The Naughty List Bundle - Kylie Adams [226]
“Don’t make me turn you over my knee when you’re already upset.” Gabe scooted into bed beside her and manfully ignored the way she tried to inch away from him. He caught her chin and turned her face, then gently stroked her with the damp washcloth. “You have no reason to be sorry, Lizzy. Everyone has bad dreams every now and again.”
A long silence threatened to break him and then she muttered, “It wasn’t a dream.”
Gabe propped his back against the headboard and handed the washcloth to Lizzy. She pressed it over her swollen eyes. Utilizing every ounce of patience he possessed, Gabe waited.
Finally she said, “I’m a little embarrassed.”
“Please don’t be.” He kept his voice soft but firm. “I’m so glad I was here with you.” His arm slipped around her shoulders and she didn’t fight him as he pulled her close. “I care about you, Lizzy. Will you believe that?”
She nodded, but said, “I don’t know.”
Rubbing his hand up and down her bare arm, he asked, “Is it so strange for someone to care about you, sweetheart?”
“Someone like you, yes.”
“What about someone not like me?”
She went still. “There’s…things about me you don’t know.”
Gabe tightened his hold, anticipating her reaction. “You mean the awful way your mother died?”
As he’d predicted, she jerked and almost got away from him. “What do you know about that?”
“I read the articles you saved.”
“How dare you!” She struggled against him, but Gabe held her tight.
“Quit fighting me, honey. I’m not letting you go.” Probably not ever. It was several seconds before she went rigid against him. Gabe could feel her hurt, her anger. But he wanted to get past it, and the only way he saw to do that was to force his way. He spread his fingers across the back of her head and kept her pressed to his shoulder. “That’s why you’re so all-fired determined to understand this nonsense about heroism, right?”
She shuddered, and another choking sob escaped her before she caught herself. “You…you can’t understand. You aren’t like me. You saw a way to help and you instinctively acted. I…I let my mother die.” Her hands curled into his shoulders, her nails biting, but Gabe would have gladly accepted any pain to help her. “Oh, God. I let her die.”
Unable to bear it, Gabe pressed his face into her neck and rocked her while she continued talking.
“We were in a car wreck. I…I was changing the radio station trying to find a song Mom and I could sing to. We did that all the time, playing around, just having fun. It was raining and dark. Mom told me to turn the radio down, and I started to, but then a semi came around the corner and Mom had to swerve…”
Her voice had an eerie, faraway quality to it. Gabe wondered how many times, and to how many people, she’d given this guilty admission. The thought of her as a twelve-year-old child, awkward and shy, suffering what no child should ever suffer, made him desperate with the need to fix things that were years too distant to repair.
“The car went off the road and hit a tree. Mom’s door was smashed shut, the windshield broken. She was…bleeding. I thought she was dead and I just screamed and got out of the car and crouched down on the gravel and the mud, waiting and numb. Too stupid to do what I should have done.”
“Oh, Lizzy.” Gabe kissed her temple, her ear. He murmured inanities, but she didn’t seem to hear him.
“The nearest telephone was only two miles away. If…if I’d gone for help…she’d have lived if only I hadn’t frozen, if I hadn’t become a useless lump crying and waiting to be helped when I was barely hurt.” Her hand fisted and thumped once, hard, against his shoulder. “She was pinned in that damn car unconscious and bleeding to death and I just let her die.” Sobbing again, her tears soaking his neck, she whispered, “By the time another car came by and found us…it was too late.”
Keeping her in the iron grip of his embrace, Gabe reached for