Ensnared (Brutes of Bristlebrook, #1)(102)

I shake my head numbly, and a tear slips down my face. Beau wipes it away with his thumb. He wets his hand again and grasps my chin, then starts wiping and rubbing at my face in smooth, deliberate motions.

“Then you did it because you wanted to be the hero?” Beau asks. “You wanted to prove to everyone that you could do it?”

Every accusation is a bullet, and those awful feelings dig deeper.

Help me, please.

“No! Will you just l-leave it alone? It’s done now.” I hate the way my voice trembles. I try to work up a glare, but I’m empty of rage.

I might throw up again.

Help.

“It is done,” Beau agrees, though he sounds pained. “Done for him. Forever.”

“Stop it!”

“Why?” he demands.

“Because I didn’t want to kill him!” I yell, and my voice breaks on the shout.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I beg the boy in my head.

The tears spill over like acid, as though all of the painful knots in my chest have liquified into some bitter fluid I need to eject from my body.

My knees buckle, but Dom catches me from behind, lifting me from the water. Beau wraps his arms around my waist, and my arms and legs twine around him like that’s their natural place. I sob into the crook of his neck, and one sob turns into dozens of heaving, ugly hiccups.

“I know,” Beau whispers. “I know, Eden. We’ve got you.”

His cheek nestles against the top of my head, and another set of hands starts washing down my back with the rough sand, then moves to the nape of my neck and down my arms. The scrapes of the coarse granules in direct contrast to the soft, rhythmic caresses.

“I didn’t want to,” I choke out between sobs. “I didn’t want to do it. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Beau lets me shatter, and Dom tends me, and after a while my tears start to slow until I’m raw and hollowed out. Beau lets me down, my body as limp as a marionette. He turns me until I face Dom, then starts unbraiding my hair. Pressure I hadn’t realized I was feeling eases, and his fingers running through the strands make me shiver.

Dom tilts my chin up. “Front now,” he murmurs.

I sniff and look up at him between my lashes, embarrassed by how blatantly I’m breaking down in front of him. He seems to have no such worries; he scoops up more sand and picks up my arms, rubbing them down and rinsing them off at the same unhurried pace, apparently unfazed by my tears. Between Beau’s hands in my hair, and Dom’s on my body, the last tension bleeds out of me, and I let myself drift, safe and secure between them again.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve ever felt so . . . cared for.

Or how little I felt like I deserved it.

After a while I start to notice the droplets clinging to Dom’s chest, the stubbled line of his jaw . . . the bloodied gash along his arm. Lips tightening, I reach up to touch it gently, rubbing some of the blood beneath it away.

“That’s a present from that sniper, you know,” Dom tells me, not taking his eyes from where he’s sluicing water over my neck.

My fingers pause.

“I was caught between the trees. A few more shots, and he might have had me.”

I study his face but see no sign he’s lying to make me feel better.

He meets my eyes. “You very well might have saved my life, doing what you did.”

Dom’s words burrow beneath the numbness. Shaking my head, I keep wiping at the blood on his arm. His arm. Just a slight change of angle and it could have been his chest.

“He didn’t need to die,” I whisper, finally. “I could have stopped him without . . . doing that.”

He turns my chin so I can’t look away from him. “Why didn’t you?”

“What?”

“If you could have just stopped him, why didn’t you?” he repeats.

“I—” I try to pull my chin away, but he has a good grip. Beau’s hands are soft in my hair. “He attacked me, he . . . he tried to throw me off the tree.”

Dom nods. “So you stabbed him.”

I flinch. “I just tried to stop myself from falling. I didn’t mean to. He— I—”

“So he threw you off the tree and you tried to catch yourself and you both ended up falling. Seems to me like he made his own bed.”

“Stop. You’re making it sound like—”

“Like you were defending yourself,” he interrupts. “Like you were defending us. You saved your own life, and mine, and the only reason he’s dead is because he tried to hurt us.”

I swallow, hard. Another memory flickers. Not of brown eyes, but an ugly snarl. “Bitch,” he’d called me, right before he threw me to my death.

Beau tugs my head back until I’m looking at him, almost upside down. “Dom and me, we killed eight between us out there.

You hatin’ on us as much as you’re hatin’ on yourself right now?”

“Of course not,” I say impatiently. It’s not the same thing.

As if he can see the thought on my face, his eyes flare. “It sure is the same thing. You don’t get to be down on yourself for doing what you had to unless you’re going to put the same blame on us.”

I open my mouth to argue, but the words don’t come. My brow tangles. What else could I have done? I could have stayed where they left me, or stayed in my tree, but then what would have happened? That sniper had them pinned. Would I rather Dom or Beau be killed? My gut lurches at the thought.