Battles of the Broken (The Sons of Templar MC Book 6)

  The realization of what he meant, what he was saying, hit me so hard that it seemed my very bones shattered.

  Junk.

  Drugs.

  The addiction that stole my brother away from me.

  That was the reason for Gage’s hard looks, that distance that yawned between us when he retreated into his darkest of places.

  He was a drug addict.

  And I could taste his fear at the confession. I knew why he’d kept it from me, because he felt this insane connection too. And I imagined after what I’d told him about David, he thought the truth would sever it.

  But it only made it stronger.

  I wanted to tell him that. Wanted to salve that obvious fear lingering behind my strong man’s eyes. But I didn’t have the words. And Gage didn’t let me try to find them.

  “But then she got pregnant,” he continued, his words razors on my soul. “And I found something I loved more than the junk. A fuck of a lot more.”

  He paused, the silence long. And painful. Daggers in the air. I itched to go to him. To touch him. To somehow take away the utter destruction in his eyes. But there was nothing that could touch that kind of pain.

  “My daughter.”

  The two words bowled through my soul. Shattered my bones. Tears streamed down my face before I could even fully realize it.

  Because I knew this story didn’t have a happy ending.

  Because there was no way sorrow could inject itself so deeply, so profoundly into those two words if it did. And the man in front of me was someone who’d convinced himself that he didn’t have happy endings. Because of what the world had shown him—or more accurately, what the world had taken from him.

  “She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in the shit-filled and ugly life I’d been livin’ the years after my folks kicked me out,” he said, voice empty. Because I knew that was the only way he could speak of her, with that detachment that was so cold it almost frosted his breath.

  Because there was no other way for him to speak and stay standing.

  “A whole head of dark curls the day she was born. Biggest eyes I’d ever seen. Saw fuckin’ into me. Like a baby seconds old somehow knew the fuckin’ secrets of the universe. Well, she knew the secrets of mine, at least. She was mine.”

  My face was soaked, the tears like acid, searing through my skin.

  “Those eyes alone, those curls, they were what I needed to get my shit straight,” he continued. “Because my girl deserved beauty every inch of her life. I didn’t know how the fuck to create it, since ugly was all I knew. Junk does that, takes away the beauty from your memories, erases it. But I tried. Stayed the fuck away from junk. Thought Missy did too. How could you want to touch that shit with the same hands that touched our daughter?” He shook his head, clenching his fists at his sides. “That was my mistake. Not my only one, but fuck, my biggest one. Thinking my wife would love my daughter, our daughter, more than a fucking high.” He hissed the word through his teeth and it seemed to turn to fire.

  “Didn’t notice because I was busy. Too busy trying to create beauty by livin’ ugly. And in the end, that’s what killed her.”

  His eyes were dry and empty and bowling through me.

  “It wasn’t my life that killed them, both of them. I’ve always found that darkly ironic,” he said, voice still clear and flat. “I was running with some bad fuckers in those days. In order to run with them, I needed to rule them, so I became worse than all of them. I’m not gonna say I had good intentions beyond trying to stay clean and give my daughter a life that would one day not be stained by the filth of her parents.”

  He glanced to the door to my studio that was no longer closed, where some of my paintings were visible, namely the reproduction of Gage’s chest tattoo I had just about finished.

  “The road to Hell isn’t just paved with good intentions, and there’s more than one way to get there,” he said. “My intentions were all bad—when they weren’t connected to my daughter, at least—and they brought me to Hell.” He gritted his teeth. “Didn’t notice my woman was still using. Or maybe I did and didn’t want to notice. I was clean from junk but not a fuck of a lot else. Drank a lot. Dove into toxic pussy because my woman was starting to disgust me. But never around my daughter. My princess. I’m not a good man, so I wasn’t a good father. But I loved her. Fuck, did I love her.”

  His voice broke then.

  Literally broke.

  Like shattered into a thousand pieces at the truth that Gage likely hadn’t faced in years. It was the single most horrifying thing I’d ever heard, save for the story, because the air was bleeding with this wound.

  I wondered why the whole fricking world wasn’t bleeding.

  How in the heck Gage was standing there in front of me.

  Not quite whole. Not even a lot whole.

  Broken.

  But still battling through life.

  Gage reached forward to brush a tear away with his thumb. He looked at it blankly for a beat, then put it in his mouth, as if he was tasting his pain within my body.

  “I protected her against everything in my world,” he continued, voice little more than a rasp. “Everything I could control, which I made sure was almost fucking everything. They went anywhere, they had tails. House was Fort Knox. She got her checkups every fucking month. I was neurotic about that shit, terrified of some illness ripping through her tiny body, something I couldn’t control.” He paused. “Turns out it was an illness that killed her. One I couldn’t control but shoulda noticed. Because if I’d noticed, my little girl would be ten years old right now. She’d be smilin’, doin’ whatever the fuck it is that ten-year-olds do.”

  His eyes were faraway, as if he was looking into the future. One not burdened by the horrors of the past.

  He physically shook himself, the motion violent and agonizing.

  “But she’s not, because the illness she was born out of, what brought her parents together, is ultimately what killed her.”

  It was an unnerving thing to have a devilishly attractive man stare at you straight in the eye. It was even more unnerving to have the Devil himself look you in the eye. I still hadn’t gotten used to Gage’s intense and almost violent gaze. But I loved it. Loved what it shook up inside me.

  But this wasn’t that.

  This was something else entirely.

  This was exactly what Nietzsche was talking about when a person stared into the abyss. When the abyss stares back at you.

  “Bein’ frank right now, the reason I haven’t told you ’bout this is partly ’cause of your brother,” Gage said, not breaking eye contact, his irises flickering with something that looked like shame. “Also ’cause I haven’t told a fucking soul about it. For much the same reasons you kept quiet about David.”

  He twitched then, as if he was going to come forward, snatch me into his arms. I braced for it, needing it. But he didn’t, just stiffened and kept talking.

  “’Cause our demons have good ears, and they come runnin’ when we come callin’,” he murmured. “But there’s also another reason. ’Cause even if all of this didn’t scare you enough to run away from me forever, which would be an utter fuckin’ shock, there’s more, and it’s definitely gonna chase you away.” His resolve was firm, as if it was already decided. “This isn’t ’cause I don’t think you can handle the truth, babe. I know you can. This is ’cause I don’t want you to handle this truth. My truth. Didn’t want you finally realizing that you’re lying in bed with a murderer. An addict. A demon wearing a man’s skin.”

  I tried to speak, to protest the fact that I wasn’t going to leave him because of an addiction. Certainly not because of his daughter’s death. That was only going to make me hold him tighter.

  He didn’t let me protest. Silenced me with a look. Because he wasn’t Gage now. This was the abyss.

  “You don’t get to speak until I’m done,” he said. “And you’ll know when I’m fuckin’ done because you won’t wanna speak to me a
gain.”

  The certainty in his voice chilled my soul.

  “Gage,” I whispered, “there can’t be more.”

  His gaze was ice. “Baby, when it comes to horror and pain, there’s always more.”

  The words hung between us.

  “She was high when she did it. When the mother of my child drowned my baby girl.”

  The words hit me like a slap. No, like a punch to the face.

  “Don’t know what was goin’ through her mind,” he continued. “Bad junk gave her a bad trip. Bad enough she was convinced our daughter was a demon. Our fuckin’ ten-month-old daughter was a demon. But that’s what junk does, turns angels into demons and then makes the demons think they’re angels.” His fists were clenched. “I was already a demon. To protect my angel, I turned into one. Turned into the Devil to avenge her.” His stare yanked at my insides. “Drowned the mother of my child in the same tub she’d drowned my baby in. Did it the second I found her floating there. After, I took my little girl out, laid her gently in her crib, like she could feel me. Of course she couldn’t. The dead don’t feel anything. The dead aren’t anything.”

  I visibly flinched at his words.

  He eyed me, stare cold and empty. “To the living, they’re everything,” he murmured. “Lost my everything in a tub that day. Cunt who killed her not included. Don’t regret ending her life. Not to this day, and won’t till the day I die. She was sick, yeah, I’ll admit that. But she made a conscious decision to shoot poison into her arm. The same one she held the whole world in. She didn’t deserve to be in the world when she let the junk take mine away. There’s no way to package that, Lauren. No way to spin that to make me come off better, less of a monster. I killed her. She’s not the first person I killed, and she wasn’t the last. Because that day broke me. Broke everything inside me that’s needed to function as a human being. I’m not that now. I’ll never be capable of living a life without blood, pain, killing. That replaced the junk. That’s my life now. I can’t fuckin’ let it be your death.”

  It was then that I moved, despite everything in his body repelling me, repelling any human touch. That’s exactly why I did it.

  He flinched when I put my hands on his neck, his whole body stiffening as if he was expecting me to strangle him. I stroked his beard and braved the demons in his eyes.

  “You’re not my death, Gage,” I said, voice clear. “And I’m not going to let you convince me of that. I’m sorry about your daughter.”

  He flinched again.

  “I don’t even know how you’re standing here after that,” I continued, going up on my tiptoes and laying my mouth on his. He didn’t respond to my kiss. I knew he couldn’t. “I don’t know how you’re standing, but I thank God you are, here, in front of me. And that’s where you’ll be for the foreseeable future. Hopefully forever.”

  His eyes widened as I spoke, in pure shock, as if he’d truly expected me to be disgusted. To throw him out of my apartment and out of my life.

  “You should hate me,” he hissed finally.

  I tilted my head. “And why is that? Because you hate yourself plenty for the both of us. And that already broke my heart before I knew this.” I stepped forward, clutching his face. “And it shatters it now.”

  He stepped from my grasp. I let him.

  “You should fuckin’ hate me! You need to!” he roared.

  I jumped slightly but didn’t retreat. “No, you need me to,” I argued softly. “And you know that’s never going to happen. If David had died from cancer, you think I’d hate you just because you survived it? Or if he’d died in a car crash, I’d never want to see you again because you walked away from one?” I shook my head. “That’s not how I work.”

  “But you don’t fuckin’ get it! I’m not recovered. I haven’t walked away. I haven’t survived.” His eyes zeroed in on me with a force akin to a tornado. “Addiction doesn’t work that way, baby. For all your knowledge, for all your faith, I’m glad as fuck that you don’t know that truth intimately. But I do. And if I stay around you, then you will too. Because my monkey is never getting off my back. It’s hooked into my flesh, my bones. Tattooed onto me more than the ink I’ve tried to cover it with. It’s always there. I just have to choose not to feed it. Every day, for the rest of my fuckin’ life, I have to fight against that bone-deep hunger.” He stepped forward. “And you’re dangerous, you see. Because I never thought I’d have to fight against something stronger than that. Never thought there’d be something I wanted more than the junk. The fix.” His grip was iron on my hips.

  But I said nothing.

  Because the dull ache in my hips was nothing like the bare and pulsating agony in Gage’s voice.

  In my heart.

  “And I’ve found it,” he murmured, face close to mine. “You’re the thing I want more than anything. It’s not a healthy want, baby, what I feel for you. Because from the second I took my first hit, everything I loved was gonna be tainted by that monkey. My addiction. Everything will be warped.” He pressed his lips to mine. “You’re my cure, baby,” he said against my mouth. “But I don’t want to be your disease.”

  I smiled sadly. “That’s what love is, Gage, a disease,” I whispered.

  He stared at me, then kissed me, hard, brutal, unyielding. I clutched the edges of his cut and kissed him back, sharing in the pain coating the room.

  The kiss lasted a long time.

  It didn’t move on from that, to something else, because I knew there was more to Gage’s story. It was unimaginable to think it, but there was.

  And it needed to come out now.

  So I pulled back from Gage. He let me.

  “Is that what they’re from?” I asked, running my fingers lightly over the skin. I knew I could only do it that way, for a short amount of time, especially now that all his pain was on the surface.

  Even though I barely made contact, Gage still flinched.

  I flinched inwardly too, at the thought of all that history mangled in scar tissue, still paining him.

  He was a man without limit, without fears.

  Until it came to his own skin. What lay beneath it.

  “Did someone do it to you… after?” I choked, unable to say the words.

  “After my wife killed my daughter and I murdered my wife?” Gage asked coldly, with such impact that it was my turn to flinch.

  I nodded once.

  “No. Well, fuck.” He lifted his arm, gazing at it as if it were an unfamiliar map. “Some of them might’ve been from someone else. I was too high to notice pain for a good while. It all melded into one. Into nothing. Don’t remember any wounds when I surfaced. Then again, I didn’t notice anything but my need for junk. The horror in my reality.” He shrugged. “But most of them come from that, from reality. The need.” His eyes moved from mine, the first time he’d ever averted his glance. He seemed… ashamed?

  “Gettin’ clean is different for everyone,” he said. “Some people do it ’cause they’re locked up and got no other choice. Most of those people don’t stay clean for long, because if someone needs junk, they’ll find it, no matter where they are. The Devil always provides for sinners who ask. Rest of ’em take up somethin’ else to distract from the need. Smokin’. Eatin’. Fuckin’. Some got support, but support means shit. You’re born alone, you die alone, and you battle addiction alone. ’Cause addiction is birth and death all rolled into one—you can’t separate the two. Methods to get clean, stay clean… not many of them are healthy, because addiction isn’t healthy in the first place, so the cure sure as shit isn’t gonna be. Obviously my version of a cure was a lot more fucked up than your garden-variety junkie, and that’s saying something.” He chuckled, the sound ugly and wrong. Full of the truth. He glanced down to his arms again, then gripped the knife that was always at his belt.

  My stomach roiled at the meaning.

  But it couldn’t be that.

  Even with Gage, it couldn’t be that.

  “Every time my skin cried out
for nothingness, I gave it pain, blood,” he said, confirming my worst fears. “’Cause that’s exactly what junk is. Someone said it’s like being taken to Hell and thinking you’re going to Heaven. But it doesn’t matter where the fuck you’re goin’. You don’t care. That’s the whole point, not caring. The pursuit of nothing. Not Heaven, not Hell, nothing. So I had to give myself the opposite of nothing to get clean.”

  I couldn’t speak for the longest of moments because my vocal cords were paralyzed in horror. In the time Gage and I had been together, the time I’d come to love him more than anything else in my world, I’d entertained all sorts of nightmares about his past.

  And even my depraved imagination couldn’t have come up with that.

  I knew he’d lost someone, because when someone loses an important person to them—when that person is stolen, brutally early—it does something to the complexion. Shadows behind the eyes, like a superimposed image on top of the flesh. Like an invisible tattoo is only visible under ultraviolet light, this pain, this loss, is only visible by people who’ve known death.

  So yeah, I’d known Gage’s story would break my heart.

  I didn’t know it would shred it to pieces and then lay them at my feet.

  He’d lost his daughter.

  I found myself desperate for some kind of instrument to turn back time. To reach into the past and grab onto her when she’d been alive, pure, beautiful. Because she was a piece of Gage before he’d lost himself to the darkness. And he was beautiful in his darkness, but her, with his light?

  I should’ve been more bothered about the admission of murdering his wife. That was kind of a big deal. When your boyfriend tells you he killed the mother of his child, it should rip apart any future you’re entertaining with him.

  For me, it only solidified it. Because I’d said goodbye to all of my black-and-white conventional beliefs when I’d climbed on Gage’s motorcycle that night, when I’d sacrificed the last piece of myself and lost myself to the darkness.