Page 40 of Cruel Debts (Killers of Port Wylde #4)

THIRTY-FIVE

TRINITY

Hawke wasn't normally nice to me. So repaying him for the kindness and pity he showed me, and for teaching me how to make my own food without burning it, was a no-brainer. But I couldn't leave the asylum, I couldn't shop online, and I couldn't make him food that he couldn't make himself.

I could clean, though. And his room had always been the messiest place in the world. He was a tad lazy with his organization. I could tidy his space up for him, give his mind some peace.

So that's what I did.

I swept the floor. I mopped. I washed up his bathroom counter, cleaned his mirror. I tossed his laundry in the empty basket in the corner. And then I moved to make his bed.

And discovered something I shouldn't have.

The diary—it was obviously a diary, from the feel of it—was old, weathered, and beaten to shit, but the seam held, and the pages were complete and intact.

I knew damn well I shouldn't open the thing.

I knew I shouldn't read anything in this book.

It wasn't mine. I had no business inserting my nose in Hawke's personal life.

And then I saw the first page, and the name on it, and gasped.

Millie Hawke.

And below it, an address I recognized as Hawke's old street in Covenant Hollow.

Was this his mother's diary? He didn't have a sister, so it couldn't be that. It had to be his mother's.

"I really shouldn't do this," I said aloud, but my curiosity got the better of me. I opened the next page, and my heart sank.

Thomas hit me again today.

I keep reminding myself that it's not my fault, and the thoughts of leaving rise up again. But then I think of the kid, and I know I can't.

I can't leave him here alone. Not with him.

But I can't support him on my own.

As long as he doesn't hit our son, it'll be okay. I can bear it for him. I'll be fine.

When he's grown, and he's out on his own, I'll walk away from this.

The man I used to love might still be in there somewhere, but I can't spend the rest of my life looking for him.

I flipped through more pages of the same, until about halfway through, a particular page stuck out, not because of what was written on it, but what wasn't.

Words. There were none.

But there was a single, solid reddish-brown splotch in the center of the page, and what looked like tear marks around it.

Suicide attempt.

Had to be. The red splotch looked like a hesitation cut in action. The tears, evidence of the anguish that came from a failed attempt or lack of follow-through.

Once upon a time, I knew that feeling well. Thankfully, I found help. Or a coping mechanism, at least.

This felt too personal. I had no business whatsoever reading the pages of personal anguish Hawke's mother went through as she struggled to raise a young man who wouldn't turn out like his father.

I closed the book with a sigh and took a step forward to put it back where I found it?—

"What are you doing with my mother's diary?"

Time stood still. I knew nothing good would come from poking my nose in this shit. And here I was, with my pants around my proverbial ankles, with the evidence of my transgression in my hands as Hawke stared at me from the doorway with a scowl heavier than a metric ton on his face.

"I can explain," I started, but he wasn't having it. In a flash, he was at my side, yanking the book out of my hands without consideration for being gentle. I couldn't fault him for it.

Something like that was sacred. And to have someone you didn't like in your space, touching things that they didn't have any business touching?—

"Get out."

"Hawke, I was just trying to clean up to thank you for?—"

"Get the fuck out of my room, Trinity."

"I swear I didn't mean to find it, and I just?—"

He whirled on me, the diary in his hand, wagging it at me like it was a rolled-up newspaper and I was a bad puppy who'd piddled on the carpet.

"You didn't mean to find it, huh? You just what, Trinity?

You just couldn't help yourself? You couldn't just put it back and leave well enough alone?

You wanted to see if it was mine? You needed to break down one more wall I put up for a reason and stick your nose where it didn't belong? What?"

I took a step back, not afraid, but regretful that I'd stepped in here uninvited. "Hawke, I'm sorry?—"

"Oh, you're sorry? Sorry for what? That you invaded my space without asking? That you overstepped yourself and pissed me off? Or sorry you got caught?"

"That's unfair," I mumbled, but he had a point. I was all those things. If I had been just a little quicker, we could have avoided this whole situation. I could have put it away and pretended I'd never seen it. And he wouldn't be mad anymore. He'd never know what I saw or what I didn't.

Now he did. Or he suspected.

"I didn't read a lot?—"

"Just the parts that matter?" He flipped the pages open, tears beading in his eyes as he forced the pages open and shoved them at me.

"Did you read this one, where she talked about how the bruises my dad left resembled the clouds she and I looked at while we were at the park?

" He flipped some more, stopping on a page with only a few words on it.

"Or the one where she couldn't write because he broke her hand and she had to switch to her other hand to document it for herself?

To remember what he'd done." He flipped further, and I sobbed alongside him as his voice broke when he turned the book around to show me the bloodstained page.

"Do you wanna know what happened here, Trinity? Or has your curiosity been satisfied?"

He shoved the book against my chest, and I grabbed it as his hands fell away, abandoning it to me.

I froze in place, confused and a little scared. "Hawke?"

"If it's so important for you to be in my business, why don't you just take it and read my whole life story from my mother's point of view?"

He refused to look at me. I couldn't blame him. After all, this was a boundary I should have never been anywhere near. And not only had I crossed it, but I stomped all over it in the process.

I set the book on the end of his bed and then left as quietly as I came, carefully closing his door behind me. I couldn't hear a single sound as I took a step away from the door and waited.

Until something that sounded suspiciously like an old book hit the other side of it, accompanied by a rage-filled, broken howl.