And my darkness pulsated with the need for Gage’s wife to be alive, only so I could kill her again. I didn’t have violent, homicidal thoughts. I got dark, but never that dark. I didn’t have the stomach for it. I didn’t even wish the man who’d sold to David dead.
I wished him suffering. Pain.
But not an end to his life. Not an end to chances to make his life better.
But this woman had beauty in her life. This woman had a half of Gage, had a family with him, and she’d murdered it.
A little girl.
Bile rose in my throat.
I struggled to stop myself from throwing up at the thought. That’s how violently ill it made me. Just hearing it. A decade on.
I couldn’t imagine what it was living it.
How Gage lived it.
But I know killing that woman—that monster—was an unforgivable sin, at least in the eyes of whatever passed for God these days.
But not to me.
I didn’t consider it a sin. I considered it a service.
Because after, Gage had literally torn the skin from his body. Cut at it. Hacked at it. Scarred it forever.
I swallowed razors. “Do you…?” I swallowed again, seriously worried about my ability to calm my stomach. “Do you still do it?” I asked, my voice a shadow.
His eyes were leveling. “No, babe, not since I patched into the club. Not since Ranger found me while in his own personal Hell and the club dragged us both out. Not gonna lie, there’re times when the pursuit of the opposite of nothing seems impossible without a knife, blood and pain—I mean my own, since I do it to others often enough—but then I met you. And you’re my new torture. Though I’m not sure which of us I’m torturing more.”
I forced myself not to break his gaze. “You’re not torturing me. You’re loving me.”
His eyes were cold. “My love is torture, Lauren.”
“Without love, life is a tomb,” I whispered.
“Robert Browning doesn’t mean shit in my life,” he growled back.
“The very fact that you know that’s Robert Browning means everything.” I stepped forward, boxing him in, using my body to make sure he couldn’t escape. Because he was used to battling, and he was used to winning. But I wasn’t going to let him win if that meant he was going to leave. “You made your tomb because you think your past defines your future. That your darkness defines the amount of light you’re going to be entitled to.”
“I’m not entitled to shit, Lauren,” he hissed. “You most of all. Your fucking light.”
“Why?”
He glowered and the cords of his neck strained with his need to move. To fight. But that would mean he’d have to fight me to move. And he didn’t seem like he was ready to do that yet.
“Why?” he repeated, voice low and dangerous. “Just fucking look at me, Lauren.” He yanked up his sleeves, thrust his arms in my face. “This is fucking why!”
He was trying to push me away and hold me tight at the same time. Because there were two different versions of himself, like there were of me. My light and dark side. But he had only the blackest of midnights and the onyx of the grave inside him. Because he was blaming himself for too much. For his daughter dying. For not noticing an addiction that he himself had battled.
For killing the woman suffering from that addiction.
For killing countless people after that.
“You’re carrying your guilt around like a pebble in the base of your shoe. You can still walk with it. Live with it. But it’s uncomfortable. Painful. Unnecessary.” I held up my hand when his eyes glittered with fury. “Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, Gage. I’m not talking about your suffering. Your grief. People who torture others—or worse, torture themselves, do not have monopoly over suffering, Gage. But hearing your story, the nightmare you’ve freaking lived, that you’re always going to live, has showed me that if I want a life with you, then that suffering will always be between us.” I took a breath as he tensed. “And I want life with you. Death. Suffering. Make no mistake about it, because I need you. More than I need the sun. More than the ocean. More than the order of my life. Because suffering in chaos is better than pretending I’m not suffering in logic. But you need to let go of that guilt for what you think you did to your daughter, because it won’t serve you. It’s going to destroy you.”
“It already fucking has.”
I shook my head. “You’re here. In front of me. And you’ve changed my life. People who’ve been destroyed don’t do that. But I know you need to destroy others to do that. To keep on. You need blood, pain, death. And you don’t think I can handle or understand that that’s going to be a constant need. That I don’t realize that no matter how good things are with us, it won’t change the bad you need. But I do. And I can handle it. Will continue to do so until we conclude.”
He was gripping my neck by the time I finished. “There’s no fucking conclusion to this story, Will. To this nightmare.”
I smiled. “Good.”
And then he kissed me.
Tore off our clothes.
And we tried to find sanctuary within one another.
Gage
He didn’t know how to feel after spewing his past out at Lauren like that little bitch from The Exorcist and her not run screaming from the room, never to be seen again.
He should’ve known better. Known his woman was made of tougher shit than that. Tougher shit than him. Because she’d felt his pain. Every inch of it. She’d sucked it all up and taken it upon herself, attached it to her bones.
He fucking hated that.
Hated himself for giving her more ugliness.
But then he loved her for it. Loved her so fuckin’ much he could barely breathe.
And that’s why he didn’t leave her after she’d made it clear that she wasn’t going anywhere. That she wasn’t being scared away.
He didn’t leave her because he couldn’t.
So he did the best thing he could. He fucked her hard. Brutal. Beyond anything they’d ever had. He hadn’t tried to fuck the pain out of her—he’d fucked it into her. Unrestrained. All of his violence and darkness.
And she’d loved it.
He took her to the edge, then pushed her off it. Because she’d passed out with him still inside her. He’d literally fucked her unconscious.
He’d wanted to slip into oblivion with his dick still inside her, her hot and comforting weight on him. But he didn’t find it. Couldn’t.
So he’d slowly slipped out of her, taking more care with her sleeping body than he ever did with her waking one. He eased her glasses off her face, folding them and placing them on her bedside table, where she put them so she could shove them on upon waking.
She was really blind, his Will. He hated that in theory, but he fucking loved her in those glasses. Every time she absently pushed those things up the bridge of her nose, his cock ached.
He’d gone to the bathroom, warmed a washcloth and cleaned himself from her, the marks covering her milky skin hardening his cock once more.
He shouldn’t have found satisfaction in the evidence of the pain he caused her. But he did.
Then he watched her. For hours, just watched her sleep, her silky hair splayed upon the pillow. Her eyelids fluttering in her dreams. Her scent pressing into him.
His arms itched, not just with the truth of what was on top of them being laid out. Underneath, he itched for a fix, because the past he’d been running from had finally caught him.
No, he’d finally stopped running. For Lauren.
And he’d known it was coming, this new and visceral craving. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t sleep, because he was waiting for it to hit. Bracing.
He was glad Lauren wasn’t awake.
He could barely see through the need for the junk. Even with her right in front of him serving as an anchor, a reason—the only reason in the world—not to seek out nothing when he had everything in his grasp.
The craving still won.
r /> So he stood. Dressed quietly. And skulked into the night. Where demons like him belonged.
When he got to the bar outside Hope where Lauren had unwittingly saved him and damned herself that night, he didn’t sit on his bike like he had then. Didn’t pause. The engine had barely stopped rumbling beneath him before he was halfway across the street.
In another heartbeat he was in the dingy alley where people paid for the drugs with scraps of cash and scraps of their souls.
He didn’t have any of his soul left to barter, and whatever crumbs were left were lying in a bed in a loft by the ocean.
Fourteen
One Month Later
Lauren
What followed after Gage opened the doors of his hidden closet and let all those decomposing, mangled, and skeletal bodies out was not peaceful.
That’s what books and movies told you, right? That after a couple’s demons met, made nice, and exposed themselves, there’s a peace?
Nothing left to hide?
There might have been nothing left to hide, but that didn’t mean there was peace.
Especially not since I woke up the morning after.
And everything was split into before and after, the serrated knife of truth splitting the days between when he told me about his past and everything that had come before. It didn’t stop the before from being important. If anything, it made it more so.
But it changed the after.
Gage was different when I awoke to him sitting in the chair across from my bed, the one positioned for the perfect and beautiful view of the ocean. I often got up and watched the sun rise from that chair. More recently, I’d been watching the sun rise with Gage bending me over that chair.
But he wasn’t watching the sun rise—it had long entered the sky, since I’d obviously been dead to the world longer than usual—nor was he bending me over the chair. The tenderness between my thighs likely wouldn’t have allowed for that, though I craved it the second my eyes met his clear and alert ones.
He was fully dressed, elbows on his knees.
“How long have you been watching me sleep?” I demanded, my voice still sleepy.
“A while,” he said. That was all he said. He didn’t move, didn’t blink as his eyes kept hold of mine.
Ice grasped my soul. “You’re not leaving me, are you?” I asked, my voice no longer snatched by dreams. No, it was grasped by a nightmare of him convincing himself to leave in the darkness.
His body jerked, and some of that horrible blankness left his expression. “Never.” The word was a vow. A promise.
But uneasiness still clutched the bottom of my stomach.
I pulled back the comforter, my naked body exposed to him.
He let out a harsh hiss.
“Prove it,” I demanded, the tenderness between my thighs forgotten, only because the tenderness of my heart drowned everything else out.
Gage was across the room before I could blink.
And he did prove it.
Twice.
I was still assaulted with goose bumps every now and then throughout the week following that, something feeling… off. And not Gage’s usual off.
I didn’t ask him what it was because I knew asking was no use. When Gage wanted to tell me something, he’d tell me. And he’d do it in his own time.
I also didn’t because I was a coward.
I convinced myself it was a throwaway fear for my article, since everyone was so convinced it was going to get me kidnapped or killed. It garnered attention around the office, mostly because no one realized I had it in me.
Jen had taken me out for virgin cocktails to celebrate. I was going to invite Gage, so the two of them could finally meet, but she insisted it be just us two.
“He steals you away often enough,” she’d said with a wink.
Gage had known I’d had in me. And though I’d expected him to be mad as hell about the whole thing, he hadn’t exactly had the chance to yell at me, what with being arrested and all that.
Well, almost arrested. Troy had skillfully avoided me since then.
But since our conversation had veered off me doing a story of a well-known drug dealer, exposing him, and onto Gage’s past, we hadn’t exactly had a chance to discuss it. I’d expected Gage to make a chance, being alpha male and protective and all that.
Amy couldn’t believe he hadn’t already. She’d said, “Brock would’ve had me locked in some kind of cabin in the woods somewhere with nuclear weapons poised at every possible entrance and exit until he thought the threat was eliminated.”
I’d laughed because I thought she was joking.
She wasn’t.
It turned out every one of those men was protective as all hell.
Gage hadn’t even put a ‘guard’ on me like the rest of the woman had during the early months of their relationships. Then again, the early stages of their relationships had been full of bombings and kidnappings, so I kind of understood why Gage hadn’t put one on me.
And I knew he loved me.
He showed me every day.
Not in the same way the rest of the men did, but in his own dark, depraved and inventive ways.
But Amy was rubbing off on me, because I found a little piece of myself not wanting flowers or chocolates or nipple clamps—though Gage had come home with those and they were fabulous. I wanted a bodyguard to show he cared about me possibly getting kidnapped by a drug lord.
I obviously wasn’t overly worried, mainly because I worked for a small-town newspaper, not the New York Times, and he was a small-time drug dealer who probably didn’t even read the newspaper, let alone ours.
Also because I simply wasn’t interesting enough to get kidnapped. Gage being my boyfriend was all my life could handle. Then again, Gage in anyone’s life was going to be more than most people could handle.
Gage probably knew all those things, but still.
So I broached the subject. Not about the bodyguards, just about his lack of general fury on the matter.
“You think I’d be mad about you writing the story?” he asked, seeming genuinely surprised.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “You’re, um…”
“Insane?” he finished for me.
“You,” I corrected.
He shrugged. “Same difference.”
I rolled my eyes. “But you were pissed off about me being outside the bar that night.”
Something worked in his eyes and I caught it, but then it was gone again and slipped through my fingers.
“Yeah, babe, I was pissed because I was pissed at myself for not getting the fuck away from you. I was also pissed at you for doin’ such a thing without so much as a fucking weapon.”
I chewed my lip. “Well you were there, and you’re a weapon.”
His eyes flared, focusing on my lip. “Yeah, I fuckin’ am,” he agreed. “But you didn’t know I was there, so that doesn’t count.”
I huffed out a breath. “So it wasn’t the act itself? Of putting myself in danger?”
He yanked me to his chest. “In an ideal world, a woman like you would never be put in danger. She would have a man who wasn’t at all like me to protect her from it. But it’s not an ideal world, so you’re gonna be in danger. I’ll try to protect you from it—I’ll die tryin’—but you need some danger to survive. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not like the other men in this club in a number of ways. My thoughts on what our women should and shouldn’t be allowed to do is one of those ways. Demons don’t discriminate between gender. So women should be able to fight their battles. They bleed the same as men, so it stands to reason that they can cut just as well too.”
I blinked. “So you’re a feminist?” I joked.
He chuckled. “I’m a realist, babe. Don’t believe in wrapping my woman in cotton wool for the world. Mostly because as soon as I close the doors, I’m gonna rip off that wool and put her in a fuck of a lot more danger than the world could.” His eyes glowed and my stomach tightened.
“So, t
he article?” I probed after getting my fluttering stomach under control.
“Proud as fuck of that, Will,” he murmured against my mouth. “My baby excels at everything you put your mind to. Not exactly a fan of you going behind my back to research the story, but I get it. This was your dragon to slay. Fuck if I want to spear every single one of them. I know better. You gotta fight your own battles. With words, that’s okay. Gets any more real than that, I’ll be fucking tanning your hide, you put that beautiful body in danger without me by your side. Because I’ll let you battle, babe. I’m not built to crush you like that. My only condition is that I’m standin’ beside you when you do.”
And that was that.
Until I realized I hadn’t asked him why he wasn’t worried about retaliation—on the small chance that a drug dealer did read a small-town paper.
I found out soon enough.
Some couples did Sunday brunch.
Gage and I did Sunday bomb making.
No joke.
It wasn’t every week, obviously. Gage would be on some kind of watch list if he was making and using bombs every week. I was surprised he wasn’t already.
But we went out to his little abandoned warehouse almost every week, bomb or no bomb, because there was a kind of serenity in the absolute solitude of it all. And there was a sickening satisfaction at being able to scream in the wide-open country air as Gage fucked me on his motorcycle. Or chained up in the warehouse—yes, chained up—or any of the other places we were discovering.
So I always felt a sick kind of excitement riding out there, the bike vibrating beneath me, my arms around Gage. He almost always rested his hand atop mine, which of late was resting lower than his midsection.
Much lower.
He had seemed off that morning, and it only intensified when we dismounted. He took my helmet from me and laid it on the seat of the bike, then snatched my face in his hands.
“You know how I said I want to be able to stand beside you while you fight your battles?” he asked. “Because I know you’ve got the strength to fight them your way?”