Page 137 of Dangerous Men

She cuts me off with a fierce glare. “Yes or no, Alec. Have you ever killed someone?”

I don’t answer right away. I want to lie. I want to twist the truth until it’s more palatable. Something I think she can handle. But I promised her.

Slowly, oh so slowly, I nod.

“Yes.” The words are heavy. Weighed down by years of difficult choices. “I’ve killed people.”

Maybe honesty is just as damning as deception. Sydney flinches at my words, hugging herself tighter, and I think this is it—this is how I lose her. This is how I break the most precious thing in my life.

But staring at her now, at the blood on her knuckles, I can’t help but remember the first time I saw her, my woman in red. How my first impression of her was so wrong. Sydney is not the meek, breakable thing she pretends to be.

I’m not the only one here who’s lying.

“Does that bother you?” I ask, straightening from the wall and moving closer to her.

“Yes!” She hisses the word when she says it, gripping herself tighter. “Of course that bothers me!”

I step closer. She’s angry. So angry.

But it’s not all directed at me. And under that anger… isguilt.

There are marks on her arms from where she’s holding herself, the flesh around her fingers white with the force of it. And there’s a flicker of emotion in her eyes I recognize.

When I’m close enough to touch her, I reach out to cup her face. She doesn’t flinch.

“You wanted honesty, Sydney,” I murmur. “Do me the courtesy of granting me the same. Does it really bother you?”

Sydney blinks.

“I…” Her gaze drops.

“Honesty, Red.” I remind her, my thumb tracing her cheek.

“It should!” The words burst out of her. She takes a gasping breath. “It has to, doesn’t it? It has to bother me. Because… because it makes you evil. People who hurt others, they… they’re evil.”

But she’s not arguing with me. She’s arguing with herself.

“I don’t want that sort of violence in my life, Alec,” Sydney tells me, shaking her head. “I promised myself that?—”

She stops, snapping her mouth closed.

“What did you promise yourself, darling?” I ask.

“I promised myself I wouldn’t be that person.” She won’tlook at me when she says it. “That I wouldn’t be that violent person anymore.”

When she finally meets my gaze, her eyes are devastatingly sad.

“I’m the reason my parents are dead. Did you know that?” she asks. “If I hadn’t gotten in yet another fight at school. If they hadn’t been forced to come pick me up. If I hadn’t decided to scream at them in the car, tell them Ihatethem? They would still be alive. But I couldn’t keep from escalating an already bad situation because of this…rage I have inside me. And it cost meeverything.”

I open my mouth to argue. “Sweetheart?—”

“If you say it wasn’t my fault, I will leave right now, and you will never see me again,” Sydney warns.

I close my mouth and say nothing. But her pain is a palpable thing between us, tugging at my heart.

She pauses to take a breath. “I promised myself that I would never be that person again. And then Chase… with Chase, I could finally prove that I wasn’t that person anymore. I couldfitwith someone. And even when things got bad with him, Iprovedthat I had control over my anger. That I didn’t have to fight back.”

“Sydney, I—” My thumb strokes her cheek again, but Sydney jerks away from me. She takes a few steps away, putting distance between us, and turning her back on me.