Page 20 of Chasing Shelter (Sparrow Falls #5)

ELLIE

My hands trembled at my sides. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t sad. I was finally feeling what I should’ve felt all along. Angry.

At my mom. My dad. Bradley. Even Linc. They’d all lied. Some because they thought they were protecting me. Some because they wanted to manipulate me. But all thought it would work because I was weak.

And I was done with that.

“Ellie,” Trace began.

“Don’t,” I clipped. I hated the softness in his voice, as if he, too, thought I was some wounded animal.

Trace was quiet for a moment before he spoke, saying words I never could’ve predicted. “He’s my birth father. He’s been in jail for twenty-four years, and I’m the one who put him there.”

Everything in me stilled and got so quiet I could feel each beat of my heart, the two-part thump at elevated speeds. “Why?”

“He killed my mom.” There was no emotion in Trace’s voice as he pulled into my driveway, no hint of anything as he stared straight ahead, the engine still running. “He didn’t pull a trigger or cut off the air from her lungs, but he killed her just the same.”

My heart rate sped up, each beat like butterfly wings against my ribs. “I’m so sorry.” I let out a breath and then gave him another piece of my truth. “I know what that’s like.” I knew it all too well. Just one more lie I’d lived with for most of my life.

Trace turned, the movement slow, his gaze searching. “You do?”

“I do.”

He searched my eyes for answers or comfort; I wasn’t sure which.

But whatever he saw there made him continue to speak.

“Jasper was mixed up with drugs. A group of guys that were seriously bad news. He got my mom hooked. I had to watch her fall deeper and deeper into that addiction. One night, he shot her up, cackling as she climbed onto the roof of our cabin, saying she could fly.”

A sick feeling swept through me as dread mounted, but I didn’t look away. I could be in the awfulness with Trace so he wasn’t alone with the truth.

“She jumped,” Trace rasped. “She wasn’t trying to end her life, just didn’t know reality anymore. My dad freaked. Thought he could bury her on our property, and no one would know. Told me if I spoke a word about it, I’d go to jail right along with him.”

An image of little-boy Trace filled my mind. Alone and terrified, grief-stricken. I knew how that was. How it felt like everything and everyone in the world was against you.

“You told someone anyway,” I surmised. Even if Trace hadn’t said that he’d sent his father to prison, I would’ve known. Because that was simply who he was. He didn’t stand for things that were wrong, and he’d do whatever he could to make them right.

Trace’s jaw worked back and forth. “Went to school the next day and told my principal. Sheriff’s department called Child Protective Services. Told them all where he’d buried her and what had been going on at home.”

“And he went to prison.”

Trace nodded slowly, his fingers following invisible lines on his uniform pants. “Got eight years for manslaughter, concealment of death, and drug possession.”

I frowned, doing the math in my head. “Shouldn’t he have been out by now?”

“Killed another inmate and attacked a guard his second year in.”

My mouth went dry as I thought about my own father currently sitting in a jail cell.

I knew now what he was capable of, but it had always been hidden.

Carefully constructed lies and facades of pleasantness.

Trace’s father’s violence was in your face, the monster that never hid in the shadows. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

“And now he’s…what? Threatening you?” Anger surged, boiling over and spreading through each and every vein.

“In not so many words. Made sure I knew that he saw me with you, with Keely. Looking for targets around me.”

That boiling turned to pure fire. “I’m not a target. And I hope he comes for me. I’ll break his balls and have him singing soprano until the cops get there.”

Trace’s lips gave the barest twitch. “Break his balls, huh?”

“Damn straight.”

Any hint of a smile slid from his face. “If you see Jasper, you get somewhere public and call me. You do not engage. Promise me.”

It was the panic in Trace’s final words that had me agreeing. “Okay. But he’s probably just trying to make you worry.”

Trace leaned back against the headrest. “I wish I could be sure of that.”

Unease slid through me like oil through water. “What about Keely?”

A muscle in Trace’s cheek fluttered. “I talked to her mom and the school. We’ll all keep a close eye.”

God, I wanted to punch Trace’s dad. Wanted to do worse. Trace was the last person who deserved this, not when he did so much for others—his family, especially.

He reached out, closing his fingers around the steering wheel until his knuckles bleached white. “I’ve worked so hard to keep Keely safe. I’d give anything to make sure she stays that way. Happy, healthy, secure. But I keep failing.”

I whirled in his direction, startling Gremlin in my lap. “The hell, you do.”

Trace’s eyes widened slightly at the fervor in my words.

I pinned him with a hard stare. “We don’t always get to choose our pasts. We definitely don’t get to choose what we’re born into. But you’ve created such good out of your heartache. You’re an amazing father, brother, and son. An incredible cop.”

“Sheriff.”

“Whatever. You made good out of the bad, beauty out of the ugliness. I would be proud as hell if I could do that.”

Trace stared at me for a long time. “What ugliness are you trying to erase?”

I let out a long breath. Thinking about sharing the truth with Trace was akin to standing naked on the lawn and letting the world see every scar and blemish. But he deserved it.

“My mom died when I was six. Dad said it was a car accident. Later, I found out she’d been drinking.”

“I’m sorry, Ellie?—”

“That wasn’t the whole story. No one told me the truth.

Not my dad. Not Linc, not until recently.

” My fingers dug into the seat cushion. “My dad terrorized her. Belittled her. Stole her life, piece by piece, until she didn’t want to live anymore.

There were no skid marks at the scene. No signs that she tried to brake at all.

She floored it and aimed straight for the bridge railing. ”

“Ellie…”

My eyes burned as I fought back tears. “I miss her, but I’m so mad at her. And worse…I’m just like her.”

Trace reared back. “Excuse me?”

I turned to face him, giving him my greatest shame. “I stayed in situations I shouldn’t have. Just for a flicker of affection and acceptance. And I let myself swallow all their lies because it was easier than looking for the truth. Maybe if I hadn’t, none of this would’ve gone as far as it did. ”

Trace’s expression turned as hard as granite. “You wanted your family’s love, and that makes you a monster?”

“The day our mom died, Linc and I promised we’d never be like them. And that was exactly what I became.”

“Bullshit,” he spat.

“You cursed, Chief.”

“Don’t give a damn.”

“That’s number two.”

He pinned me with a hard glare. “You’re nothing like them. You may have the good parts of your mom, but your dad? You think he’d be crawling around on dirty pavement trying to save an abandoned dog?”

The image was so opposed to anything my father would deign to do that I almost laughed.

“Didn’t think so,” Trace said. “You think your dad would give a little girl the bracelet off her wrist just to make her feel accepted, special?”

My dad gave nothing unless it benefitted him in the long run.

“Taking that silence as a no, too,” Trace went on. “And I sure as hell don’t think he’d jump in to help Thea tackle tables when she was swamped when he didn’t even work there.” Trace arched a brow. “Yeah, I heard about that.”

I pressed my lips into a hard line.

“You’re nothing like him. Wouldn’t be surprised if you sprang from nothing but magic and fairy dust. Because that’s what you leave in your wake.”

“Oh.” My lips formed the shape right along with the word.

“Yeah, oh . And if you keep talking down about yourself, you and I are gonna have problems.”

My mouth curved the barest amount. “That so?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Chief.”

“Good.”

I couldn’t hold back the full grin that formed. “Only you could say good like you’re still pissed off.”

Trace shook his head. “No one can piss me off quicker than you. ”

“I’m taking that as a compliment.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I still am,” I said, sliding out of the SUV.

“Go inside. You’re grounded.”

I couldn’t help but laugh then. It was the last sound I thought I’d make after sharing what I felt was my shame. But Trace gave it to me anyway.