Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

47. Tessa

FORTY-SEVEN

TESSA

Sorrow wrenched through my soul as I sat and listened to Milo confess what happened that day.

Because I could see that to him, that’s what it was—a confession.

Confession for his sins.

For his guilt.

For the shame he carried like tumbled stones.

Stones he was pinned beneath.

Rubble he couldn’t free himself from.

All while I struggled to catch up to who Bobby had been. Tried to reorganize everything I’d known and believed of my brother.

Fuzziness blurred my mind, the disorder amplified by the cocktail of painkillers I could feel slithering through my veins.

But it didn’t distort this.

The pain that radiated through our connection.

His hands clinging to mine like he would never have to let go, all while I saw the grief that saturated every inch of him.

“Do you know what happened to him afterward?”

Remorse shook his head. “The cops took me in that night. Questioned me. The second they released me once they realized I wasn’t there, I started to hunt. Hunted his men. Took them out, one by one. One of them was spitting that he’d taken care of Immortal just like he was going to take care of me. I thought he was dead.”

Air huffed from my nose. “Immortal. I can’t believe that was my brother. But he wasn’t, was he?”

Milo’s head shook. “None of us are.”

“But you gave him the chance to walk out of that basement. Gave him extra time. Time to leave the message so someone would know.”

Although I was sure his time had been cut off too soon, that he’d fully intended to get that charm into someone else’s hands.

Maybe into mine.

I just hadn’t seen it for what it was.

“You tried to save him, Milo. You stood up for what was right. That’s what matters.”

Milo’s throat bobbed beneath his beard, a breath of refusal leaving his mouth. “I fucked it up from the beginning. Made mistake after mistake.”

“My brother made his own.”

Milo’s nod was clipped. “And it cost him everything. Just like mine did me. My wife died because of me, Tessa. Don’t you understand? I did it. I was the one who was responsible. I was the one who made the choice that cost everything.”

I couldn’t bring myself to point out that he’d spared my brother while doing it, or at least had given him more time. Not when Autumn’s life had been the cost. I wouldn’t be so selfish to tell him I was grateful when it’d been the greatest sacrifice, nor would I ask him not to regret it.

But I could ask him to see what still remained on the other side of it.

“But you haven’t lost everything, Milo. Look at what you have. What remains. You saved me.” I squeezed his hand as tightly as I could.

“I almost got you killed, Tessa.” The words were coarse. Riddled with self-hate.

“No.”

“You know that I did. I warned that I would ruin you, just like I did Autumn. I knew I would, and I was the selfish bastard who wanted to keep you, anyway.”

“Because I’m yours.”

His head shook. “No.”

“Yes.”

Slowly, he pushed to his feet.

Tall and towering.

Fierce and soft.

Rough and gentle.

Everything.

But I’d never seen his broken halo as clearly as right then.

What he’d been through.

The reason he’d held himself back. The reason he thought he couldn’t love.

The reason fear clouded his aura in a dark, dingy black.

Dread clamored through my senses. A cold, icy slick of foreboding.

He leaned over and pressed his lips to my forehead. “You are a treasure, Little Dove. You are the light. And I won’t dim that…not any longer.”

He started to straighten, and I grappled for his shirt, curling my fingers in the fabric, pleading, “Please, don’t do this. Don’t walk away from me.”

“I’m doing you a favor.”

“You’re wrong.”

And if it was a favor, I didn’t want it.

He uncurled my fingers from his shirt, and he squeezed them once, heartbreak written all over his face as he carefully set them back on my chest, holding them tight there for an elongated beat. “Shine bright, Little Dove.”

Then he turned on his heel and strode for the door, so big and massive and everything that my soul ached for.

Craved.

My match.

My Beautiful Beast.

“Don’t you dare leave me, Milo. You promised. You promised!”

I shouted it at his retreating form, panic tremoring through my voice.

He stopped at the door with his hand on the latch, his head bowed between his shoulders.

“We’re a team,” I whispered when he finally shifted to look at me from over his shoulder.

Amber eyes bled with remorse. “Not anymore.”

I stared at the laptop screen, watching the clips again and again.

Maybe I was torturing myself, but somehow, it was cathartic.

Knowing Bobby this way. The side of him that I’d never met. The one he’d kept hidden.

No wonder, because I would have kicked his ass myself.

God, what had he been thinking?

It made it more painful to know he’d done it for me.

Gotten involved in these underground fights because it was easy money.

He’d used it to support me.

As a way to pay for my college and my dorm and to ensure that I didn’t start off life with a huge debt.

I’d gladly welcome that debt because the alternative was too steep a price to pay.

I should have known there was no way he could have afforded everything he was paying for.

Working two jobs .

I’d been young and na?ve and blind to what was going on.

It wasn’t like it even occurred to me to be suspicious. Bobby had been my hero, and I never could have imagined he’d get involved in something that slanted sinister.

But I imagined, through everything I’d learned, that Stefan had gotten his hooks into Bobby the same way as he’d done Milo.

Twisted the reality.

Manipulated the intentions.

Laid out a plan that had seemed like a no-brainer but had only been a trap.

It turned out the flash drive held my big brother’s secrets. We still didn’t know who’d helped him record the fights, but Bobby had been compiling video after video of the illegal fights, plus documenting a ton of different illegal activities that were also taking place.

I wasn’t sure if he planned to use it as blackmail or if he was taking it to the authorities.

Either way, it had ultimately cost him his life.

Anger pulsed through me at the memory. At everything that had been lost and stolen.

At the wounds that were now permanently embedded in me.

I wouldn’t lie and say I’d come out of that day and night unscathed.

It had truly been horrifying.

Terrifying.

But Milo had come.

Well, Trent, Jud, and Logan had come, too, the idiots.

But I guessed I should have known this family didn’t turn their backs on those they loved, and maybe it’d taken until then for me to realize I was a part of it.

A true part of them.

That I wasn’t an outsider. The crazy friend who showed for drinks and a good time but was forgotten in the day to day.

Grief had a way of skewing it, didn’t it? Of making you believe you were unworthy.

Less.

Lost and without a home when it was sitting right in front of you, waiting for you to claim it.

I just wished Milo had figured that out for himself.

Could see he was worthy to be loved, no matter what he’d done.

I’d believed in him. Believed him when he’d promised forever.

Believed he’d fight for me, which he had, and the sad part was he would have gladly died that night to set me free, but he didn’t have the courage to stand for me in the light.

His shame too profound. Those demons catching up to him and bending his mind to their will.

The subdued tapping at the door jolted me out of my thoughts, and I pressed pause on the screen.

From where I was sitting propped against the headboard in the guest bedroom, I shifted around to find Eden leaning against the doorjamb.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Like I got shot…oh, and like someone ripped my heart out, too,” I tried my best to tease. It only caused a fresh pang of pain.

Sympathy coasted through her soft smile. “I’m sure that’s exactly what it feels like.”

My nod was erratic, emotion rising up quickly to erase any lightness.

“It feels like it’s missing, Eden.” I whispered the admission.

It’d been two weeks since Milo had walked out of my hospital room, and each day had compounded the vacancy that throbbed inside.

I fiddled with the locket I now wore around my neck.

Bobby had made it out alive that night all those years ago, only because Milo had chosen my brother, his humanity , over the depravity of the call.

Over his own well-being.

It cost him so much.

His wife.

His children for all those years.

Bobby had been wearing the locket on a large chain the day he’d been found, and I could only assume he’d stashed the flash drive and then had written the code on the pictures.

He’d likely been beaten and tossed over the ravine, making it look like an accident.

Left to die.

Except he hadn’t.

Grief clamped down on my chest, so heavy and intense I didn’t know how to see through it.

It was funny how I’d tried so hard to interact with Bobby, tried so hard to reach him in the recesses of his mind, praying so hard that he could hear and feel me and know I was there. So, I’d pressed the locket to his hand and asked him if he could remember the memories imprinted on those pictures, whispered a story about how he’d been wearing it that day.

He’d curled his hand around it, and I’d thought…thought he was giving me a message.

It was weird to find out he had been trying to give me a message, but an entirely different one.

I’d had no idea.

None until he was gone.

I sucked in a shattered breath, still unable to fully grasp it.

His funeral had been four days ago—three days after I’d been released from the hospital.

I’d been surrounded by my friends.

Wrapped in their support.

And I had to remind myself again and again that I wasn’t alone .

That I wasn’t abandoned.

That they loved me and would support me through anything.

They were my family.

Karl’d had the nerve to show there, giving me feigned sympathies, like he’d ever actually cared about Bobby. It was strange that I didn’t even really notice or acknowledge him when he’d once felt like such an obstacle.

He’d become no more than a blip. I hadn’t even given him a response, just turned my back on that part of my life.

But it’d been Milo who’d lurked in the distance, a giant silhouette on the boundary of my pain, cut off and alone and bleeding his.

His apology.

His remorse.

But he’d turned and left me there as I’d been swamped in my sorrow, and I thought that had probably wounded me more than anything.

Him turning his back.

On me.

On us.

A tear slipped free, and I swatted at it, whispering, “It all hurts so bad, Eden.”

Climbing onto the bed, she laid down beside me and threaded our fingers together. “Love is the most painful of all emotions. The most beautiful and most wonderful and the most painful.”

Through the blur of moisture clouding my eyes, I nodded. “Which was why Milo didn’t want to fall for me. He thought he would hurt me, but the only thing that hurts is that he turned his back on me. We were supposed to be a team.”

The last of the words came out ragged.

All the hopes and the dreams.

His children.

Our love.

I stared at the stupid ring I still couldn’t bring myself to remove from my finger.

It glittered and danced in the spray of sunlight.

“I miss him so much.”

Eden ran her thumb over the back of my hand. “Because you’re missing the piece of yourself you gave to him.”

Tears kept streaming. “I don’t even want it back, Eden. I’m glad I got to experience it. What it felt like to find my Ace.”

“He was worth it. The risk.”

“Yeah, and well, the sex was pretty great, too.” I sent her a soggy grin.

Soft laughter rolled from Eden. “At least you know what it’s like now.”

Yeah, I knew what it was like.

I knew what it was like to be cherished.

Adored.

Worshipped.

“He loves me, you know,” I murmured. “He just doesn’t know how to separate that feeling from his fear.”

Eden hummed. “Fear is powerful, but love is stronger. Don’t forget that.”

Both our phones pinged at the same time, and I picked mine up to find a new message in the Fantastic Foursome thread.

Salem had sent a link with the caption: Just so everyone can keep up with the local news.

She capped it with a winky face.

I clicked on it and scanned through the news article that detailed the violent demise of one of the most wanted crime figures in California. Authorities had been searching for him for years.

Apparently, that man had been killed in an internal gunfight that had broken out between him and his men, leaving seven dead.

I’d honestly been terrified when the police officer had come in to question me about the mugging. Praying everyone’s involvement in this fiasco wouldn’t be discovered. Thank God they seemed to have bought it.

“This is all so crazy. I still can’t believe it happened. That I was involved in it,” I muttered. I glanced over at Eden. “I’m really thankful for everything. That Trent and the guys stepped up for us. I don’t know what would have happened if they hadn’t been there.”

“Trent and his brothers do what needs to be done to take care of their family. And you and Milo are a part of that.”

My chest squeezed, both in thankfulness and misery. “I hope you know what that means to me.”

“Of course, I do. You’re my soul sister, remember?” Her smile was only half a tease, riddled with the true affection she had for me.

“My ride or die,” I muttered with the slightest grin.

She gathered up my hand as she turned to face me. “I know you’re in pain right now, but you were right to take the chance. Even if he can’t feel it or accept it, you know it was real, and I hope you treasure that forever.”

My nod was shaky.

“Promise me you’ll never, ever stop fighting for that,” she continued. “For what you need and what you want, and promise me, you won’t be scared of taking the chance again when it comes to you. Because I know it will, and you deserve every ounce of joy in this world, Tessa McDaniels.”

I sniffled through a laugh. “I am pretty great, aren’t I?”

Eden smiled. “Yeah, you’re pretty great.”