Through my confusion and horror and heart ache as he slowly, slowly broke it, my chest seized as something new gripped at my heart and refused to let go. It was as if the man in front of me was holding my heart in his hands, shattering it to find and tear out the love and happiness he had given me. Because I was positive I hadn’t heard him wrong, and after the high of finding out that my devil loved me, the low of knowing he had loved someone else was a long fall.
“W-what?”
“I’d been charged with taking a girl hostage. I wanted no part in it, I’d never wanted a part in any of that life, and I swore to protect her because I’d fallen in love with her. Only problem was, we were holding her hostage because her fiancé was an undercover detective who had infiltrated our crew years before. She only ever wanted him and went back to him when we got her out. But she made sure her fiancé and his partner got me into witness protection because of what I’d done to the remaining members of my crew to get her out—that shootout with my brothers. After her, I never wanted to put myself in the position where I could lose the girl again. Then I ended up here, undercover, in another place and life I didn’t want to be with a girl I want more than my next breath. And she’s engaged, and I’m not supposed to want her.” One of his eyebrows ticked up. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
This wasn’t ironic; it was a morbid joke.
It had to be.
But as I pushed myself back until I was pressed against the cabinets and watched as acknowledgment mixed with a pain so great on his face it made the ache in my own chest magnify, I knew it wasn’t.
“As I’ve said, Blackbird. You do not love me.” Each word was laced with pain and seemed to take all of his strength.
I wanted to deny it, but I didn’t know how to. I didn’t know who was sitting in front of me anymore. He’d told me—he’d tried to warn me, but I couldn’t take the stories he’d told me when I’d thought of him as Lucas and connect them to what I’d just heard.
Everything I knew now felt so heavy and hard to handle.
And it was painful . . . so painful knowing I’d been sleeping with a man I didn’t know at all. That I’d fallen in love with a façade. And he’d allowed it.
“How many people have you killed?”
His eyes darkened, and his right hand once again moved to the large tattoo on his forearm while his head moved in the faintest of shakes. “Enough that I refuse to tell you.”
“One would be more than enough, but you said you would answer my questions,” I said tightly as I wrapped my arms around my waist, trying unsuccessfully to calm my churning stomach.
Nearly a minute passed without the devil responding, and I wondered if he was counting or avoiding answering when he suddenly said, “I remember every single person, and I’m haunted by their faces every day. I won’t haunt you with a number.”
I wanted to tell him that I might have preferred a number over the answer he’d given me—because his answer left a chill deep in my bones and my stomach rolling with unease as terrifying images and thoughts filled my mind.
I watched as he trailed his fingers over his arm and wondered about the other person who haunted him. “Do you still love her?”
His hand stopped, and his unnerved gaze met mine. “No, but I still care about her. I always will. Of anything, you have to understand that.”
I did.
Images of Kyle assaulted me. Flashes of a disastrous morning burned behind my eyelids.
A fleeting moment of bliss ruined by agonized cries and pleas and one weighted question . . .
“Do you still love him?”
“Yes.”
A devastating day filled with handwritten notes and misunderstanding. A night mended by the most beautiful connection—and the first time I’d told Lucas I loved him.
And now even that memory felt tainted.
My throat tightened as every emotion overwhelmed me and threatened to suffocate me. My vision blurred, and I hated how weak and pathetic I sounded when I asked, “Did you ever love me?”
Pain tore across his face, and I watched as he struggled to replace it with that infuriating, cold indifference. “If you have to ask, then you won’t hear my answer.”
He was right. It didn’t matter what he said then. I already felt so shattered. If he’d said he hadn’t loved me, my heart couldn’t break any more than it already had. If he told me that he had—that he did—I doubted I would believe him.
I had looked past the man the devil was supposed to be and had fallen in love with him. I had looked past his cruelties to his kindness and love and had thought I’d shown him he could have more than this life. I’d looked his darkness head-on and embraced it.
The darkness of the man before me was all new. Something he’d wrestled with but I hadn’t been prepared for. Something I hadn’t been forgiving and fighting against all these months. And despite how much I wanted to believe that the Lucas I had fallen in love with was really the man before me, I didn’t know how to. I wasn’t sure I could.
I couldn’t differentiate between the lies to find the truth.
“I need . . . I’m sorry, but I just need time,” I whispered, then staggered to standing.
Without seeing him or the kitchen that just an hour before had held our passion and our fabricated bliss, I walked blindly up the stairs and to my room, and had barely made it into the shower—clothes and all—before my sobs broke free.
Chapter 37
Day 119 with Briar
Lucas
Briar hadn’t come back downstairs that night, or the next, or the next . . . And despite my panic and my restlessness and my overwhelming need to beg her to understand, I hadn’t gone searching for her.
I’d told her I wouldn’t chase her.
I’d been so sure she would be gone as soon as she knew the truth, and even though she’d walked away from me, she was still inside the house and had only said she’d needed time.
I wanted to give her my life . . . time seemed like nothing in comparison.
But as that time had stretched on longer and longer without any word from her, or a song floating from the top floor of the house, my panic had turned into regret and frustration.
I refused to leave the house and hadn’t slept for more than an hour or two each of the last three nights. I tried telling myself I was stressed about William, and having told Briar about who I really was—but I didn’t believe my own lies.
I was terrified that if I left, or allowed myself to sleep, that would be when I lost her.
I glanced up from the kitchen table when my driver entered the house from the garage and eyed the bag hanging from his hand for a second before a miserable-sounding laugh forced from my chest.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Holt, but with you not wanting to leave the house, I thought it would be best if I chose and shipped the package this month.”
I stood and accepted the coffee from his other hand, and wordlessly walked into my office to grab a blank card and a pre-addressed bubble mailer. When I walked back into the kitchen, my driver was standing with terror in his eyes, as if he’d made a colossal mistake by choosing for me.
Knowing the look my blackbird would have given me if she were there, I held back an eye roll and forced myself not to growl when I said, “Thank you for doing this.”
Like he had just days before, my driver looked like my thanks had floored him as much as if I’d moved a mountain. It didn’t matter that the man worked for me or that I trusted him with Briar’s life.
I didn’t become Lucas Holt by thanking men, and I wouldn’t be able to hold on to the image I needed to if I continued to.
“O-of course, Mr. Holt.” His gaze darted nervously around the room before he asked, “Do you want me to pick up breakfast?”
I held up the coffee he’d brought, let my eyes dart over to him then back to the table. “No.” I took a long sip of the black coffee, and pretended that I could taste it, feel the heat as it slid down my throat.
But there was nothi
ng other than the last shred of my sanity I was clinging to.
I glanced at the bottle of nail polish my driver had picked up, then to the blank card I was trying to write on.
Two words. Just two words I’d written over and over again, every month, for years. And now I didn’t know how to, because all I wanted to say was I’d found her—that girl she’d said I would find—but I’d destroyed everything by trying to keep her . . . because of who I was. But I knew I couldn’t risk that, not right now.
I’m fine.
I stared at my written words, dropped the pen, and grabbed for my coffee again. I had the cup halfway to my mouth when she entered the kitchen, and everything inside of me faltered.
“Briar.” Her name was as soft as a breath and sounded like a prayer coming from me.
A sad smile pulled at her lips for a fraction of a second before falling, and then confusion took over that beautiful face when she looked at the table.
“I’ll take care of this, Mr. Holt,” the driver murmured and hurried to collect everything off the table before disappearing.
I didn’t watch him go. I couldn’t stop staring at the girl in front of me as she watched me.
I wanted to pull her into my arms. I wanted to beg her to tell me what she’d thought about and decided over the weekend. I wanted to tell her I understood and didn’t blame her, because I’d been preparing for this day from the first moment I’d watched her sing. But I didn’t move. I didn’t speak.
After a minute of heavy silence, her gaze dipped back to the table that was bare except for my coffee. “What was that?”
I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms over my chest, trying to hide my shaking as I forced myself to stay there—forced myself not to say that after two and a half days of silence, this wasn’t what I wanted to talk about with her. “Nail polish and a note.” As if she hadn’t already seen it.
“Right. What for?”
“For her.” I waited for her to understand—waited until those eyes flashed to me again and hated the hurt and uncertainty that filled them. “I send both every month so she has a way of knowing I’m still okay. She knew a lot of people wanted me dead, and prison can’t stop them from making it happen—which is why I was supposed to go into witness protection. Once a year I send her a journal because she always wrote in one. That’s why I put one in your room.” One corner of my mouth quirked up. “Obviously wasn’t one of my better decisions.”
Another hint of a smile, this one at least held some amusement behind it. She took the few remaining steps toward the small, square table and pulled out the chair on my left. Once she was sitting in it, she rested her elbow on the table and her head in her hand, letting her eyes slowly take in every part of me she could see.
I thanked God for another chance to have this girl so close to me. I knew I would never forget her—would never forget this moment or her pure, composed façade.
I hadn’t wanted to fall in love again after what had happened all those years ago, hadn’t wanted to feel that pain. Watching Briar, I knew if she walked out of my life, it wouldn’t be a matter of wanting to avoid the pain again . . .
There wasn’t a possibility of loving anyone else after having loved the girl who tried to consume my darkness with her light.
Once she finished her inspection and those eyes were locked with mine, she asked, “What do I call you?”
“Lucas. Devil. Whatever you want.”
She hesitated for only a second before altering the question. “What do you want me to call you?”
A name tore through my mind, screaming and thrashing, trying to claw its way out. I shoved it down with every other memory I kept buried. “I need you to call me Lucas.”
“Until when?”
“I don’t have an answer for that,” I said honestly. “I don’t know how long I’m here—how long I’m in this life. I’d already been in it for three and a half years before the auction.”
“And then what happens when it’s over? When your job as Lucas Holt is done. What happens to us?”
My heart clenched painfully, then steadily beat faster and faster, each thump more uneven than the last, until it felt like my chest wouldn’t be able to contain it anymore. What happens to us? I wanted to reach inside and tear my heart out just to be done with the pain. “Then you go home. Then, hopefully, all the women go home . . . or somewhere where they can get help.”
“You want me to go back to Atlanta?” Her face gave away nothing, and despite struggling so hard to find the required calm, I knew mine gave away everything.
“I want you to be where you need to be. I want you to be wherever home is.”
She seemed to nod distractedly for a few seconds and continued to, even as the first few words left her lips. “I don’t know why it seemed so much easier to accept the story of Lucas, and to forgive it, but it did. Maybe because I kept seeing you fight the dark and believed, deep down, you never wanted to be this man—be the man who bought stolen women and terrified them the way you did me. Maybe because I believed something about me made you want to not be that man. Only to find out that you had never been that man at all, but someone else entirely. Someone just as awful, just as terrifying . . . someone people turned to in an attempt to tear down this horror-filled world, because you had already lived in a similar darkness. Breathed it in and let it fill your veins until you became darkness, and darkness became you.”
I wanted to deny everything she was saying, tell her that I wasn’t the man she was describing—but I was. I always had been. If Briar knew half the things I’d done in an attempt to keep myself alive, she wouldn’t be sitting at this table with me.
She was too pure. Too unsullied. Too . . . light.
Wives and girlfriends of the men I’d killed had called me a monster as I’d walked from their homes.
Even though my brothers had only ever called me by name, other crews had called me Reaper since death followed in my wake.
The name Devil had summed up my entire life all too well . . . summed up everything about myself I’d hated and hadn’t been able to escape. But being Briar’s devil? It had never felt like something I’d wanted to escape but rather something I’d wanted to cling to. Be redeemed by.
“I told you your darkness scared me,” she said, her tone and expression thoughtful. “But for the first time in so, so long, I was afraid of you. I was terrified just being near you. I felt sick knowing I’d given my heart and body to someone who wasn’t the man I’d thought I’d fallen in love with. I’d given my heart to a man who could so easily slip into the role you’ve been playing, because you’ve done worse.”
My jaw was clenched so tightly it felt like it would break, and my blackbird . . . she studied me like she wasn’t about to annihilate me in a way nothing in my life had ever been able to.
“And then last night I realized I’d fallen in love with a man who should’ve been able to slip into that role like it was second nature . . . and couldn’t.” Briar stood slowly from her chair and took a step toward me, and then another—tears filling those beautiful, beautiful eyes. “And that thought just kept turning over and over in my mind, and I couldn’t figure out why a man like you hadn’t wanted to hurt me. Or why it had clearly killed you to be the devil in those first weeks.” Tears were now slowly slipping down her cheeks as she slid between the table and me and crawled onto my lap.
My heart thundered as I gripped her waist, pulling her closer and trying to memorize the feel of her and praying this wasn’t about to be goodbye.
“And then I understood,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. “I saw the role you tried to play, and I watched as you failed, and from that moment on you never truly hid who you are from me. There are so many things I still don’t know about you—including your name—and who knows if I’ll ever know it all, but there are five things I do know with absolute certainty . . .”
She placed her hands on either side of my head, her fingers gripping at my hair as she pressed
her lips to my forehead. “One. You’ve had so much darkness in your life that you’ve become it.” Her lips swept across my forehead, and pressed gently to my temple. “Two. You hate it and what’s in your mind from it.” She lifted one of my hands from her waist, and passed her mouth across my knuckles. “Three. You fight it and fight to keep others from it.” Keeping my hand in hers, she interlaced our fingers and kissed the tips of them before pressing them against my chest. “Four. You are good—”
“Briar, no,” I said softly, cutting her off. “Didn’t you hear anything I told you?”
She slipped her hand out from underneath mine and placed the tips of her fingers over my lips. “Every word,” she said through her tears. “I’ve seen your heart, Devil, and I know who you are. And you are good, even if you can’t see that about yourself.”
“Oh, Blackbird.” I pulled her hand up higher to kiss her wrist and felt the shiver that went through her body like it was my own.
“Five,” she murmured as she leaned forward and paused with her mouth so close to mine that they brushed against each other with each word. “I love every part of yo—”
I captured her mouth with my own, swallowing her surprised whimper, then backed off enough so the kiss was nothing more than a tease until she opened to me. And then I took and took from the girl in my arms and tried to show her with every brush of my lips and sweep of my tongue how she had come to mean everything to me.