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Chapter Twenty-Four

Tessa

I immediately turn away from the spray and start clawing at my face, trying to get rid of the pungent smell filling my nostrils again.

“Tess?”

My knees buckle as I curl into a ball.

“He tried to kill me,” I whisper brokenly. “He killed Ciaran, and he killed my mother.”

“Aw, fuck.” Nathan squats beside me and gently wraps his arm around my midriff, pushing the hair out of my eyes, the steam of the shower swirling in the enclosed stall. “What do you remember?”

I cover my head with my arms, unable to stop the vicious memories rushing against me like a flock of angry birds. Everything seems to rush out at me, even memories that I seemed to have repressed from over a decade.

Situations that didn’t add up but I dismissed at the time because I desperately needed to believe that we were a normal family.

“He threw a glass of water right in my face, and after that, I only had the strength to do what he suggested. All this time, he’s been wanting to kill me, Nathan. He saw us together at the Citrus Fest years ago and has been wanting to kill me since then. All those invites to Thanksgiving, to Blackwell Orchard events…”

They weren’t so he could try to reconnect with me like I believed—well, more like hoped.

“Sonofabitch,” Nathan curses.

“All those years, I stayed away because of what you said to me on the pier.”

I was so desperate for my dad's love, even after I stopped talking to him.

If Nathan hadn’t harshly told me to leave and not come back, if I hadn’t turned my anger and humiliation into a singular drive to leave my past behind and succeed, John would have sucked me back into his toxicity and killed me ages ago.

I turn to Nathan and throw myself in his arms. He catches me as I break down into great, wracking sobs.

“You saved me, Nathan,” I say over and over.