Guilty as Sin

by Jami Alden

  After all, she’d never want to cause another family scandal, he thought, and then felt like an asshole for even thinking it. No matter how much he’d spent the last fourteen years trying to convince himself that Kate was a spoiled girl who shared her family’s obsession with public image, deep down he’d always known there was so much more to her.

  And the thought of her trying to snuff it out made him feel as if his guts were being ripped out.

  His grip tightened on the steering wheel and he forced the thought away, wondering when the hell he’d gotten so damn melodramatic.

  “You all ended up okay,” he said gruffly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You, your family, you all managed to pull together.”

  Kate responded with a harsh laugh. “Right.”

  “I saw the pictures in the magazines, the Beckett family Christmas, vacationing in Florida—”

  “You actually believed that?” Kate said incredulously. “Jeez, Tommy, I always gave you credit for being so smart, but I may need to rethink that. You know my father is a master at manipulating the press into seeing only the image he wants them to see. Where do you think I get my on-camera skills from?”

  “So what really happened?”

  “You know what happened,” she said tightly. “Michael died. They all blamed me.”

  Guilt bubbled through him like acid. “There were two of us there that night,” he reminded her. “I should have—”

  “No,” Kate interrupted harshly. “I was supposed to take care of him. I was supposed to know better. But I was so gung-ho on losing my virginity that night, I didn’t care about anything else. No morals, just like my father said.”

  “Don’t talk about yourself like that,” he said, his voice harsher than he’d meant. But he couldn’t help remembering Kate as she’d been that night, so sweet, so eager. How her whispered “I love you” had sent a pulse of joy through him like nothing else he’d ever felt. He didn’t want anybody talking about that sweet girl that way, not even herself.

  “Anyway, they were never able to move past it. Not that I ever expected them to get over it, but part of me felt like I carried around enough guilt that I don’t need them reminding me that it was all my fault.”

  Unable to resist, Tommy reached over and covered her hand with his, his heart squeezing when she gripped his fingers like a lifeline.

  “I haven’t been home for more than a few hours since I left for college. That spread in People magazine, the one that caught up with us five later?”

  “The one with you all in front of the Christmas tree?” Tommy remembered it well—the issue was months late by the time he’d received it in a care package on base in Afghanistan. He’d been about to discard it when his eyes snagged on the cover, his fists clenching on recognition.

  The Becketts were positioned in front of a Christmas tree in the massive living room in their mansion in Boise where they spent the holidays. Senator and Mrs. Beckett stood behind their daughters, who were seated on leather stools wearing matching red sweaters. The senator had his hand on Kate’s shoulder while Lauren reached over her shoulder to hold her mother’s hand.

  Tommy remembered being pissed off at the scene, all the trappings of wealth on display.

  And the Becketts smiling amid all that luxury while he was stuck in one of earth’s smelliest armpits, dodging bullets in the air and IEDs on the ground, alternately freezing cold or burning hot, depending on the season.

  And then there was Kate herself, looking as beautiful as ever with that smile on her that had just a touch of sadness—this was a feature highlighting their triumph over tragedy, after all.

  After the way Kate had so wholeheartedly rejected him and retreated back to the family fortress, he hadn’t even considered that the smile, the image of the once-again happy family, hadn’t been real.

  “An hour after that picture was taken, my parents and Lauren took a private jet to Aspen to go skiing. My parents told everyone I was busy at work on a research project and couldn’t join them, but the truth was I went back to New York and spent Christmas in my apartment.”

  The knot in his gut pulled tighter. “Your mother let him get away with that?” Tommy had his issues with his mother and her tendency to poke her nose too far into his business, but he knew if he and his father ever had a falling out, for whatever reason, she would never coldly stand by and let him be all but banished by the family.

  Kate gave another chuckle, this one a little watery. “Mom wasn’t about to stand up to him about anything, or anyone else for that matter. After Michael…” She trailed off for a second. “He was her favorite, her baby. When he was killed, it was like she ceased to exist. With the right meds she can still pull off a couple public appearances a year, but otherwise she barely leaves the house.”

  That left Lauren, her twin. He almost didn’t want to know.

  “Lauren and I are still in touch, but it’s never been the same.”

  His heart squeezed in his chest as he thought of Kate, grieving, in pain, receiving no comfort from the people who were supposed to love her most.

  “Jesus, that’s awful.” Tommy had suffered too, from his own guilt and how Senator Beckett had systematically upended all of his plans for the future. But at least he’d had his parents and sister around to remind him that they loved him and that they believed in him.

  That had helped him survive all of it, even the heartbreak. And by the time he joined the Army, he’d convinced himself that he should count himself lucky that Kate never answered that pathetic, pleading letter he’d sent. By the time her father finished with him, he knew he’d fallen in love with a fake. He convinced himself the Kate he thought he’d glimpsed in those rare moments she let her guard down never really existed. Nothing they’d had was real, because the girl he’d dreamed her up to be wasn’t real.

  But in the past four days, he’d seen too many signs of that girl to ignore. It was in the way she cried when she first met Brooke Fuller. The way she warmly greeted Erin Flannery whenever she saw the other woman, even as many of the locals continued to shun her and her family for their past crimes.

  It was in the way she came apart in his arms, holding nothing back, taking everything he had to give.

  The memory made his hand tighten around hers, made the blood thicken in his veins. From the second she’d walked into Jackson Fuller’s house, he’d felt something crack inside, and every second he spent with her created another fissure, spidering out from his core.

  Last night had been a major breach. Another like that and it was all going to blow to pieces.

  There was something real, something big between them. But fuck him if he knew what to do about it.

  His thumb brushed across the thin line striping her arm from her wrist to the middle of her forearm. “This?”

  Kate tried to pull her hand free but he wouldn’t let her. “What, you didn’t tap into my medical files?”

  He couldn’t deny it hadn’t occurred to him to do a deep background check a time or two. “I don’t do that for personal gain.”

  “Well, if you did,” Kate said, her voice falsely bright, “you would have discovered that one night the summer after Michael was killed, I sliced a three-inch gash into my left wrist.”

  “Jesus.” He winced.

  “We were supposed to go to Florida the next day, and I overheard my dad and Lauren arguing over whether I should go. I remember my father saying ‘I can’t stand the sight of her. Every time I see her, I wish she was the one who’d died.’ ”

  Tommy’s throat went tight and there was a strange heat behind his eyes. Fuck, he wasn’t going to cry. “I’m sure Lauren defended you?”

  Kate’s mouth pulled into a mirthless smile. “She said she understood how he felt…”

  Tommy sucked a breath through his teeth at that.

  “… but that it would probably look strange to leave me alone. After what happened to Michael, people expected they would want to keep us close for t
heir own peace of mind.” She turned her gaze back to the window but didn’t let go of his hand. “It was the moment I really got it, that they were never going to forgive me. I did everything I could, I even went along with it when he got your scholarship yanked and threatened your parents’ ranch.” Her fingers squeezed convulsively around his, and he felt an answering squeeze in his chest. “And I know it’s not worth much, but I’m sorry I never spoke out against the lies my father told about you.”

  “I know you were just as trapped as I was.” Though he’d acknowledged that a thousand times in the past, for the first time it actually rang true.

  “In the end none of it mattered. Nothing I did or said mattered. I was nothing but a walking reminder of what my mistakes had cost them, and they all wanted me to just disappear.” She turned back to him, her blue eyes swimming with the kind weary sadness that comes only when your heart has been ripped from your chest and put back wrong. “I decided I’d give them what they wanted.

  “Luckily I didn’t get very far,” Kate said. She tried to make her tone light, but it came out brittle. “I opened up one vein, saw the blood coming out and passed out. The housekeeper found me a little while later, and I got to spend a week at a psychiatric facility while the rest of them went to Florida.”

  “Jesus,” Tommy said, his fingers tightening convulsively around hers, imagining her in a hospital all alone. “That’s awful, that they treated you that way.”

  Kate gave his hand another squeeze and gently disengaged hers. Tommy fought the urge to snatch it back, every instinct in his body screaming at him to hold onto her and never let her go.

  “I didn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me,” she said quietly. “I told you so you’d understand why I’m so worried about Brooke, and Jackson too. I know how bad it can get.”

  He was silent for several seconds, glad they were driving on a straight stretch of highway. It was all he could do to keep the car under control when he felt like he’d just taken an ax to the chest. He felt so many things right now, but feeling pity for Kate wasn’t at the top of the list—not even close.

  Anger, yeah, at her family for taking their grief out on her. And at himself too, for all those years he spent resenting her. Sure, the logical part of his brain had told him over and over that what happened to him wasn’t really her fault. She’d just been a kid too, experienced a horrible tragedy. When it came down to it, it made sense that she would be angry with him for being the one to suggest they leave the house that night, that in the end she would side with her father.

  Yet that wounded nineteen-year-old had lurked inside of him all along. Hurt, humiliated, betrayed by the girl he loved and believed loved him back. Even worse was the helplessness. Though Tommy knew the truth and could have spoken out against the senator with or without Kate’s support, he’d been warned that if he did so, or said a word publicly about his relationship with Kate, the senator would make sure that the bank that held the mortgage on his parents’ ranch would call it in immediately.

  Everything he felt for Kate had twisted into an ugly black mass that he’d shoved to the darkest recesses of his soul, never to be revisited.

  Since then Tommy had done everything in his power to make sure he was never that weak again. Never at the mercy of anyone, physically, emotionally, financially.

  But he felt weakened now. From the force of the sadness pulling at him, a deep cavernous ache as he thought of all the pain she must have been in to do something like that.

  There was something else there, an ache in his chest he couldn’t put a name on. All he knew was the idea of Kate being hurt, by herself or anyone else, made him feel like he was going out of his mind. And the idea that she could have died…

  He’d lost her a long time ago, he reminded himself, and he’d been convinced he was over the breakup almost as soon as it happened.

  What if he’d gotten a call, seen the news, that Kate had died? Because no one was around to love her and take care of her.

  He got an urgent, gut-deep feeling that somehow that person should have been him. He shoved it away. “I’m sorry, I had no idea—”

  “No reason you should have,” Kate interrupted. “My father did a damn good job making sure no one had any idea,” she said with a rueful smile.

  She held her arm up to the window, examining it in the bright afternoon sunlight. “I’m surprised you even noticed it. The senator got the best plastic surgeon in D.C. to do the sutures, and now it’s totally faded.”

  “I had to get really close,” he said, shifting a little in his seat as he remembered exactly how close he’d been.

  Kate’s cheeks flushed as though she knew exactly what he was thinking about, and the atmosphere in the car changed abruptly.

  The air got thick and close, the temperature seemed to rise about ten degrees. Tommy reached over and cranked up the AC, but it didn’t do much to cool the blood pooling between his legs.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry,” he said, trying to bring the subject back around. As much as he didn’t want to dwell on the idea of Kate trying to off herself, there was nothing like attempted suicide to take the edge off a boner. “I feel like I should have been there for you.”

  “Tommy,” she said, her voice edged in regret, “after the way I pushed you away and especially after what my father did, there was no way I could have expected anything from you.”

  Chapter 18

  Kate may not have expected anything from Tommy, but that didn’t mean she didn’t dream about him coming to her rescue. Every day and every night for that first year after Michael died. Every day of her senior year, the bell would ring and she’d imagine walking down the front steps of Sacred Heart Academy and finding Tommy’s truck parked outside. He’d be inside, waiting to take her away forever.

  Never in a million years would she admit that out loud. “And besides, like you said, you thought we were fine. Everybody did.”

  “Still,” Tommy said. His shoulders were pulled tight and he smacked the steering wheel lightly with one big hand. “It’s not right. It’s not okay that you went through that and nobody did anything to help you.”

  “That’s not true. After that, some of the best psychiatrists and therapists in the country did plenty to help me.”

  He shot her a glare, and Kate couldn’t stifle the little thrill that shot through her to see a big, tough warrior like Tommy so angry on her behalf. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  He was silent a few seconds. Then, almost like he was talking to himself, he said, “I should have tried harder to get in touch, but when you didn’t answer my letter… Maybe things would have gone differently—”

  “What letter?”

  Tommy’s face took on that closed, stony look.

  “Seriously, what letter?” Kate said.

  Tommy pressed his lips into a rueful line. “You never got it, did you?”

  She felt like snakes were coiling and uncoiling in her stomach. “I never got a letter from you, Tommy.”

  He slapped one big palm down on the steering wheel. “You’re absolutely sure?

  Was she sure? She’d spent days, months, wallowing in the impossible dream that by some miracle he didn’t hate her, wishing with everything she had that he’d show up at her door. Call her.

  Write her a letter. “I swear on my brother’s grave,” Kate said in a shaky voice. “If I had ever received a letter from you, I would have remembered it.” She shook her head, her lips pursing around the bitter taste in her mouth as she realized the truth. “All of our personal mail was handled by my mother’s assistant. I’m sure my father told her to make sure I didn’t get anything from you.”

  Tommy let out a long, slow breath. “Well, doesn’t all of this just hit the reset button,” he muttered.

  Kate wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that, but right now she had bigger concerns. “When did you send it?”

  Kate watched as the muscles in his jaw clenched and unclenched. “Two days after you le
ft. I told myself not to worry when you didn’t answer right away. Two weeks later my scholarship was yanked, and I figured I had my answer.”

  Kate’s stomach plummeted as she realized how hurt he must have been. “Oh, God, Tommy, I’m so sorry. You must have felt—”

  “I got over it,” he said stonily, the hard set of his jaw making it clear he wasn’t going to go there.

  “What did it say?” she said a few minutes later, curiosity burning too hot to contain.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tommy said, and just like that the steel doors slammed shut.

  “Uh, it matters to me,” Kate replied. “Since the fact that I believed you hated my guts was like a cherry on top of the shit sundae my life had become, hearing something from you to the contrary would have gone a long way toward making me feel like I wasn’t a completely worthless human being!”

  Tommy let out a startled laugh. “Shit sundae?”

  She gave a soft laugh of her own. “That pretty much sums it up.” When he stayed quiet, she prodded again. “So what did it say?”

  He shifted in his seat, cleared his throat. He was uncomfortable.

  “It didn’t say anything about hating you, that’s for sure,” he muttered.

  She gestured with her hand for him to elaborate.

  He blew out a sharp breath. “I think I said something about how I was sorry and that I was there if you needed anyone to talk to, and hell, Kate, it was fourteen years ago. How the hell am I supposed to remember?”

  But the dark slash of color on the cheekbone facing her and the way his fingers flexed and unflexed around the steering wheel told her differently.

  She stifled the urge to press him further. It was clear from his face and his body language that he wasn’t interested in going any deeper on the topic.

  Just as it was clear he remembered a lot more of that letter than he claimed. Something important that he wasn’t ready to share.

  Too consumed with curiosity to muster up small talk, Kate switched on the radio to quell the thick silence. Other than to ask her to double check Judy Dorsey’s address, he stayed silent, closed up, for the rest of the drive to Spokane.