With All My Heart - Emilia Finn Page 0,58
we can keep the secret.”
“That’s what I was doing,” he whispers as I lead him toward the door. “I was saving Iz from the hurts.”
“I know you were, bud. I know what you’ve been doing. But you don’t have to do it anymore. Come on.” I lead him into the sun and catch him when he almost sprawls. “I got you, buddy. Come on.”
It takes us ten minutes to get him into my truck and his seatbelt secured so it doesn’t hurt his aching body. I waited outside barely a minute from when he walked in, and yet, Jon aches in ways that hurt my heart.
Backing away from the trailer park and heading toward town, I say nothing when he curls up on the bench seat and covers his face. He makes it look like the sun is bothering him, but in reality, I know its something else. Something that makes him feel like less.
“You trust me to take care of you, right? Jon?” I tap his leg and grit my teeth when he jumps. “I won’t ever hurt you. You’re coming to live with us now.”
“They’re gonna come back and get us. They’re gonna be extra mad, so they’ll hurt Iz to punish me.”
“No they won’t. Hey?” I grab his face and bring it around. “I swear to you, I’ll make sure they never come back again. Do you think for a sec I’d let anyone hurt Bobby?” With wobbling lips, he shakes his head. “Aiden? Jimmy?” Again, he shakes his head. “What about Mom? You think I’d let anyone hurt her?”
“Definitely not,” he whimpers.
“Exactly.” I put on my brave face and steel my spine, because this boy makes me want to weep for him. “You’re one of us now. You may as well change your name to Kincaid, because I’ll protect you like I protect them.”
Chapter 18
Jon - Now
“He never knew what was truly happening to me in that place.” Sitting in Mom’s living room decades after that day in the trailer park, with my sweet Izzy sitting across from me, and her baby girl – who’s no longer a baby herself – sitting right beside Bryan’s soulmate. Mom watches us all with pride in her eyes, even if that pride is shadowed by grief. “He never knew they sold me, he thought taking a beating was the worst of it, but I’m actually really thankful for that. He would have killed them.” Holding my wife against my previously broken ribs, I press a kiss to the top of her head. “He would have murdered them in cold blood, and I didn’t want that on my hands. So I kept the secret from those I love.”
“But you still hung at the fort,” Izzy says. “And after that, even when I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, you told me if they speak to me, to let you know.”
“I didn’t know that he’d taken care of it for real.” Meeting Mom’s eyes with a smile, I add, “I worried, because having him stand in front of us was protection, right? But then he died, and my shield was gone again.”
“So you worried they’d be back?”
I shrug. “It was a logical worry. I figured everything would go back to how it was just as soon as Dad was buried.”
“I promised you it wouldn’t,” Mom murmurs. Sitting between my nieces, her granddaughters, and snuggling in close, Nelly Kincaid still looks as beautiful and fearsome today as she did back then. I never should have doubted my protection, because Bryan wasn’t even the strongest of the two. “We promised to take care of you, and that job didn’t end just because… well…”
Chapter 19
Bryan – Then
“I don’t think I can do it legally, Bert. But I don’t think they’re smart enough to know any different.” Whipping a yellow envelope from inside our closet and pulling the flap open, I present highly fabricated and super illegal documents that make it look like I’m going to adopt those babies. “We just need the signature, right? It’s enough to make them think we have the control.”
“I dunno, Bry.” Sitting on the end of our bed just days after Jon’s last beating, Nelly sits in tiny sleep shorts, bites her nails, and watches me pull my Padres ball cap on. “I just don’t know what to do. What if they come back for them? You can beat on those jerks as much as you want, but the law is the law.”
“Which is why we need signatures.” Snapping the envelope