Page 80 of Behind the Shadows

“I haven’t seen him, which makes me nervous.” She reached up and removed the scarf from her neck and tossed it on the table.

Guilt swallowed me whole as the outline of my fingers on her throat glared at me. I reminded myself that I’d hurt her, and it was another reason to keep my distance. I couldn’t trust myself not to black out again. I just didn’t understand why it had happened or how to stop it from happening again.

“Something smells good.” She sniffed the air as she walked to the stove. “You cooked me dinner?”

“Yeah. I needed something to keep me busy.”

She turned to me and placed her palm on my chest. “I need to talk to you.”

Her eyes lifted, soft and searching, and she rose onto her toes, closing the space between us. For a split second, I thought she might kiss me—and God help me, I wanted it. Needed it.

But Lily’s face slammed into my mind, her name on Holland’s lips, the puzzle pieces twisting into something I couldn’t untangle. What if I was right? What if Lily wasn’t just my mother but hers too?

The bruises on her throat. My fingerprints. Her red hair glinting the same way Lily’s once had. My gut knotted, nausea and need warring inside me.

At the last second, I pulled back, turning to the stove and stirring the food as if it mattered more than the fire burning between us.

I didn’t dare look at her. I couldn’t. If I did, she’d see everything I was hiding—the guilt, the hunger, and the fear that she might be my sister.

“Same, but you go first.”

She wiped her palms on the thighs of her jeans as if they were sweaty. She was nervous. She should be, I’d tried to kill her, and she had zero reason to trust me.

“I … I visited Lily today.”

Oh. Shit. I already knew she was at my mother’s, but that didn’t mean she’d seen and talked to her.

“When you told me she lived nearby, I had to see the woman who—.” Her words trailed off. “Sold me.”

I stirred the noodles before I drained them over the sink, waiting for her to continue.

“I thought … I wasn’t sure what I was thinking really. I needed to see her, to see her dying. I needed to stand in front of her and prove that she didn’t destroy me.”

I set the pot back on the stove and turned off the heat.

“How did it feel?” Funny how Holland and I had swapped places. That was typically her question to ask patients, not mine. As calm as I appeared, I was barely holding my shit together.

“Good. Bad.” She paused and her gaze dropped to the floor, then returned to me. “I wanted to kill her for what she did to Ally and me, and there’s no telling how many other innocent lives she ruined. Is it wrong that I wanted to kill her? Actually, I showed up with the intention of doing just that. I even aimed my gun at her.”

A thousand voices in my head cheered for Holland. “I wish you had pulled the trigger.”

Holland shifted from one foot to the other while playing with the diamond pendant on her necklace.

“Have you thought about killing her after what she did to you? It would make sense if you had. No judgment over here.”

I chuckled. “So many times. I can’t … even after all the fucked-up shit she’s done, I can’t cross that line. Plus, it would put her out of her misery, and I would rather see her suffer until the day she dies and rots in hell.”

“What stops you? Is it because she’s a woman, or because she’s your mother?”

I chewed on her question for a moment. I hadn’t given much thought to it other than I couldn’t have her blood on my hands.

“Both. A part of me doesn’t even connect with what happened all those years ago when I killed that girl. Whateverreally happened, it was driven from a different place inside me. A shadow self that I don’t know any more. Killing monsters is my gig. Not women.”

Holland closed the gap between us, the light scent of her flowery perfume teasing my senses and shooting straight to my cock. I wanted to wrap her in my arms and kiss her, but I couldn’t.

“She’s a monster, Kip. There wouldn’t be any shame in ending her. You even know how to destroy the evidence.” Her tone was soft but sincere, as if she was giving me permission to do the one thing that I’d wrestled with for years. Killing my own mother.

Holland pursed her lips into a thin line. “When I talked to her, she admitted hurting you. She has no remorse for what she did to either of us. I don’t think she’s capable of feelings, honestly. I actually went to see her for another reason, to find out what else she did to you.”