“YES. Last night. After those two assholes beat the crap out of you, thinking you were me. Laila was killed only a couple of minutes later.” “By the same two?” He shook his head. “By one of them. He’d had the hots for her and thought you—that I was moving in on ‘his’ girl. After someone interrupted his assault of . . . me, he took out his rage on her.” Serenity watched Jon pale. “She’s dead,” he said in a low voice. “Because of me.” David stroked his chin, a gesture he often used until the accident. Somehow, she knew it was a calculated gesture, as if David was trying to remind her of the “old days.” “Honestly? If seeing you and Laila in conversation drove him to do this, then it really didn’t matter if he saw you or me. He was simply a ticking bomb, and he picked this particular time to go kaboom.” David’s sudden . . . kindness surprised her. Normally, if anything went wrong, his first reaction was to place the blame on anybody else but himself.
