Page 55 of Devoured By the Forbidden Mountain Man

She told him what Meredith had admitted without supplying anything Meredith hadn’t chosen to reveal herself: the abuse, the first fight, the fact that the old statement was incomplete, and Meredith’s certainty that Gavin had not killed Brad.

For the first time in seven years, Georgia heard her brother say the words himself.

“No. I didn’t kill him.”

She closed her eyes.

Her shoulders lifted with one long breath before she spoke again.

“Then why did you let me spend seven years not knowing that?”

Gavin didn’t have a quick answer.

When it came, his voice was lower.

“Because by the time I understood what defending myself would require, there was no way to do it without exposing something that wasn’t mine to tell.”

Georgia looked across the desk at Gavin’s old folder. “You mean Meredith.”

“I’m not telling you more than she wants you to know.”

Georgia didn’t push at the secret itself. “She already told me you saw her after bail.”

A curse came quietly over the speaker.

Georgia almost smiled despite herself.

“She also told me you called once after you left. So we can stop pretending the two of you didn’t know why you disappeared.”

For a moment Gavin sounded like the man who had spent seven years surviving by being careful.

Then Georgia asked the question that had been waiting beneath everything else. “Why didn’t you ever contact me?”

For the first time since answering, Gavin lost some of the careful distance in his voice.

“Because I knew you’d try to help. If you knew where I was, you could’ve been questioned, followed, or dragged into whatever happened next. I thought keeping you ignorant was the only thing I could still do for you.”

Georgia listened all the way through. By the end, she was rubbing the heel of one hand over her eye.

“You protected me by making me wonder whether my brother was alive.”

Gavin let out a rough breath. “I know.”

Georgia’s fingers curled against the edge of the desk while she chose her next words instead of throwing them at him.

“And you left me with every consequence except the truth.”

His answer took longer this time. “Yes.”

Georgia went still. The admission seemed to hurt more than an excuse would have.

“I hate that you can admit that now. You could have called. You could have come home.”

“I should have. Both times. I’ve had seven years to know I made the wrong choice.”

The conversation lost its defensive edge after that, not because Georgia forgave him in a minute or Gavin explained away what he’d done, but because neither of them spent energy pretending the damage was something else.

“I’m still furious with you,” Georgia said. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all of this yet.”