With an inner strength that surprised even her, she lifted her eyes to meet Matt’s and told her the secret she’d once worked so hard to hide. “I’ve had six broken ribs, broken my left arm twice, my collarbone, my ankle, a fractured pelvis, and a ruptured spleen. I think that’s everything.”
Matt shook and grew red with rage, but didn’t say a word. There was nothing anyone could say. They all knew Brenna had been hurt far more than anyone deserved. When Matt asked for a moment and paced out into the hall, Brenna let go of the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
If her father hadn’t already been dead, she knew that Matt would have killed him with his bare hands. But he didn’t have to—she’d already done the job for him.
Chapter 22
The doctor talked to Brenna for a little while and gave her a prescription for painkillers and a referral to a therapist. After a quick check of her vitals, he told her she’d be ready for discharge that same day. Brenna thanked him, and he left.
Now she sat up on the edge of the bed, still and silent, as she waited for Matt to come back and join her. She knew he couldn’t have gone far, but still, he had vanished for the better part of half an hour. As she sat by herself, she tried to remember why she had been so upset the night before. Had it just been about her father, or had something new happened?
She remembered talking to Matt and Liz in the kitchen but couldn’t remember what all she’d revealed. She also remembered another person, someone she didn’t like very much calling her Ms. Barry and making her feel angry. The particulars would come back to her soon. She knew they would. Her brain just had to thaw out a little more. She had to move past the trauma of being lost in the storm to start piecing her thoughts back together regularly again.
Similar such short-term lapses had happened to her in the past following particularly cruel beatings from her father. Her therapist at the ranch called it compartmentalization and said it was a safety measure Brenna had unwittingly concocted to protect her brain.
The memories always came flooding back eventually, but not until she was ready to deal with them. Apparently, she wasn’t yet ready to address whatever had happened the night before.
Still, she was tremendously curious and hoped the fog would clear soon.
At last Matt returned with a smile on his face and a cup of coffee in each hand. He handed one to her then sank onto the bed beside her, sitting close but not touching.
“Thanks for this,” she said, lifting the cup to her lips with a grateful sigh.
Matt nodded as his features rearranged themselves into a grimace. “I knew he’d hurt you, Brenna. But I had no idea how badly. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” she asked with a bitter laugh. “That I spent a lot of time in hospitals growing up, being fixed back up after he hurt me, and everyone always believed the stories he gave them about an accident I’d had? No one ever questioned the great Patrick Barry. And if anyone suspected, they obviously didn’t care enough to do anything about it.”
Matt’s hands tightened around his cup, and for a moment she feared the coffee would come sloshing out from the top. “You mean like your mother? Where was she during all of this?” His voice shook with anger. “What kind of a mother would let this happen?”
“She’s not the one who hit me. He is,” Brenna pointed out.
“But she let him. I just don’t understand.”
“I’m glad you don’t,” she said softly, truly meaning the words as she spoke them. “It means you’ve had a better life than I have so far.”
They sat side by side in silence as they both considered this.
“Let’s leave the past in the past,” she said, offering her hand palm up which he accepted with an exhausted sigh. “We’ve both had hard times, but we have each other now. Things can be better.”
She knew there was something else about Matt she’d recently learned, but what was it? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be bad. This was her Matt, her kind, gentle Matt. He’d saved her, helped her heal, and maybe—just maybe—he even loved her.
His renewed smile told her all she needed to know. “I like the sound of that,” he admitted. “I like it very much.”
“Knock, knock.” A familiar voice she couldn’t quite place wafted over from the doorway.
They both turned toward the man waiting with a bouquet of half-brown flowers in the hall. He wore a suit but no tie, and his dark hair was in need of a trim.
“You again,” Matt growled while Brenna tried to remember how she knew him. “Haven’t you done enough damage already?”
“Ms. Barry, I was so sorry to hear about what happened the other night. You know, you wouldn’t have had to go through all that if you’d just stayed and answered my questions.”
“Questions?”
“Sure, don’t you remember?”
“Will,” she said. “Your name is Will Hardy. You’re a P.I.”
He made a little gun gesture with his free hand and pointed at Brenna. “Bingo. These are for you, by the way.” He handed her the flowers, which were even uglier up close. Now it was all coming back to her. She had not enjoyed her last conversation with this man, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for another.
“She’s in the hospital, for crying out loud,” Matt protested. “Don’t you piranhas ever take any time off?”
“Not when we have a job to do. Give us a few minutes to ourselves?” he asked Matt, who folded both arms over his chest and stared down the bridge of his nose at Mr. Hardy.
“No way. That did not end well the last time.”
Will just shrugged. “Fine. Whatever.” Yesterday he’d been adamant about talking to Brenna on her own. What had changed?
“What will it take to make you go away as fast as possible?” Brenna asked, glowering at the man with hate. He was looking into her father’s death. She knew that much, but why?
“First, let’s revisit what I know, then you can tell me the parts I’m missing.” He pulled out his phone and read from the screen. “One, your parents took out a massive life insurance four years ago. Two, your father died during a domestic dispute one year ago. Three, your mother requested a lump payout of $250,000 one month ago. With me so far?”
Brenna nodded, unwilling to give anything away before she understood his angle.
Matt’s eyes turned to hers, full of questions she couldn’t yet answer.
Will Hardy paced to the other side of the room and narrowed his eyes first at Brenna and then Matt. “Insurance fraud is a very serious crime. As is murder. Oh, and hey, arson, too. So, tell me, which should we talk about first?”
Insurance fraud. She remembered that part now. The company had hired this oaf to investigate, but arson?
She looked toward Matt, who’d grown bright red with anger. “Get out of this room,” he growled, shoving the other man in his chest. “And if I ever see you near Brenna again, you’re going to be sorry.”
The investigator chuckled and tapped something on his phone. “Adding assault to the list as well, I see. You picked a real winner, Ms. Barry. A real winner.”
The cruel expression on his face showed that he considered Matt anything but.
Brenna, too.
“You might be able to intimidate other people with threats,” Will Hardy said to Matt, “but you can’t scare me off. I’m following the law and have every right to ask questions for my client.”
Brenna’s mind raced around in circles. She was so close to remembering. So close.
“And I have every right to protect my girlfriend from scum like you.” It seemed Matt was ready to start pounding on the other man right there in the middle of her hospital room. But he was gentle, not violent like her father. He’d done drugs, but he’d never hurt anyone. He’d told her that much when…
Oh, my gosh.
Brenna’s head reeled around the truth she’d learned the night before. Matt had done something terrible, and then he’d hid it from her. He was still hiding.
“You know,” the investigator continued, “the past will always come back to haunt you unless you face up to the truth. If your mother is pulling something on my client, we’ll find out. So you can keep hiding behind your boyfriend’s threats, but someday I’ll find out what happened. The police might have made a mess of the original investigation, but I won’t make the same mistakes.”
Matt pushed the man again, still holding him by the front of his coat. “Get out.” He gave one final shove and let go, leaving Will to stumble awkwardly toward the door.
“You can’t hide forever,” he said on the way out the door.
Matt spun to face her, confusing marring his features. “Your mom took out an insurance policy?”
“You committed arson?” she dropped her voice to a whisper before saying the next part. She still couldn’t believe it. “And killed someone?”
Matt paced back over to the bed and thrust his fingers through his hair. “Do you really think I could do something like that?”
“Will told me everything yesterday at the ranch. Is it true?”
“He’s got his facts twisted. I would never hurt anyone, and I’m trying to help you now. Please listen to me. If there’s really an insurance agency investigating, they aren’t just going to give up. They don’t want to pay money out if they don’t have to, so if they think there is any way to get out of it, they will hound your family relentlessly.”
He reached out and put his hands on her arms. “I know the police ruled it an accident, but if there’s any chance that this guy can twist it to work in his client’s favor, it can cause a lot of problems for you. After everything you’ve been through, you don’t need to deal with this. I have a friend who can take care of it for you and bring all of this to an end.”
Brenna gasped and edged away from him on the bed, staring at him in utter disbelief. “So you won’t talk about the arson or the murder that you committed, and now you’re trying to get one of your thug friends to ‘help’ me? Thanks, but no thanks.”
Matt dropped his hand from hers at once. “Do you really think that little of me, Brenna? After all the time we’ve spent together? When I was honest with you about my past right upfront?”
She looked away so she wouldn’t have to see the pain in his eyes reflecting back at her. Had she been wrong? Had the P.I. lied to get a rise out of her?
But even if he had, why was Matt offering to have some guy “take care of things” as far as the insurance investigation went? Once a criminal, always a criminal.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” she whispered, wishing she’d never been rescued from that storm.
Chapter 23
Brenna watched as Matt paced around the room. Several times it looked like he wanted to say something, but he kept quiet as he worked his thoughts out in his head. Finally, he took up a seat by the window and leaned forward with an elbow on each knee.
“You said you don’t know what to believe. Well, whether or not you choose to believe me, I’m going to tell you the truth about everything, including some things I’m pretty sure you’re not going to want to hear.”
She stared at him, unsure of how to feel. Regardless of who was in the wrong, they’d already lost each other. That much was clear from the thick tension that filled the room like smog. “Say what you’re going to say,” she told him, feeling the ugliness rear up inside of her.
It had never been this way with Matt, not before. Was that because they’d had something real, or was it because he was good at faking it? She didn’t know which answer she wanted to hear, so she looked at him and waited for his version of the truth. She’d decide whether she believed it after he’d said all that he needed to say.
“I’ll start with the obvious, and that’s that you’re not being fair to either of us. Ten minutes ago you wanted to leave the past in the past, but apparently that’s only true when it comes to your past,” he pointed out.
He laughed bitterly. “Oh, wait. That’s not true, either. Because I’ve proven to you at every opportunity that I am nothing like your father, that I would never hurt you, that I would have killed that piece of crap myself to protect you if I had the chance.”
“Because I’m scared. I’m always scared,” she shouted, eliciting a questioning glance from a nurse passing by outside the hall. She dropped her voice back down to its normal volume. “I’ve always been scared. I can’t suddenly just stop because you want me to. It’s not that easy.”
“Yeah, but it also doesn’t need to be this hard, Brenna.” The way his eyes bore into her drilled straight into her heart. His pain echoed loud and clear with every word.
“I know you’ve been hurt so, so badly. What your father did to you was terrible. The worst part, though, is that you refuse to let it be over. You are keeping yourself in that tornado of pain. Nobody else, Brenna. You.”
She gasped, unable to defend herself, unable to argue—because the things he was saying were one hundred percent, undeniably true.
He wiped both hands over his mouth and took a deep breath before continuing. “And you know what else? I don’t think my past actually does matter to you. I could have been an Eagle Scout who spends my weekends reading to cancer patients and you would still find a reason not to trust me. It’s not me you don’t trust, Brenna. It’s yourself. You’re worried about letting someone in so much that you’ve frozen me out. It doesn’t matter that I would do anything to make you happy, that I love you. You made up your mind about me long before we even had the chance to meet.”
The room swayed around Brenna as if she’d suddenly been transported to the deck of a boat. Giant waves of emotion crashed into her. Matt loved her. He’d just said that, but it was clear he was now also saying goodbye.
She didn’t know how to reconcile what she’d learned first from the P.I. and now from Matt. Had she jumped to conclusions and refused to dig deeper, when all her life she’d wished and prayed someone would look at her and know the truth about what was happening at home?
She’d looked hard and long at Matt. She’d seen him, and still she let her fear win out over his kindness, over her love.
And now Matt wept openly, silently. “For weeks, I’ve patiently stayed by your side, giving you the space you needed to realize that not all men are like your father. I thought I’d shown you who I am. The person you’ve spent all this time with is the real me. I’ve been honest with you because it’s what you deserve. I never planned to lead you on only to have you find out later on about my past. I put my past behind me, and that’s what I thought—or at least had hoped—you were trying to do, too.”
Her stomach was in knots as she tried to think of what she could say to fix this, but a part of her still needed to know the truth behind the arson and the death it had caused. She still doubted him, even though he’d proven himself over and over again. What did that say about her? This man loved her, and she couldn’t even offer him the benefit of a doubt when it came to things from that past that didn’t even affect her. She’d always thought of her father as a monster, but perhaps she was one, too.
“As for the fire,” he said as if he knew she needed to hear exactly this thing. “It wasn’t arson. It was an accident, and it wasn’t my fault, either. Remember those unsavory friends I mentioned? The ones I never see anymore? The fire was the last straw. They hadn’t set it on purpose. It was a cigarette that wasn’t snubbed out all the way before making a break for it. I was there, but you know why? I was trying to save some dogs from a fighting ring. I made a delivery there. Yeah, for drugs. But it was the last one I ever made. I saw those dogs ripping each other’s faces off, being forced to fight for evil people’s entertainment, and I just lost it. I snuck back later that week with a friend who’d agreed to help. Another friend followed. She was the one who accidentally set the fire. We saved more than twenty, by the way. A few died, and it’s haunted me every day since, but if we wouldn’t have done something, all of them would have died. Every single one.”
What?
In all the wildest scenarios she could have concocted, she never would have guessed at this one. When she’d made her confession to Liz and Matt in the kitchen, Liz had told her that she wasn’t a murderer, but a hero. That wasn’t true, though. Brenna had been trying to save herself just as much as anyone else. Matt had risked so much to save a group of abused animals. There was nothing selfish about that. He was a true hero, not a fraud masquerading as one like her.
Matt swallowed and rose slowly from his seat, shrugging back into his jacket as his eyes continued to bore into hers. “By the way, the friend I thought could help you deal with that P.I. guy is a detective with Anchorage PD. His name is Hunter Burke, and he’s friends with Liz and Dorian, too, so if you want his help, talk to them because once I walk out that door, I’m not coming back. I hope you and that fear you refuse to let go of will be very happy together, but I can’t stand by and watch you hurt yourself. Not anymore.”
He paused and gave her one last parting glance when he reached the doorway. “Goodbye, Brenna.”
And then he was gone.
Brenna fell back on the bed and covered her face with her hands, but nothing could hide her shame. All he’d ever wanted to do was help her, love her, be there for her. But she’d taken his kindness and thrown it right back in his face. She didn’t deserve a guy like Matt. She didn’t deserve anything other than what she’d already gotten from her father for years.
Maybe it was time for her to just go back to Florida and face everything. She’d believed coming here and away from her past would be a way for her to heal. Instead, she’d ruined somebody else’s life with her drama and ugliness.
Matt had never deserved what she’d done to him, and she’d never deserved his kindness.
The Strongest Love Page 11
