Trace thanked the Lord for Dustin not pushing her for more information. He only held her and watched the moon and stars dazzle in the sky above. The night had gone from emotional to exceptional, but when he pulled up to the curb at Jewels’s place, she didn’t want the night to end. That scared her more than anything.
Dustin grasped the handle to the car door, but she stayed his movement with a soft touch to his forearm. “Wait.”
He sat back and looked through the front windshield and then to her. “You don’t need to tell me anything. But if you’d like to tell me what happened, I’ll listen.”
The tunnel at the edge of the fence jiggled, telling Trace that Houdini waited and watched. He was the perfect small-town, all-up-in-your-business resident.
She closed her eyes and knew that this was her way out of how she was feeling. The way her pulse quickened at the sight of Dustin. His touch heated her skin, and his kindness soothed her anger and resentment and hatred for herself. No. She didn’t want to care for a man. Especially a man like Dustin. Sure, he wasn’t some important oil tycoon, but he was still a man of business and played the manipulation game. She’d witnessed his tactics firsthand. “I’m not allowed to talk about this, but I can’t let you think I’m somebody I’m not. If you tell anyone, though—”
“I won’t.”
“I caused the death of my partner and friend while working to stop an oil rig from drilling off shore,” she blurted at rib-stinging speed.
He covered her hand with his, but she pulled away. “No. Don’t. I don’t deserve your comfort. I’ve criticized all your manipulative ways, but I’m a hypocrite.” She eyed the walkaway to Jewels’s front door and the escape route from the truth. A truth she’d avoided for so long, she almost believed the lie that it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t hold it in any longer. She had to tell someone, and if he hated her, it would be a solution to her attraction. And if he did tell someone, well, she deserved the punishment she’d receive for breaking the gag order.
Dustin didn’t say anything, which drew her to look at him once more. The man only sat there with soft eyes. Not even a hint of judgment on his rugged and handsome face.
She took in a sweltering breath of denial and exhaled the facts. “I worked as the lead on a project to stop an oil company from damaging the ocean habitat. There were rumors that the company cut corners, causing even more impact on sea life. It was my job to fight them—a fight I was ready for—but then I was invited in to be part of the company instead of working against it.” She fisted her hands. A sharp pain shot up her wrist.
Dustin reached over, unfurled her fingers, and entwined them with his.
She tugged to free herself. “No, I don’t deserve your comfort.”
He didn’t let go. “I think you’ve been facing this alone long enough.”
A dryness coated her tongue and throat. She thought she wouldn’t be able to speak again, but she glanced out the front windshield at the sparkling, moonlit waves. “I’d been in the business so long, I thought I was immune to their tactics, and I was—the normal business bait and switch and guiding me toward what they wanted me to see. But then the head of the company flew me to the oil rig. Something that would never happen in US waters. He invited me for an unobstructed all-access tour of the rig, along with an inspector. That had never happened before. I’d always been a gnat on an ape, not worth anyone’s attention. But there I was, getting the red carpet treatment.”
Dustin shifted in his small seat and angled to face her as if there was nothing else in the world that meant more than her words.
She needed to get this out and stop paddling around the gapping whirlpool of regrets. “I was dazzled by the man. He convinced me that he had been thinking about getting out of the oil industry altogether. That he’d made his money and I’d changed his mind about what he was doing.”
The tunnel at the edge of the walkway raddled again, as if her words were too much for Houdini to witness, not that he could hear from that distance or understand. If she could crawl into that tunnel with him at this moment, she would.
Say it. Confess and let him know the person you really are.
Trace cleared her throat. “I fell for him and his manipulation, hook, line, and drill. My intern and friend told me how I was being used, but I told him he was jealous. That he was my intern and still had a lot to learn. I was a fool. And it cost him his life and my reputation.”
Dustin tucked her hair behind her ear and tipped her chin to force her to look at him.
“I allowed myself to be used. And then I wouldn’t listen. There I was, the one who thought no one ever listened to me, even though I knew I was in the right. I’d trained Matt. He only did something based on a story I’d told him about a stunt I pulled years ago.” A coldness seeped out from her insides, and she shivered. “He looked up to me for so long. Had a crush on me, the way you do with teachers, so I dismissed him the way I’d been dismissed all those years.”
Dustin didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe that Trace could hear. He only sat there, by her side, holding her hand and her grief. Finally he said, “I don’t believe it was your fault.”
“You don’t know what happened.”
“I don’t have to. I know who you are, and you would never harm anyone.”
“I was with the scoundrel Robert Remming, having wine and dinner and conversation and kissing when Matt took off on a boat too small for the waters, to unveil Robert’s deception. If I hadn’t been so caught up in being the center of attention in Robert’s eyes, I would’ve been with Matt and he wouldn’t have drowned trying to gather evidence. He was trapped beneath the small boat against the rig. A storm had rolled in, and he shouldn’t have been out there. It’s my fault the boy’s dead.”
The tears rolled down her cheeks. It was the first time she’d said the words aloud. Her gut churned and burned. Acid ate away at her insides.
Dustin released her and opened his door. She knew that her past would open his eyes to who she was and why she didn’t deserve any man in her life. With the back of her hand, she swiped away the tears, and then she grabbed her purse and opened the door. But when she stood to leave him and his ideal of her, he pulled her into him. His arms wrapped around her body like a shield against the pain.
The heat of him, the strength of him, soothed the battle inside. Her muscles relaxed, and her pulse slowed.
His lips pressed to her forehead, and he whispered, “It wasn’t your fault.”
But it was. If it hadn’t been for her, Matt would be alive. And his parents wouldn’t be mourning his death. A death she hadn’t even answered their letters about.
Coward, that’s what she was, and now she’d even dragged Dustin into her mess. A mess he could never speak about or she’d go to jail. Even if she could get around the gag order, Robert Remming claimed to have evidence linking her to Matt’s death. It wouldn’t matter if he’d made it up. He’d been right about one thing: The courts and world would believe his attorneys over a small-town activist.
Maybe that’s why she’d told Dustin. She deserved prison. It had to be better than where she’d been living in purgatory.