The One You Fight For

by Loren, Roni

  He blinked. “My loss?”

  “Yeah. You lost a sibling, too. And it sounds like you’ve lost a lot more than that.” She glanced around the apartment. “Long Acre had more victims than I realized.”

  Shaw simply stared at her, marveling. This woman, this woman who had been traumatized and who had lost her sister and friends, who’d had her whole life turned inside out because of his brother, was offering him condolences? Sympathy? “Do you…”

  When he didn’t finish, she tilted her head. “What?”

  He flexed his jaw, his emotions trying to push to the surface. Do you have any idea how amazing you are? That was what he wanted to say, but instead, he said, “Please don’t waste sympathy on me. I’m okay.”

  She gave him a sad smile. “Cutting yourself off from any possibility of new friendships or relationships and living under a different name, looking over your shoulder every moment? That’s not a life, Shaw. That’s jail.”

  His jaw flexed. “Maybe I deserve the sentence.”

  She blew out a long breath, looking exhausted all of a sudden. “I have a hard time believing that. Not if you’re anything like the Lucas I met.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “So that’s your plan?” she asked in what he would guess was her professor voice—slightly chastising but edged with concern. “Run the gym and just pretend to be someone else for the rest of your life?”

  “No. After tonight, I won’t be running the gym. I’ll need to leave.”

  “Leave?” Lines bracketed her mouth, her distaste for that idea apparent. “Why?”

  He put his hands out to his sides. “Because you know who I am. You’ll tell someone. The press will find me again.”

  She gave him an offended look and put her hand to her chest. “You think I’m going to run to the press? You think I like that kind of attention? I was in that media circus, too. I could barely stand to have the cameras pointed at me during the school-board meeting the other night.”

  He grimaced, realizing how self-centered and accusatory he’d sounded. “Maybe not the press, but if you tell someone, then they tell someone…”

  She let out a harsh breath. “I’m angry at you, but I’m not going to out you, Luc…Shaw. I have nothing to gain by doing that. I have no desire to screw up your life.”

  “But—”

  She lifted a palm. “Your secret is yours to keep.”

  His shoulders sagged, relief a living, blooming thing inside him. “Thank you. I can’t begin to tell you how much that means to me.”

  “Of course. I don’t wish anything bad for you. We’ve all been through our own version of hell. I hope the gym is successful, and you can find some peace there.” She grabbed her purse off the couch.

  Peace. Right. That was an impossible goal, but he’d settle for a few months in Austin working with Rivers at the gym so he could buy the RV and set up the next phase of his life. Time was the biggest gift he could receive. “Thank you.”

  When she turned back to him, her expression had gone somber. “Just tell me one thing.”

  He tucked his hands in his pockets, feeling more vulnerable than he had in a long time. She knew who he was—the horrible parts. It was like standing naked in front of her. “What’s that?”

  Her grip on her purse strap flexed as if she were having trouble choosing her words. “Was the person I’ve been spending time with the real you? Or was the Lucas thing an act?”

  The question caught him off guard. He searched her face, trying to figure out why she was asking, but her expression was frustratingly stoic. All he could offer her was the truth. “It was the person I wish I could be.”

  A flicker of disappointment moved over her face and, after a second, she nodded. “Goodbye, Shaw.”

  Goodbye. The word burned into his skin, leaving a tattoo of what-ifs behind. What if he had a different life? What if he’d never left home to pursue the Olympics? What if he’d never said those things to his brother? What if Long Acre had never happened?

  But he didn’t. He had. And Long Acre could never be undone.

  “Goodbye, Taryn.”

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  The pink fingers of sunrise crept along Taryn’s worn floorboards Saturday morning as she sat curled up on the couch with her laptop. She’d managed to sleep all of about two hours after leaving Shaw’s place. She’d walked out feeling so many emotions that she barely remembered the long drive home. Anger that she’d been lied to. Embarrassment that she’d been so clueless. And then just deep, deep sadness. The kind of sadness that settled into her bones and made her feel tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.

  One night. Two people with guns. The violence of that one moment in time stretched out like cracks in glass—always splintering, reaching out further, touching lives in ways no one but the people affected ever thought about. To be honest, she had never truly thought about what it must be like to be a family member of one of the shooters. She’d considered the families through the academic lens—their history, mental illness in their genetics, known traumas, all the things that could give her a better picture of the shooter so she could design her program. But she’d never tried to step into their shoes.

  What would it be like for a parent to see their child turn into a monster? What would it be like to be that monster’s brother? To know that someone you shared blood and history with had done something so horrible? Seeing Shaw last night, the anguish on his face, hearing how he’d basically shut down his life, she’d realized how shortsighted she’d been.

  She recognized that despite her training and research, she’d dismissed the shooters’ families the same way the public had, her personal feelings coloring their image. Why should she waste sympathy on the people who had produced murderers? It was a sweeping and unfair assessment. She was a psychologist, dammit. This was what she studied. She knew that so many different factors went into creating a situation like Long Acre. Her entire program was based on the fact.

  She knew killers could come from good families, that the parents weren’t always the ones to blame, that brain chemistry, environment, resources, social connections, other traumas, and so many factors played a part. The puzzle was both complex and complicated. She also knew Shaw didn’t believe any of that. She’d seen it in his face last night. The blame. He was my little brother.

  For whatever reason, he believed he was at least partially at fault. Maybe he was. Taryn couldn’t rule that out. She didn’t really know him. But what if he wasn’t? That was what had kept her from falling back asleep this morning. That was what was twisting up her thoughts and making her head hurt. She’d learned in her life that her gut could usually be trusted, and everything was telling her that the man she’d met as Lucas wasn’t a bad guy.

  However, she needed to separate out the positive feelings she’d developed for Lucas from the fake and be real about this. She needed to do her research. So after a long sip of coffee to rally her resolve, she forced herself to type a name into the search box. Shaw Miller.

  The page immediately populated with hits. Not a Facebook or LinkedIn profile, not a blog or a personal website, but hit after hit of news stories and video clips. She felt a strange kinship seeing that. She and Shaw shared that internet reality. Even after all these years, even with her research credits and career, the search results on her own name wouldn’t be about her job. To the rest of the world, her life hadn’t gone on. She was a person frozen in time in a news story. A tragic character. An anguished face in a still shot. A flat picture on a page or screen.

  Her eyes skimmed down the results. At the top were the story and video of the incident Shaw had mentioned—him attacking a reporter. The headlines were ugly: Killer’s Brother Explodes in Violence. Former Olympic Hopeful Thrown in Jail. Like Brother, Like Brother.

  Taryn’s heart thumped a little harder. Her finger hovered
over the mouse, but she couldn’t click yet. Instead, she chose one from a competition he’d been in to qualify for the World Championships. The video wasn’t high definition, so the images were a little fuzzy, but she picked out Shaw quickly enough. His hair was military short, his nose straight and narrow, his face boyish but serious as he conversed with a coach. Shaw hadn’t been lying. He looked so different from this fresh-faced kid, one who had the whole world rolling out a red carpet in front of him. Beyond age, trauma wrote lines onto people that altered their appearance in subtle but significant ways. Tiny markers that said I’ve seen things I can’t unsee. She could almost believe the boy in the video and today’s Shaw were completely different people, if not for the eyes.

  Shaw’s name was displayed on the screen along with the event he was about to do—pommel horse. Taryn watched in thrall as he walked over to the platform and strapped on the wrist supports, preparing. He was even more muscular then, youth and what had to be constant training making him look like human art. His expression was focused and intense as he stepped up to the pommel horse. After a visible breath, he reached out and grabbed the handles, swinging himself up and separating his legs to rock along the horse before twisting into an effortless handstand. Taryn held her breath in awe as she watched the routine, Shaw swinging his legs around and around at a speed that made her dizzy and moving himself over the apparatus like it was nothing. Strong. Elegant. Obviously gifted.

  The announcers were commenting the whole way through. How good Shaw was. How talented. How he would be the favorite going into the Olympic trials if he did this well at the World Championships. During the routine, the screen split, showing Shaw’s parents in the stands. His mom, a petite woman with short brown hair and the pretty blue eyes she’d passed to her sons, was clasping her hands tightly to her chest, obviously nervous. His father, a big man with a shiny bald head, was gripping a little American flag but not waving it, his gaze focused on his son’s performance.

  So much anticipation. So much hope. Looking like every other pair of parents who wanted the best for their kid.

  Taryn’s eyes skimmed down to the date of the competition. A few months before the Long Acre shooting. The air left her lungs as if someone had pressed on her stomach. The people in the video had no idea what awaited them. This was what their Before looked like. Taryn had one of those, too—a Before.

  She blinked, her eyes going misty for herself and the people in the video. She quickly swiped at the unfallen tears and closed the video. She didn’t want to see Shaw receive his medal, didn’t want to see the face of someone who thought he was going to the World Championships and then the Olympic trials, knowing he’d never get to either.

  Plus, this wasn’t the whole story. She couldn’t just watch the Shaw who was shiny.

  She sat up taller on the couch, bracing herself, and opened the video with the most hits, the one Shaw was more known for now. She’d seen a version of it years ago when the story had broken, but she’d never watched it closely. It’d blended together with all the other horrible Long Acre news stories out there.

  Sound blasted from her computer—shouts, cursing, and the heavy thud of punches landing on flesh. She winced and quickly lowered the volume, but the images on the screen played out in front of her. The camera was jumpy, someone running toward the fray, filming on their phone probably. Two men, one bigger than the other, were in a tangle. The person filming stopped enough distance away that Taryn couldn’t get a clear shot of the men’s faces, but it was obviously an all-out brawl.

  A professional video camera was in pieces on the sidewalk. The smaller man was shouting and trying to defend himself against Shaw. Shaw clearly had the advantage—bigger, stronger, madder. He grabbed the guy by the collar as if he was going to shove him, but the reporter swung out wildly, landing a punch in the center of Shaw’s face. Shaw’s hand went briefly to his nose. If the video had been better, Taryn had no doubt that blood would be visible, but the broken nose didn’t slow Shaw down. He cursed and shoved the other guy hard. The reporter tumbled to the pavement and Shaw followed him, kicking. The sounds of pain and begging were clear even over the street noise.

  “Stop! I can’t…breathe. You’re going to kill me.”

  “You think I fucking care!” Shaw kicked him again. “I told you to stay away from her!”

  Taryn had to look away and stop the video, the violence of it making her stomach turn. She couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that the raging, violent man could be the man she’d gotten to know over the last week, that the funny, flirty guy who’d teased her about running up the wall was capable of this.

  But maybe she hadn’t known him at all. After all, he had been Lucas with her. Not Shaw. He’d said so himself. It was the person I wish I could be.

  Not the person he was. That person was the brother of a killer. That person was capable of this kind of violence.

  A chill chased over her skin, and she pulled her robe tighter around her. But the two sides she’d seen in the videos wouldn’t join together in her head. She’d studied Joseph so thoroughly. He had all the markers of a sociopath. That disorder could have a genetic link in some cases, but she didn’t see those traits in Shaw.

  If Shaw was a sociopath, he never would’ve told her who he was. He would’ve gotten pleasure out of lying to her, taking her to bed without her knowing a thing. He wouldn’t have felt compelled to tell her the truth. He wouldn’t have said goodbye last night and apologized so much. He would’ve charmed or manipulated her into thinking he was a good guy. He’d done the opposite. He’d sent her away. So he could live his life in hiding. Almost completely alone.

  Taryn clicked back to the gymnastics video, the freeze frame on Shaw’s face as he grinned at the camera, receiving his high scores for his performance. He was just a college kid back then. A few months later, that smile, his family as he knew it, and his Olympic dream would be gone. His whole life would be irrevocably changed.

  She wanted to step inside that video and go back in time and warn everyone. Tell Shaw’s parents to go home and get Joseph some help. Even if curing sociopaths was next to impossible once they’d escalated to that level, someone could’ve at least caught the warning signs in Joseph, kept him away from guns, and intervened in his relationship with Trevor, the other shooter. Done something. Anything.

  A few pulled dominos could’ve stopped the chain of them from falling. All of their lives would look different.

  And she couldn’t help but think of the questions that had haunted her all through her career: How many dominos are being lined up right now in places around the country? How many Josephs and Trevors are making plans? How many families are blindly walking around in the Before?

  Taryn shut her laptop, an overwhelming resolve moving through her. She suddenly had two things she knew she had to do.

  One intimidated the hell out of her.

  The other just flat-out scared her.

  Too bad.

  She had to do both.

  * * *

  “I’ve decided I can’t give up on this program.” It was late Sunday morning, and Taryn had just finished her first slice of spinach artichoke quiche at Bitching Brunch with the girls. She’d needed a little fuel before making her announcement and had wanted to let her friends catch up with one another first, but now she needed to get it off her chest.

  Rebecca, who was pouring mimosas for them at the outdoor table in the food-truck park, looked up from her task. “Of course you can’t.”

  “We knew you wouldn’t.” Liv dumped more hot sauce on her quiche and passed the bottle to Kincaid. Knight, Rebecca’s big, fluffy black mutt, tried to nose his way to Liv’s plate. Liv patted his head and gently pushed him away from her food. She looked to Taryn. “So have you come up with a new plan to present to the school board?”

  “Fuck the school board,” Taryn said, the bitterness slipping out.

 
“Damn, girl,” Kincaid said, peeking over her shoulder as if someone could overhear them, but of course, it was empty except for the birds pecking the ground for last night’s crumbs. The food-truck park didn’t officially open until lunchtime today. Rebecca’s husband, Wes, had offered to make them a private breakfast, so they could have the place to themselves. “You’re pissed. I like it.”

  “I’m pissed, too,” Rebecca said, taking her seat and pouring herself straight juice instead of a mimosa. Knight plopped down by her feet with a huff. “They had their minds made up before you even spoke. And that superintendent was so dismissive. He was one step shy of patting you on the head and saying, Now, now, don’t get your panties in a wad, little lady.” Rebecca harrumphed. “Asshole.”

  “Well, thanks, babe. I love you, too,” Wes said, sauntering up to the table with a bandanna around his blond hair and a tray of bacon in his hands.

  Rebecca patted his arm and smiled. “Not you, honey. You’re not an asshole. Especially after bringing me bacon.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “I’ll make sure to bring you a tray if we ever get into a fight.”

  Rebecca rolled her eyes, but when Wes took out a pair of tongs and put a slice on her plate, she recoiled and put her fingers to her lips. “Oh yuck. I think the bacon’s gone bad.”

  Wes frowned. “What?” He lifted the tray close to his face and sniffed. “No, I just bought this. Brown-sugar crust. Smoked locally. It smells great.”

  Kincaid plucked a piece off the platter, examined it, and then bit. “Mmm, yep. That’s a winner. Pile it on, chef.”