Rock Me Faster (Licks of Leather #4) - Jenna Jacob Page 0,86

lips.

“As she grabbed it, I cinched her wrist and told her to open her hand. Lily refused and started slapping my arm, screaming for me to let her go. I lost my shit. I started yelling at her, demanding to know how long she’d been using again. She told me she’d never stopped. I was so shocked that she’d played me, I took my eyes off the road. It was only for a second, but…”

I paused and willed down the bile rising in the back of my throat.

“A panel van had broken down on the highway. It was stalled out in the middle of my lane. I didn’t even see it until I was right on top of it. I tried to swerve, but it was too late. The car pretty much disintegrated all around me, and though I had some cuts on my face and hands, I was relatively unscathed. Lily wasn’t so lucky. The passenger side of the car took the full force of the crash. She was messed up, badly…bleeding everywhere…”

I paused as the sounds, smells, and sights of the nightmare slammed through my brain. My stomach and heart clutched in tandem.

“She was still alive when I dragged her onto my lap and cradled her in my arms. She kept begging me… Please, Ross. Let me explain. Lily was lying there, dying in my arms, and all she wanted to do was try and make me understand. But I couldn’t…couldn’t wrap my brain around her choosing drugs over me. I knew in my gut she wasn’t going to make it, so I lied. I lied and told her it was okay. Told her I wasn’t mad. The last word she ever spoke…was a whispered, sorry.”

I swiped at my tears, lowered my chin, and stared at the carpet while Harmony sniffed and stroked my back.

“It wasn’t your—”

“Don’t,” I growled. “I killed her.”

“It was an accident, Ross.”

I couldn’t play the coward any longer. Lifting my head, more tears slid down my face, while the scalding pain that had never left my soul blazed even brighter.

“I didn’t find out until after the autopsy…” As a wall of agony crashed down over me, my voice cracked beneath the wretched strain. “I didn’t just kill Lily…I killed our child, too.”

Turning away, I let the coward win out again and dropped my chin…body shaking with silent sobs.

“Lily was pregnant?”

“Seven weeks,” I whispered, struggling to regain control of myself.

“Oh, god, Ross. No.” The horror dripping off Harmony’s words only confirmed what I’d known for years…I was an unforgivable monster.

Swallowing down the wail of guilt and regret choking the air from my lungs, I fought the urge to stop the story there. But Harmony deserved to know everything. Every last dirty detail.

“I called Quinn before the cops and paramedics even reached the scene. He contacted his lawyer, Reed, who told me not to say anything. That he’d meet me at the hospital in Rockford.” I scoffed and shook my head. “Reed has a lot of friends in the state. He assured me that friends take care of friends.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means the police report, the one that states Lily was alone in the car, driving under the influence of cocaine, is sealed and can’t ever be opened again.”

“How can they do that?”

“If there’s a guarantee some important person will be reelected and enough money and influence are contributed to that campaign, anything is possible. I bought their silence to protect my sorry ass,” I confessed quietly.

Harmony didn’t say anything. What was there to say? I’d killed my child, my girlfriend, and paid a shitload of money to keep my sins a secret.

“Reed made up some story about me tripping through a plate-glass window at the hospital. After they stitched me up, he drove me home. He assured me that everything…the police reports, coroner’s reports, toxicology, all of it, would never see the light of day. His friends had erased me from the scene of the accident, whipped up some crazy story about Lily borrowing my car, then sealed up every lie and locked them away. But the one thing none of them could erase or magically make disappear was my guilt. Nothing could. So, one day I decided to let cocaine do it for me. I figured since it had helped Lily live a happy, carefree life…maybe it would do the same for me. It didn’t. It destroyed me even more.”

“I’m sorry, Ross. What happened to Lily was horrible. But I don’t understand why