don’t really know who the emotion is for, though—him or me. “I killed Charlie. There’s no way to sugarcoat that. I’m going to pay for that mistake for the rest of my life.”
“But he hurt you. He hurt you badly. All you did was protect yourself.”
“One bullet was for protection. The other four . . . not so much.”
“No, I don’t buy it. I know you think the judge believed that and you’ve convinced yourself of it too, but it’s not true. It doesn’t matter how much training you’ve had, Toni.” He moves some hair off my forehead and continues. “You know that when you’re in a situation like that, where stress levels are maxed out, you don’t have the presence of mind to say, ‘Oh, one bullet is all I need. There you go. Bang.’ All you know is you’ve got a threat coming at you and you need to end that threat. You need to put a stop to it.”
“I wish it were that simple.”
“It is that simple. Look at all of the police shootings we’ve had in the city over the past five years. I’ve read the reports—have you?” He waits for me to shake my head no before continuing. “In every single case, the police officers, arguably the most well-trained individuals in the use of firearms under stress, used more than one bullet to subdue their suspects.”
“Because they were shooting from far away, probably. They weren’t sure they hit the suspect, so they had to keep going.” I can’t look Lucky in the eye anymore so I stare at his chin. “Charlie was shot from practically point-blank range.”
“No, that’s not true. In several of the cases that I read, the officers were within five feet of the suspects. No one ever uses just one bullet. There’s too much adrenaline flowing and too much at stake.”
Why was he reading those reports? I don’t remember anything like that being part of a case we’ve worked on. Did he do it for me? A little piece of me really wants to believe what he’s saying, but I know what he’s doing; he’s just trying to make me feel better about the horrible thing that I did.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” And I’m not in the mood to do what we were going to do, either. The warmth hasn’t returned to the space between us. Now I just feel empty of emotion. So much for shaved legs.
He runs his hand up and down my arm and then pulls me into him, hugging me close. “I’m sorry I brought this stuff up. Talk about a mood killer.”
I pull away and roll over, turning my back to him. I hate feeling vulnerable, but that’s exactly where I find myself right now. “Could you just . . . hold me tonight?”
“Of course,” he says, moving closer. “I’d love to.”
Memories of Charlie intermingle with thoughts of Lucky, our past and the future we might have. I’m obviously deeply scarred from my last relationship and the way I handled it. I feel like I can’t move forward until I fix what’s in the past, but I also know it’s impossible to undo what I’ve done. Spin, spin, spin, round and round my thoughts whirl . . . If only there was a way to fix things . . .
A lightbulb goes on in my brain, and the clarity it brings is immediate. It hits me like a bolt of lightning, right in the center of my brain. I know what my problem is now and why everything in my life feels so doomed and bound to be awful, no matter what I do to try to fix it. This thing with Charlie is like an open wound for a reason. I can’t believe I didn’t figure this out sooner. This is why I felt the need to drunk-dial a guy who tried to kidnap a friend of mine to get to me. Even drunk off my ass, I knew what my heart needs. It needs closure.
I can’t undo the things I’ve done, and I’ll never not regret those things or not feel terribly guilty for what I did to Charlie, but maybe if I could find a way to put some things behind me, I could move on with Lucky and the babies with light in my world and not all this overwhelming darkness that threatens to take over all the time.
The sparkle of hope that lights up my heart is like