand. I’m sure few people could understand what you’ve gone through, Grant. But I want to.” I ran my hand up his arm.

“The tags…I know that they should hold the opposite feeling, that I should hate them…hate everything about them. But I don’t. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s a complete contradiction. One part of me knows that they’re not enough to keep me from ending up like him. The other part knows they’re the only link I still have to the only life I’ve ever been happy in. I lost both my parents in the same day. All I can remember is the bad—the memories, the inexplicable f**king horror of what occurred—but sometimes, when I look at them and when I look at you wearing them…I remember those earlier days. I remember when I didn’t feel the pain.”

Grant took the tags I still held in my hands and eased them back over my head. “Every time I see you, Princess, I feel better. Every single day, you push away the pain and the memories. You’re my life raft in an endless ocean. You saved me from drowning. You saved me from myself.”