Mara stroked his hair back from his forehead. His eyes were closed. “Don’t think about that. What happened after you found them?” He looked so vulnerable that she almost wanted to stop the entire conversation, but Mara knew he needed to talk it out, no matter how painful.
“I left,” he admitted hoarsely. “I took off, and they ended up catching a ride with a drunken student. They crashed not long after they left the party. The driver was going too fast and swerved off the road and hit a tree. All three of them died instantly.” His voice grew stronger, angrier. “I was supposed to be their driver. I should have gotten them home safely. I was pissed, and I never gave one fucking thought about how they were getting home.”
Her heart ached because he was so willing to take the blame when it wasn’t warranted. “It wasn’t your fault, Jared.” She pulled his head against her breasts and rocked him like a child. “Your reaction was no different than anyone else’s would be if they were betrayed. They were adults. Nobody forced them into that car. They could have called a taxi. What happened was a tragic accident, but none of it was your fault. How drunk were they?”
“Barely above the legal limit, according to their blood alcohol. The driver was plastered.”
“Then they still could have made the right decision, but they didn’t. Nobody can blame you for what happened, and you can’t blame yourself.” Mara’s voice was pleading. She had to get through to him, make him really believe he wasn’t responsible. His torment was evident now, and she couldn’t stand to see him this way.
“Her mother blamed me,” he replied gravely. “She always liked me, thought I was good for Selena. She was grateful that I was helping her daughter through school. Until the funeral. She let me know that I killed her daughter, and she hoped I went to hell. She never knew that I was already there.”
Oh, dear God. Selena’s mother never knew. “You never told her what really happened,” Mara said softly, her heart skittering as her brain furiously worked out what had occurred.
“I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone,” Jared choked out harshly. “All she knew is that I left the party without her daughter. There were plenty of friends who saw me leave. There were only three people who knew what really happened, why I left when I shouldn’t have, and two of them were dead,” he rasped. “How in the hell could I tell her mother that she was screwing another man, after Selena was already dead? That was her daughter. I couldn’t leave her with those kinds of memories of her daughter. It was better to let her think that I killed Selena and Alan without the details. It didn’t really matter.”
“You didn’t kill them,” Mara answered angrily, defensively. Sweet Jesus, Jared had taken the blame alone, too kind to tell his girlfriend’s mother or anyone else that he’d had a completely legitimate reason for leaving that night. The sheer selflessness that it had taken for Jared to shoulder all of the blame to let everyone else keep good memories of two people taken away so young nearly made her heart beat out of her chest with empathy for him. Jared had been young, but had still taken every criticism, every bit of blame to cover up for two dead young people who had betrayed his trust in every way.
“If I would have stayed—”
“You don’t know what would have happened. They would have been embarrassed. They knew you saw them?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. Selena saw me.”
They wouldn’t have gone with you anyway, Jared. Please believe that. Jesus, he’d been so damn determined to take the blame and let everyone else grieve that he’d actually convinced himself that it was really true, that he’d really been completely responsible for their deaths. Just the thought of his girlfriend’s mother condemning Jared to hell when he was trying to actually save her and other people close to Selena and Alan from additional pain made furious tears flow from Mara’s eyes. Her heart felt like it was being torn from her chest as she imagined what it must have been like for him during that time. He’d been alone, without a single soul to talk to about his own grief and betrayal. That was why he’d gone on a bender, the emotional pain so severe that he’d needed to escape.
“Do you really think they would have calmly ridden home with you?” she finally asked him gently.
“I don’t know,” he answered huskily. “I don’t know.”
“You need to stop blaming yourself. They made several bad choices. None of them deserved to die. But you don’t know if things would have turned out any differently, and your reaction was perfectly normal. I would have done the same thing. I would have been upset, and I would have left.” Mara took a deep breath, tears still streaming down her face. She found it amazing that years after the incident, Jared still blamed himself. Not only had he needed to deal with the betrayal and the death of two of the most important people in his life, but he felt he had to take the blame for his girlfriend and friend getting killed on top of it.
“I wish I could believe that things wouldn’t have turned out any differently had I stayed and insisted on driving them.”
What person does that? What young guy that heartbroken was going to keep a cool head and calmly drive two people home who had betrayed him? “They wouldn’t have gone home with you. How long do you think they were involved?”
Jared released a masculine sigh. “Looking back, they may have been screwing each other for quite a while. They weren’t drunk enough that night for it to have been a first-time fling, and I heard them before I actually saw them fucking. Selena was rambling about how much she loved some of the things that Alan did to her. It wasn’t a new thing.” He paused and took a deep breath before continuing. “They started doing things together about halfway through my last year of college. I thought they were just friends, and I was trying to get the business together, so I was busy. Selena and I just kept growing more and more distant. I thought it was just because I was so busy.”