The Departed

his hand on the back of her neck. “Dez, you need to stop.”
    “I can’t ,” she snapped, surging out of the chair and pacing the small confines of the waiting room. “I haven’t been gone so long that I’ve forgotten to be aware of all possible outcomes. I knew what kind of kid he was—knew he wasn’t stable—should have realized he’d react badly if he saw me there. Damn it—”
    “And what if we’d waited?” Taylor stood up. His voice was cool and, once more, his emotions were hidden behind that steely blue curtain. “What if we’d waited? Dez, did you look at that journal at all? He was at Beau’s house. You know why? Because Beau saw Mark and ran him off the road. He wrote it all down. He was afraid Beau’s fuckup would lead back to him. And he also was worried about the other boys. What if he’d gone after them?”
    Dez shook her head. “And what if he hadn’t?”
    “He was going to go back for Ivy.”
    She stilled. Her heart slammed against her rib cage and her mouth went dry. Wiping her sweating palms over her jeans, she stared at him. “What?”
    “You heard me. He considered her an unfinished job. He’d set himself a goal of ‘killing a bitch’—his words—before he turned eighteen and he was going to do it. She was his goal and he was going to kill her.”
    “No.” Dez turned away, covering her face with her hands. Screams of fury rose inside her, but she kept them trapped. “You…hell. You read it in the journal?”
    “Yeah. He had it all documented, neat as can be. His dad had me read it earlier—I finished it while you were in the chapel. It goes back eight months. There are others, though. His stepmom says he’s kept journals for almost as long as he’s been able to write.”
    The guilt was still there. She couldn’t wipe it away as easily as that. And maybe she shouldn’t be able to—oh, screw the maybe. She knew she shouldn’t be able to wipe it away. She’d fucked up and she needed to take responsibility for it.
    But she could bear that guilt, she reckoned. Especially if it meant Ivy would be safe. “He’ll have a harder time hurting her now,” she said quietly.
    “Yes.”
    “Does that make it okay?” She turned and looked at him, her hands opening, closing into fists. She remembered the look of sheer hate, the rage—the ugliness she’d seen in Brendan’s eyes. The pure filth she’d felt inside his soul. “He’s so young. Could he be helped? Knowing she’s safe now, that makes me breathe easier, but this doesn’t make it okay for me. It can’t .”
    “It shouldn’t.” Taylor came to her and slid his arm around her waist. She sighed and rested her head on his chest, wishing she could get closer. Wishing she could find a way to fix all the mistakes she’d made over the past day. “If this made it okay for you, you wouldn’t be who you are.”
    “Are you okay with this?” She curled a hand into his shirt, determined she wasn’t going to cry over this. She wouldn’t let herself have those tears. She wasn’t sure she deserved them.
    “No. But I saw a kid who was willing to kill you, me, his father. All because we were in his way. That’s all it was, Dez. We were in his way. It doesn’t make any of this right, but I’m not going to kill myself with guilt over it, either. We screwed up. We have to live with it. But he made the choices that put him here.” He pressed his lips to her brow.
    “He’s just a kid.”
    “He’s seventeen. Old enough to know he shouldn’t kidnap a girl, that he shouldn’t kill his friends. Don’t use that ‘just a kid’ line, Dez. We both know better. Neither of us had the easiest childhood and we didn’t decide to go and kidnap a girl, didn’t decide to kill our friends, none of that.” He eased back, studying her face. “You have to figure out how to deal with it on your own; I know that. But he made his own choices. And he knew they were wrong. He just didn’t care.”
    She swallowed. Sighing, she eased back away from him. The memory of seeing those pictures spill out of the journal haunted her—seeing Ivy’s face— that haunted her. Ivy…God, she wanted that image gone. So badly.
    But she couldn’t pluck it from her mind, just like she couldn’t erase any other moment of this day. She had to live with it. “You’re right. He didn’t care. I have to live with knowing I did something that pushed him into running—and he had an accident that landed him in here.”
    “ We pushed him