"Let's have some fun," he says.
I kneel on the bed, then crawl into position. Settling my weight onto him, I place my hands on his shoulders, pinning him down. He might have a hundred pounds on me, but now I have what he took from me.
Men are so easy to control, so vulnerable once you get them onto their backs. His eyes flutter as I move, lulling him. They get heavy, heavier, the lids snapping shut. He goes lax, letting me do all the work.
Good.
I shift my weight, moving my hands to his neck, wrapping my fingers around his throat.
I put all of my weight into my hands.
His eyes fly open, alarm pinging through them.
"I'm just having fun," I assure him, clenching. He thrashes underneath me, shock flickering in his eyes. His hands scrabble at mine, but it's too late. "Was it like this?" I ask him. His face goes red, then purple, then marbles. "Was it like this?" I ask again.
The floorboards in the hall squeak under someone's feet, but I don't look away. I'm done making mistakes tonight.
53
Cliff
A work emergency—I don't buy it. I give Olivia a head start, then follow her. I keep several cars between us, just in case she really is going to work. I don't want her to think I'm some kind of lovesick stalker, like Eli. But when she turns onto her street, I know for sure.
This has nothing to do with work.
I hang back, shutting off my headlight, and watch her go inside. Barely two minutes pass and she's already mounting her bike again. Nothing is different—that I can see, anyway. Still, my gut tells me something is wrong.
So I follow her again.
She takes Spring Street, then turns onto Mallane Lane. I continue by. I don't need to alarm her. She's too focused, body bent forward, shoulders hunched.
Who lives on Mallane?
I circle back down Spring Street, taking a left onto Springdale Avenue. It's the only other way to access Mallane. By the time I turn onto the road, her Street Glide is already cooling down in front of a teal house.
My pulse jumps in my throat.
I consider calling Ravage or even Donny, but there's a slim chance this could be a client's house. Even if it isn't, I don't want to step all over her toes again. That's how we ended up here, this place where we don't talk and I follow her like some kind of creep.
I thumb the throttle, two seconds away from leaving Mallane. This isn't healthy. Olivia's a grown woman. She can take care of herself. Bright white light flashes through a window—a strobe light. I frown. Nothing is adding up.
Something crashes on the second floor, shattering as it hits hard wood. It's then I know. I have to get inside.
I shut off the bike and vault over it, barely registering whether I've moved the kickstand into place. My bike, the street, everything fades away, my focus solely on the house. I lunge up the steps, yank open the screen door. The front door is unlocked. I push it open and race inside, careening through a dark living room. The dim light from the street highlights a framed photo: Greg with his wild red hair, and a happy blonde bride.
This must be Greg's house.
"Was it like this?" Olivia screams from upstairs. Fear and anger sharpen her words.
I fly up the steps, hands tingling, fingers twitching for something to latch onto. I'm going to kill him, if she doesn't first.
I hit the landing and turn toward the sound of her voice. Bright light spills from a bedroom into the hall, a beacon guiding me to her. I take a step toward the door. The blood pounding through my veins pulses even in my eyes. My vision becomes a tunnel of red.
Something thumps—a boot against a footboard, a desperate thrashing.
"Was it like this?" Olivia screams again, pain and fury breaking her voice.
My heart rockets into my throat. He's got her, and he'll kill her if I don't get there now. I close the distance to the door and stop dead in the hall when I see her in the bedroom.
Olivia straddles Greg on the bed, their clothing littering the floor in a trail behind them. Her hands wrap around her neck, all of her weight pressed into his throat. He jerks underneath her, but she's got him in the most vulnerable position a man can ever be in.
I stare as his face turns purple.
"What it like this?" she shrieks again, tears running down her cheeks. She lets out a howl of pain, a growl of vengeance—a battle cry. Even as I gape in shock, my chest aches for her.
I'll never know what it's like to have survived what she survived, but I do know what it's like to reach your limit, when you've had enough. When the phoenix of your broken soul rises, morphing into a beast whose thirst must be slaked. The evil of a man like Greg awakens that beast, and it won't be stopped until its thirst is slaked.
So I watch her take her power back, both shock and awe warring in my heart. I should probably stop her, but I don't.
54
Olivia
I feel the oxygen draining from his body, his life evaporating with it.
I hold pressure until he goes slack and the life drains from his eyes. Finally, he goes limp inside me. I keep squeezing. No mistakes.
"Olivia," Cliff calls from the doorway.
I flinch, my whole body tensing.
"He's gone," he says.
I start shaking, cold sweat washing over me. He wasn't supposed to see this. As if in a dream, I roll off the bed and start dressing, afraid to look at Cliff. Afraid of what I'll find in his eyes.
I find my phone in the pocket of the hoodie I stole from Cliff. The tremor in my hands makes my fingers loose and clumsy. I drop it.
"Who do you need me to call?" Cliff asks, taking my shoulders. He turns me until our eyes connect.
I see nothing in his.
His brown eyes are dark but void of emotion, as if he's stuffing down his revulsion.
Pressure squeezes my chest and lungs. I try to draw in a breath, but I can't. I glance at the Oh Vile Eye poster again, my eyes dropping to the form on the bed. I can't look at Cliff.
He wasn't supposed to see this.
Already there are dark red handprints on Greg's pale throat. They're so much smaller than the ones he left on me, yet I already feel the darkness lifting.
He's no longer loose in the world.
Cami is safe.
I am safe.
"Olivia?" Cliff asks, my name emotionless on his lips.
Part of him will always see me in this bed with the man who hurt me, chin lifted, lips spread in a vile smile. Part of him will always be disgusted.
My shoulders are free of the weight I've been carrying, but at what cost?
55
Cliff
I need a cigarette.
Scratch that—I need a drink.
There is no substance on Earth strong enough to wipe out the last five minutes.
Olivia and I stand a room apart. She's still trying to pick up her phone, still looking everywhere but at me. She is both the earthquake and the house about to cave into the abyss.
I call her name again, but she doesn't hear me. I am out of my element. I thought I saw some fucked up things in the pen, but this . . .
This is something else.
My chest tightens. I've only walked beside her for a short time. I can only imagine what led her to this moment. My only regret is that I don't get to kill him, too.
She stands staring down at her phone, trembling, teeth chattering. Calling her name isn't working, so I do the only other thing I can think of.
I go to her.
"I'm going to put my arms around you, okay?"
She stares and stares, eyes wide and round, shivering. I don't think she's even here. She's years ago, before I met her. Her chest rises and falls with rapid breaths.
I hesitate. I don't want to do any more damage.
Tears make their way down her cheeks in crooked paths. Yet she doesn't blink. She doesn't even wipe them away.
She's not having a flashback. She's having a panic attack.
I hope I'm right.
/> "Olivia," I say gently. "I'm going to hug you."
In the pen, I had nothing but time. I read a lot, mostly old magazines. There were a few medical magazines. I read once that a hug stops the panic response.
I put my arms around her, slowly at first. "I've got you," I tell her. She feels so small, a wisp of a woman. I hold her tight, cradling her into my chest.
It's like hugging a brick, she's so tense.
"I've got you," I say again.
Minute by minute, she relaxes. I cup the back of her head with a hand, holding her as if I can just transfer warmth into her. Her tears collect on my shirt, hot and wet against my skin, a salve to the splitting sensation in my chest.
My woman, my warrior. She is a hero just for surviving, just for walking around with such awful memories.
I hold her, pressing safety into her. I don't know if she can ever believe that, not even now, but I try anyway.
She lifts her head, wet curls sticking to her face. I pull them off.
"You're here," she whispers.
"I'm here." I smooth her hair, my hands suddenly too big, too clumsy.
"You're still here." She bows her head. "You weren't supposed to see that."
The ache in my chest deepens. I cup her chin, lift her face until our eyes meet. "Why not?"
She says nothing, just closes her eyes in one long blink.
"Do you think I think less of you now?" I ask.
Those eyes—twin mesmerizing pools of pained determination, as untouchable and beautiful as fog. She blinks again, wet lashes brushing her cheeks. "Do you?" she whispers.
I stroke her cheek. "I could never."
I don't tell her about the shock that kept me rooted in the doorway. I can't. I won't, ever. A shock born not out of revulsion but awe. I witnessed a reclaiming, a rebirth.
Once again, I'm too stunned by her to put my thoughts into words. Because she is stunning, a force that ripped me off my sleeping feet, shook me up, then plunked me down in the eye of her storm.
"You shouldn't be here," she says, heart slamming in her chest against mine. "You have to go." She glances around the room, eyes panicked once more.
"Go? Why would I go?"
She gives me a look. "I can't keep getting you into trouble."
"You are trouble," I admit, hugging her tighter. "But you're the kind worth getting into."
She scoffs and puts her hands on my chest. "You have to go." She pushes, but I keep my feet firmly planted.
"I'm not going anywhere," I say, and it feels like more, like a promise.
A promise she won't let me keep.
"I thought I didn't need you," she says, more to herself. "Yet here you are, just in time to pull me back."
I close my burning eyes. I can't keep not saying the things I want to say.
Before I met Olivia, I told myself only an irrational woman could fall for me. After I met her, I feared I'd just fallen in love with the idea of her, imprinting on the first woman I saw on the outs. Now I know the truth: I am irrationally in love with her, because love is not rational.
"I'll never stop reaching for you," I tell her, opening my eyes. "Every time you step too close to the edge, I'll be here, pulling you back into the light."
She nods, once. Then she pulls away, bending down to collect her phone and hoodie.
My hoodie.
I can't help it. I grin. "So that's where that went."
She presses her lips together, nodding.
"I'm gonna need that back, you know," I tease.
"Here," she says softly, holding it out to me.
The smile falls from my lips. "I was kidding. You can keep it." I try to press it into her hands, but she shakes her head.
"It's not right for me to keep it." She drops it into my arms and turns away. "I need a shower," she says, her back to me. "Can you call the guys, get the cleanup started?"
"Of course."
I watch her go. When I hear the water running, I pull the hoodie on over my head. As the fabric passes my face, I inhale her scent, the dark jasmine with saffron and pepper. I tug it on all the way, breathing in, ignoring the ache in my chest.
Then I make the call.
56
Olivia
In the bathroom, I find bars of Dove soap stacked neatly in a closet, still in their boxes. Everything has come down to one question: What do I do next? Find soap. Turn on the shower. Get in. Don't think. Just breathe.
Hot water beads pummel me, beating the soreness from my muscles. If nothing else, the motherfucker had great taste in shower heads. I cup the bar of soap in one hand and trace the Dove logo with the pad of a finger. It's so smooth, so perfect, I almost hate to use it.
But there's no way in hell I'm using one of his.
I jerk my mind back to the soap. It's the sensitive formula, the kind that doesn't suck all the moisture from skin. Not what I normally use, but it's soap. It's clean. It's here.
I didn't think to look for a washcloth, and I don't really want any of his things touching me, anyway. So I wash up with the bar. The point isn't really to get clean, anyway. The point is to . . .
I don't know.
Wash away what I just did?
I didn't even know I was capable of such a thing.
Of killing a man with just my hands.
I touch my neck. The skin itches where he put his hands all those years ago. I sweep the bar of soap up and down, as if I can erase his fingerprints. Prints that are long gone from my skin but still burning deep into my psyche.
Surely this time he would've finished the job.
I should feel lucky to be alive. Instead, my limbs are heavy and numb, the panic attack still pumping through my veins.
"It's over," I whisper to myself. My hands shake. The bar of soap slips from my grasp and hits the tile. It slides down the length of the tub and stops at the top of the drain.
My feet remain planted, reluctant to move.
I need to. But terror keeps me rooted in place. It pumps through my blood, washing out the certainty that carried me through this house. It replaces it with useless frozen adrenaline, a sludge in my veins.
"Olivia?" Cliff calls through the door. He taps on it with his knuckles. "You good?"
I open my mouth—or at least, I want to. I hug myself, shuddering.
The bathroom door creaks open. "Olivia?"
Only the rush of water answers him.
It mixes with my tears, disguises the sludge I'm emptying through my eyes. Even though the water is hot enough to turn my skin pink, I shiver. I see Greg beneath me, then above me. I touch my neck again, expecting to find his hands there.
My hands pat my bare neck.
"I'm coming in," Cliff says. "Okay?"
I find my voice. "I'm good."
"You sure?" he calls over the rush of water.
"Positive." I reach for the bar of soap and close my fingers around it.
"I'm right outside—if you need me." The door creaks again, but I don't hear it click shut. Instead I hear his retreating steps, slow and hesitant.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Then I straighten. Clutching the soap, I wash again. And again. And again. I scrub my skin until the water runs cold and I can't feel anything with the tips of my pruned fingers.
I'll probably regret washing my hair with bar soap, but at least I don't smell like him anymore.
Stepping out, I take the soap with me. I hold it in my palm. I can't leave it in the shower, and I probably shouldn't put it in the trash. I stand dripping on the bath mat, a new cold fear taking hold.
I've fucked up.
Majorly.
My DNA is all over this shower now. My hair is probably halfway down the drain, just waiting for some CSI cop to find it.
I tug my clothes on, not bothering to towel off. Not that it'd matter.
"Cliff?" I call, darting into the hall.
"Yeah." He strides out of the bedroom, his frame blocking my line of vision inside.
"You really should go
," I urge. "This is my mess."
I just have no idea how I'm going to clean it up.
He comes to me, hands stroking my shoulders. "Take a deep breath."
"But—"
"Breathe, baby, breathe."
I do as he says, my chest hitching when I realize he called me his baby. Hot tears prick my eyes. "You c-can't go to jail for me."
"No one is going to jail. Okay?"
I swallow. "I shouldn't have taken a shower."
He tips his chin to the side. "Huh?"
"My DNA," I say, hair dripping water down my back. "It's all over the place now."
"We're going to figure this out," he promises.
"Did you call Donny?" I shiver. All I had on under that hoodie was a tank top.
"Yes." He runs his hands up and down my arms. "They'll be here soon." Releasing me, he grips the hem of his hoodie and yanks it off over his head. "Here."
"But it's yours," I insist.
"Right now you need it more than I do." He slips it on over my head. I lift my arms, letting him dress me like a child. Warmth floods my chest. Normally, I'd never let anyone do this for me. But with Cliff, it feels nice. His scent mixed with mine engulfs me, grounding me.
I stand there for a moment, wanting to say something but not knowing exactly what to say. I can't tell him he smells good. I shove my hands into the pocket and my fingers brush against my phone. "I'll call Finn," I blurt.
He lifts a thick brow. "The brother?" He runs a hand through his hair.
I clasp my hands together inside the pocket, resisting the urge to touch his hair, too.
"I don't know, Olivia. That doesn't seem like a good idea."
"He owes me."
"He already helped us with Esther," he says. "Somehow I don't think he's going to go for covering up his brother's . . ." He trails off.
"You can say it." I lick my lips. "Murder."
"That's not what I was going to say."
"That's what I did, isn't it?" I pull my hands from the pocket and cross my arms.
A Risky Prospect (River Reapers Motorcycle Club Book 2) Page 25
