Cleaning the blood of a dead man who’d pulled a knife on you off your grandmother’s wood floors had never been on my list of things to do before. Doing it while trying not to show fear to the friend of your ex who’d killed the man was about as bad as it sounded. And exhausting. The alternate reality I’d found myself in really sucked except for the fact that Bishop would be coming back to see me soon. Or at least, I hoped he would. God, if he didn’t—

“Another cup of tea? You’re going to float away from us.” Deacon—handsome, charming, and way too smooth for the likes of Justice—shot me a teasing grin across the kitchen table. I didn’t return it.

“Tea calms me.”

And it did usually, but not then. I’d been in the kitchen since we finished bleaching the floor. I’d made my first cup while Deacon had been outside, burning our bloody clothes and towels. As the hours had passed and Bishop hadn’t returned, I’d kept drinking. I was on cup number eight. Maybe nine.

I was also out of my favorite tea.

I clung to that last mug, almost afraid to take a sip. Not wanting the comfort it offered me to end. I’d always liked minty teas. They had been a link to Bishop. He’d been chewing spearmint gum the day I met him, had been doing it again the first time he’d kissed me. When I left him, I couldn’t listen to the music that reminded me of us or watch the movies and TV programs we’d watched together. But the spearmint…the warmth inside of me as I drank the tea that tasted like him…that stayed. It became a constant in my life. A little bit of Bishop with me no matter where I went. And it was about to end for this trip because Bishop might not ever want to talk to me again.

The thought gutted me, left me unable to think or do or pay attention to anything as the tea in the mug grew cold. As Deacon came and went. As the light began to peek over the mountains and brighten the morning sky.

As Bishop suddenly appeared in the entryway to the kitchen.

Big and tall, with rough edges that counteracted Deacon’s smooth ones, Bishop stole all the air from the room before breathing it back in. Something like calm settled over me as I sat there under his steely gaze. Something familiar and comfortable. Something I would hate to give up if he didn’t forgive me for what I knew I finally had to tell him.

“I know that had to be scary,” he said, looking almost stuck. As if I would kick him out instead of invite him in. I did that to him—made him doubt. That was all on me.

I hated myself sometimes. “It was very scary.”

He nodded, hanging on to the wall. Bracing himself as the muscles in his biceps bulged. He stood and he blocked the door and he stared. And he dropped words like bombs in the quiet of the kitchen.

“I don’t like killing.”

My stomach knotted up as I took a sip of the too-cool tea to grab hold of one last little bit of calm before I dove in.

“Yeah, well—you killed for self-defense.” I set the mug down, my hand already shaking. “I don’t have the same excuse.”

His brows dropped, and his shoulders relaxed. Not a ton, but enough. He was with me. Paying attention. “What do you mean?”

And there it was. My opening…my chance to lay everything out. To tell him the truth and deal with the repercussions of it. To atone for my sins. The words were hard to find after so many years of hiding them, though. Almost impossible. At least at first.

“Anabeth?”

Sink or swim time.

“Finn started using drugs right after Thanksgiving of our senior year. At least, that’s when I knew he was using.” A hard, sharp pang of guilt washed over me at the shock on his face. They hadn’t known—from what I’d found out later, Finn hadn’t told his family he had a problem until much later. Months. By then…

“Okay.” Bishop inched closer, coming to sit down in a chair beside me. Keeping his distance, though. The space between us yawned, and his eyes went flat and wary. “We didn’t find out until late that summer.”

“I know.”

“You were gone by then.”

“I kept in touch with a few people, and Finn…wrote me letters.”

Bishop nodded, looking so damn hurt. A man reliving the time he’d spent sliding into hell. By then, he’d tracked me down in Vegas. Had come to find out why I’d left him. I’d slammed the door in his face, both literally and figuratively.

And that wasn’t the worst of it.

“You came home for spring break that year,” I said, letting myself remember. For once allowing the happiness to creep through the sad. “You told me you wanted to marry me.”

He clenched his hand into a fist. Pulling himself away even more. “I did.”

It was time. But even as I felt sure of that, as I stared down at the old tabletop, unable to look him in the face for this one, the words were just so hard to say.

My voice was rough when I said, “We made a baby that week.”

I felt more than saw him recoil, something that forced my eyes to his even as they burned with the tears I did my best to hold back. The look on his face, the surprise. The pain. It half killed me, so I rushed on.

“I didn’t find out… I wouldn’t have kept it a secret, but by the time I knew…”

“You were gone.” Hard and angry, his words hit me like a physical blow. Knocking me back in my chair. So wrong and yet not harsh enough. Not for what I’d let happen. For what I’d done.

“No,” I said, breathing deep and fighting to keep the sick from rising in my throat. “By the time I knew, I’d already killed her.”

Bishop lurched to his feet, his chair flying across the room as he stumbled back. “You had an abortion without talking to me?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head and closing my eyes against what I knew was coming. What I knew had to be told. “I wouldn’t have done that.”

What I’d done hadn’t been much better.

“Then what, Anabeth?” Bishop sounded almost crazed. Pissed off and likely unsure where to focus that rage. “You tell me you were pregnant with my child and you killed it… What the fuck happened? What was so bad that you had to run away from me and never talk to me about it?”

“Finn was using—”

“I know that,” he roared.

I looked up, meeting his gaze. Needing to have his full attention for my confession. “And so was I.”

Bishop froze, staring at me with his mouth hanging open. Every inch of him tense but restrained. On a leash. “You what?”

There was no prettying up this part. “It wasn’t as often or as much, but I…I hung out with him a lot. We used sometimes. It made me feel better when I was missing you.”

“So this is my fault.”

“No, it’s fully mine. But I want you to understand. I hated being here without you. I never tried to hold you back, though. I didn’t want to get in your way. So I waited, and I filled my time with what I could to keep me sane.”

He paced, his steps fast and strong. His path too short for such a wide stride. Like some sort of caged animal. “How long?”

The drugs. Of course he’d want to know more about the drugs.

“Almost a year before I got clean. Miss’ friend that took me in—he wouldn’t work with me if I was high, and I wanted to perform, so I stopped. Went to rehab. Did all the things he told me I had to do, all the things Miss wanted me to do. Except one. I didn’t come back here. I couldn’t face any of you after what happened.”

Bishop sat back down, heavy. Tired. Still keeping so much distance between us. A distance that left me trembling for his touch.

“Jesus, Anabeth. I would have helped you.”

“I know that. But by then…the guilt consumed me. I was so ashamed of what I’d done. What I’d lost for us.” I shook my head, wiping away the cold, wet trails under my eyes. The tears I had no right to cry. “I couldn’t face you.”

He inched closer, dragging his chair around the side of the table. Making my heart skip a beat. “How did you lose the baby?”

Oh God. The one confession I hated to make above all others. The memory that ate at me every day, that never let me rest, that gave me nightmares. The decision that had almost killed me. But it was time—he deserved the truth. The whole story, even the ugliest parts.

“The old barn…the meth lab you burned down? It’s been there for a long time. Finn found it one summer, and we sort of made it our secret place. He and I used to hide out down there senior year, getting high and hanging around like it was some sort of clubhouse.” A clubhouse with lighters and cigarette papers, needles and rubber tubing. All the things we needed to chase that euphoria we couldn’t find any other way. At least, until I took it too far. “One day, Finn got this new meth—said it was too good to smoke and that we had to inject it. So I did. I never even questioned him.”

“You overdosed?”

If only. “No. I had a seizure, and my heart stopped beating. Technically, I died.”

Bishop jerked back, fists raised as if to throw a punch. He closed his eyes, whispering a rough, “Jesus, Anabeth,” before shaking his head.

Every inch of me hurt, my body trembling and cold. Not yet, I told myself. You can break when you’re done, but not yet.

“I’m thankful that Finn got me help. To this day, I don’t know how I made it, but I did. I woke up in a hospital bed and thought I was so lucky, that I’d finally reached the bottom and could use that to make a fresh start. I could get clean and do all the right things again. And I had plans to tell you about the drugs and the seizure—I really did. But after I was stabilized and aware of what was going on, this doctor came in looking so angry. He stood there at the end of my bed and berated me for being so irresponsible. He told me how I’d been pregnant, but that I wasn’t anymore. That I’d lost the baby when I’d…”

I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t admit even to him that my drug use had cost us our child’s life. All I could do was sit and sob for everything that one decision had cost me. My future, my family, my child, Bishop—everything. The guilt swamped me, left me drowning in a sea of emotions too rough to traverse. Too cold to survive. And Bishop…if he walked away as I’d always assumed he would, if he now saw me as something wretched and cruel, he would take my heart with him. Fully and completely. There would be no more future, no more chances, no more possibilities. There would be no more hope in my world.

But Bishop didn’t leave. He didn’t make a sound either. He sat and he stared at me and he stayed so still, I almost didn’t know what to do.

And he made me scream when he wrapped his arms around me and lifted me into his lap.