Rock Me Deeper (Licks of Leather #5) - Jenna Jacob Page 0,19
would have starved that winter if not for her.”
“Probably.”
“I sure miss Emma Halloran.”
“Miss her? You mean, she’s…”
“Dead? Yeah, six years ago…heart attack.”
“Damn.” I shook my head.
“She told me about that money order you mailed her after joining the band.”
A rush of embarrassment zipped through me and I dropped my chin. “She did, huh?”
“Yeah. She said you paid her eight thousand dollars for the four chickens you stole. She said if she’d known those birds were worth so much, she’d have sold them all and bought a mansion in Little Rock.”
We both started laughing, and for a precious second it was as if the years we’d been apart vanished.
“I should have moved us into the barn like she’d asked us to,” I murmured.
Caris’s smile faded. A haunted looked filled her eyes before she lowered her lashes and shrugged slightly. “We talked it out together. Remember? We decided we didn’t want her to get into trouble for aiding and abetting us juvenile delinquents.”
“I know, but if we’d moved into the barn, we never would have broken into that house in Lead Hill.”
Caris held up her hand, shot me a look of warning. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Why not?”
“What’s done is done. Leave it alone.” Her tone was colder than a nor’easter in January.
“But I want to know what happened after I”—ran away like a coward—"left.”
“You became a famous rock star and I became a waitress.”
Her flippant response was expected, but the haunted look in her eyes told me she was holding something back…something major.
“I’m talking about the night we went to Lead Hill.”
“We got caught…well, one of us did.”
My stomach knotted and my heart sputtered as a wall of guilt crashed down upon me.
“You mean you didn’t get away? You got caught? That’s why you didn’t come back to the woods that night?”
“Why else wouldn’t I have met you there?”
“I-I thought you were pissed at me for talking you into robbing the place.”
“Oh, I was pissed, all right.” Caris launched from her chair and stormed to the opposite end of the balcony. “In fact, I’ve spent the last fifteen years being pissed as hell at you.”
“I fucked up, angel. I didn’t know you’d gotten caught. I-I’m sorry.” I stood and started toward her, but when Caris turned, the fury etching her face and flames shooting from her dark eyes had me stopping in my tracks.
“You’re sorry?” she screeched. “What exactly are you sorry for, Syd? Are you sorry you turned and ran? Or are you sorry you never looked back?”
“I thought you were behind me.”
“Well, I wasn’t,” she bit out.
“Christ, Caris. I didn’t know.”
“Because you didn’t look.”
“I’m sorry,” I barked, tossing up my hands. “I was a sixteen-year-old kid, scared to death.”
“So was I, Syd, beyond scared when I turned to follow you and that old bastard grabbed my arm.”
No. No. Oh, fuck no.
My blood turned to ice.
“I was more than terrified when he yelled at me and slapped me across the face so hard I landed on the floor.”
The quiver in her voice and the gruesome images spooling through my brain stole the air from my lungs. My heart drummed against my ribs in anger, anguish, and fear.
“Once I was down, he started punching me with his hard fists and kicking me with those damn cowboy boots. Don’t tell me you couldn’t hear me screaming.”
My stomach pitched and bile burned the back of my throat. I’d failed her…failed to protect her after convincing her to go with me to rob the prick.
“No, angel, I didn’t,” I whispered, all but choking on my guilt. “I didn’t hear anything but my feet hitting the pavement and my heartbeat pounding in my ears.”
“Thankfully, I passed out. When I came to, every inch of my body was screaming in pain. A couple of EMTs loaded me onto a gurney and a nasty cop handcuffed me to its frame. Then they shoved me in the back of an ambulance and hauled me to the hospital in Harrison.”
A whole new level of guilt crawled through me like millions of fire ants. I’m sorry lay poised on the tip of my tongue, but those two words weren’t enough. There weren’t words on the planet to absolve me for leaving her to fend off a man four times her size and failing to protect her like I should have.
“The doctors and nurses didn’t have an ounce of sympathy for my broken jaw, punctured lung, or fractured eye socket and ribs. They treated me like a terrorist as