by Elena Lawson
“Alright—”
“No.” Blake’s gruff voice sawed through the air like a serrated knife.
“Blake,” Frost warned, his voice hard.
“No. She should know,” he replied tersely, rising from the armchair with his spine ramrod straight. “Let’s talk,” he said, his gaze flickering to meet mine for the briefest of seconds. “In private.”
I bit my lip, my blood chilling in my veins. “Ok.”
He didn’t pause as he strode down the hallway. He didn’t turn back to see if I was following.
Ethan ran a hand down my arm, smoothing the goosebumps that’d risen there. “He doesn’t like talking about it,” he said in a low voice. “Be patient.”
I nodded, wondering what the fuck I was about to find out.
Who was I going to have to kill?
His father’s chilling stare flashed in a distant memory through my mind and I shuddered. There was always something about that man that didn’t sit right with me. We all knew he was an asshole. He’d shouted profanities at a fourteen-year-old Blake right in their front yard once, in front of all the neighbors. Called him pathetic. Useless. A waste of skin.
We all hated him. He was an ass—there was no denying it.
Had he done something worse than verbal abuse? I’d seen enough of the world now to know there was far worse a person could do to another person.
I never told Blake, but that time out in the yard, after his father was through yelling, I saw him raise his hand. He didn’t strike, but I was so afraid he would. So furious. I was the one who called the police that day. I was the reason Mr. Silvers was taken away in cuffs to sober up in the drunk tank overnight.
I prayed that a night behind bars would be enough to make him think twice about ever raising his hand against his son again. And it seemed for a while that it had. Mr. Silvers stopped shouting in the night. Blake seemed happier. His mother even seemed to take a turn for the better—going outside to tend to her wilting garden along the front of the house.
What if it hadn’t been enough?
Somberly, I followed Blake to an open door at the end of the hall and to the left.
When I stepped inside, it was dark, the only light a softly glowing blue light beside the nightstand. “Close the door, Rose,” Blake ordered, and I took the last step over the threshold, letting the door fall closed behind me.
17
The room was cloaked in a shadow and smelled faintly of suede and vanilla, as though a candle had been burning only moments before. There was another scent, too. A peculiar one. Like oiled rope and warm leather—not scents I was used to finding in a bedroom.
I could just make out Blake’s outline, with his torso hunched over his knees he sat on the edge of a double bed covered in luxe black bedding. I went to him, careful to step around a strange contraption hanging from the ceiling. I thought maybe it was some sort of light fixture, but saw no bulbs hanging from it.
When I was in front of him, and he made no move to raise his head or to speak, I knelt, putting myself squarely in front of him, at eye-level between his knees. I didn’t dare touch him. After the way he reacted in the bathroom to a simple embrace, I was afraid I might not ever be able to touch him again. Not if he was going to look at me in horror—as though caressed by the blade of a knife instead of the soft pads of my fingers.
“You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to,” I told him in a whisper, my throat suddenly dry. “I can wait. I’ll wait as long as you need me to, Blake. I—”
He moved his hands away from his face and I was floored at the sheer amount of pain radiating out from his eyes to coat me in a layer of icy dread that had me shivering against its chill.
I couldn’t help myself, the words tumbled out of my lips before I could stuff them back in. “What happened to you?” My voice broke and I had to clench my hands into tight fists to keep myself from reaching out to console him.
My heart broke to see him in so much anguish.
He swallowed and his gaze dropped from mine to the floor again. His beautiful face was twisted in anguish he was clearly working so hard to hide. His body almost shaking from the effort of keeping it contained.
Then suddenly, as swiftly as it came, it went. The storm clouds in his eyes cleared and the storm raging beneath his flesh stilled. Quieted.
“I’m going to tell you everything,” he said without feeling. “I’ll say it once, and then never again.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I do. You’re one of us. Ours.”
My chest swelled and my throat grew thick.
Blake inhaled deeply, his chest expanding before he let loose a long, breathy sigh. “You deserve to know why I can’t…” he paused, switching his train of thought. “You need to know what my triggers are. I don’t want you to think my reactions are your fault. And I don’t want to hurt you.”
Hurt me?
“How—”
“Rose, just listen.”
I zipped my lips.
I never did know when to shut up.
Rocking back on my heels, I moved to sit cross legged in front of him, staring up through his knees at his anguished face. I could only make out the planes of him in the dark. The sharp line of his jaw and cheekbones. The dark hollows of his eyes. The curling tattoos creeping like vines up his neck. He was wearing only a t-shirt now. His usual jacket discarded on the bed.
I clasped my fingers together tightly in my lap and listened, my body tense as though preparing for a physical assault. My muscles coiled to—to strike or to run, I wasn’t sure. I only knew that I wasn’t going to like whatever I was about to hear, and my body was rebelling—my ears ringing in the quiet as though they could block out what he was about to say.
“My mother died,” he said after a time.
I opened my mouth to speak again, but he cut me a side-long glance and I closed it. Dead? She’d been sick for so long. I shouldn’t have been surprised. But a part of me always thought she wasn’t actually sick. Like maybe she just didn’t have as much energy as most people and needed to lay down a lot. And then when I grew older and wiser, looking back I thought maybe she suffered from some form of depression. I still didn’t know. By the time I returned to my hometown, Blake’s house was no longer The Silvers’.
It belonged to another family. They’d painted the house yellow and the door bright cherry red. The shiny new mailbox at the end of the driveway wasn’t the rusted out black box anymore, instead it was one of those fancy ones that looked like a miniature house.
I knew right away that the place didn’t belong to them anymore.
“It was cancer,” he explained.
“Undiagnosed,” he then added with a note of gruff malice in his voice, wringing his hands in front of him. “When she got worse, I tried to get him to let me take her to the hospital, but he refused.”
“Your father?”
He nodded. “He said she was fine. That we couldn’t afford the medical bills and that she wasn’t really sick anyway. He was—well, looking back now, I think he must’ve been in denial.”
“When did she pass?”
“Less than a year after they took you away.”
Tears pricked at my eyes, but I knew from the look in his that this wasn’t even close to the worst part. Whatever he was going to tell me next was what I needed to be bracing for.
“He went fucking nuts, Rose.”
No.
If that motherfucker hurt my Blake—
“He punished me for her passing. Blamed me. Told me she was never the same after she had me. That I was the cause of her sickness.”
I clenched my jaw to keep myself in check. I coaxed the sleeping dragon in my belly back to laying and whispered to the darkness in my mind that we would get our vengeance in blood. Patience.
Patience.
“Blake, I’m—”
He hushed me sharply, grinding his teeth behind lips pressed into a tight line. “He…he started to make good on hi
s promises after she was gone.”
I knew those promises. Or at least some of them. If you were within twenty feet of the Silver’s residence any time after nine in the evening, you’d have heard them, too.
I should cut you for saying that!
You’re lucky I don’t put this out on your face!
You ever talk back to me again and I’ll put you in a pine box!
They were idle threats.
Weren’t they?
Blake reached out a shaking hand and tugged my hand from my lap. He unfurled my clenched knuckles and I swallowed. He held my hand tightly, palm out. So tightly it almost hurt. With his other hand, he lifted his shirt and guided my hand around his side to his back. He hesitated before placing my palm flat against his skin.
My calloused palm met raised tissue. A ridgeline of it. I almost gagged as my stomach turned and acidic bile rose in my throat. Blake held onto my wrist, not allowing me to explore more than the reach of my fingertips. All the while clenching and unclenching his jaw. Hard breaths flaring his nostrils.
The ridge of scar tissue was long. A jagged line. Not unlike the scar on his chest—or the one across my neck. Below that line, were three other scars. Circular ones. The skin puckered and uneven. Burn scars, I realized with a jolt that made my hairs stand on end.
Hot tears welled in my eyes and spilled over as I strained to feel more of his back. The further I reached, the more scars I found. His entire back was a roadmap of scar tissue. A morbid patchwork of pain.
Oh god…
His grip tightened on my wrist and then he pulled my hand away. “That’s enough,” he snapped, his breaths evening back out the instant I moved my hand away.
My heart ached for him. Guilt gripped me from the inside, like fists around my lungs. It was hard to breathe.
What had his father done to him? For how long?
“I’m—” I began, trying to keep the strain from my voice. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t…”
“It’s not your fau—”
“I should’ve done something. If I thought he would actually—”
“Rose—”
The tears began to dry, and a hot and sizzling fury flooded my veins. “He’ll pay for this,” I hissed, shaking now, getting ready to stand. Azrael’s orders be damned. I could be back in Silverton within a day or two if I drove without stopping. I could have Mr. Silvers begging for death within forty-eight hours. I’d draw it out. I’d cut him. I’d burn him. And then I’d fucking chop off his junk and stuff it down his throat until he choked on it.
I couldn’t remember the last time I was this murderous. My teeth ground together as my mind whirred.
Blake’s hand snaked out and snatched me by the wrist, stopping me. “Rose.” Blake’s voice was hard.
“You can’t stop me,” I warned. People like Mr. Silvers didn’t deserve forgiveness. They deserved pain and suffering and an eternity in hell.
“I wouldn’t,” Blake said, releasing me. He looked up into my amber eyes and I read the meaning hiding in his deadly gaze. “If he weren’t already dead.”
I frowned, and then it dawned on me. “How?” I asked, though I thought I already knew.
“Ethan and Frost found out what was going on.”
Again, my heart ached that I wasn’t there for him. To stop the monster he called father from torturing him. It hurt more than words could express. But at least he had Ethan and Frost…
At least he wasn’t alone.
“I told them I didn’t want the police involved, so they came over and threatened him. Ethan said he had footage of what my father did to me and would plaster it on the news and use it to make sure he got life in prison. Frost told him he would set the house on fire with him inside it and make sure he couldn’t get out—make it look like an accident.”
Blake laughed a bit at that. “I felt so weak, Rose. I knew he was in pain and I just kept expecting him to stop. To change. To see what he was doing to me and realize he was sick, too.”
Unconsciously, I reached out to caress his face. He flinched a little, but when I went to remove my hand, he held it against his cheek, instead.
“Anyway,” Blake said, twining his fingers with mine as he drew my hand away. “Suffice it to say my father didn’t like being threatened.” The low tone of his voice skittered down my spine and I shivered.
“What did he do?” I breathed, grasping his hand tighter.
“He tried to make good on the one promise he hadn’t yet…”
I’ll put you in a pine box…
Blake shook his head. “He might’ve succeeded if the guys hadn’t been watching and listening. They came in and found me…” he paused, and I couldn’t take seeing the shame cross his dark eyes.
He had nothing to be ashamed of. Didn’t he see that?
A father was supposed to be someone you could trust. Someone you could count on to protect you. Prescott Silvers was no father. He was the fucking devil incarnate.
“They found me half dead in the living room. Dad was in the bedroom, putting the combination into the safe where he kept his pistol.”
I winced, bracing myself for what he would say next.
“He managed to get a shot off before they managed to disarm him. He was aiming for me, but Ethan took the hit—the idiot.”
My golden knight. I wasn’t surprised. Not in the least.
“He got Ethan in the stomach. I thought he was going to die…”
I could only imagine the horror of that moment. I knelt back down to see into Blake’s eyes, still clutching his hand in mine, urging him to go on.
“Frost had him in a headlock. His gun was only a few feet away from me on the carpet.”
I knew what would happen next.
Blake may not have stood up for himself. He may not have been willing to fight his own father for himself. But for Frost and Ethan…
It wasn’t a question.
“Frost saw me grab the gun and shoved my father away a split second before I put a bullet between his eyes.”
“You did the right thing,” I told him, imploring him to see that.
His face was hard as he nodded. “I told myself that for a long time. I was only sixteen when it happened. They sent me to juvie. I was there until I turned eighteen. Ethan and Frost were there to pick me up the day I got out. We’ve been together ever since.”
We sat quietly for a moment as his words sunk in.
I rubbed my thumb over the back of his hand. I could tell he was finished talking. He’d said he would tell me what happened once and then never again. Though I had more questions, I refrained from asking them. Not wanting him to feel forced to share more than he had already. I would ask the other guys later. I wouldn’t make Blake talk about it anymore.
“So now you know,” Blake sighed. “It’s why I can’t handle being touched.”
“I understand. And I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t know.”
“This,” I said, rubbing my thumb over the back of his hand again. “This seems to be okay.”
He nodded solemnly. “It’s my back mostly,” Blake explained. “The bastard liked to put his marks where no one would be able to see them.”
I grit my teeth.
“It’s better than it was before. Any touch set me off for years. It wasn’t until we turned that I got some of myself back.”
I offered him a pained smile.
Where the change had affected Ethan with disgust in himself—with hopelessness—it had strengthened Blake. I could see it now. How immortality had re-birthed him into a stronger, more confident version of himself. I was suddenly so glad he’d made the choice to do it. If only for that reason.
If only to attain a modicum of peace and acceptance of the events that shaped him.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Blake said suddenly, taking me aback. He released my hand and I stiffened. “Don’t look at me like I’m broken. I resent that.”
I schooled my features and gave him a single terse nod.
I knew the look he was talking about. It was the same one the doctors and police officers and psychologists gave me once upon a time. I hated that look, too.
“You’re the strongest of us,” I whispered. “Always have been. If anything, what you’ve just told me proves that.”
He looked at me doubtfully, but I was entirely sincere.
Once he saw that, some of the chill left his gaze. After a moment, a little bit of some other emotion crossed his handsome face. A flicker of fire in his eyes. The slight twist of his lips.
I cocked my head at him, confused as his fiery gaze roved over my body. “That’s enough depressing shit for one day, don’t you think?”
My brows drew together. What was he playing at?
He reached over and tapped the softly glowing blue light on the nightstand—making it glow a bit brighter, illuminating the space around us. I took a cursory glance around and froze.
The lights I thought I’d walked into earlier weren’t lights at all. They were a bunch of loosely tied ropes hanging from thick metal anchors in the ceiling. And across the room, there was a sort of den that stretched around the edge of the long wall.
I could only make out part of what was inside, but I saw polished black leather and deep crimson velvet. The edge of a rack with leather manacles at the top and bottom. The back end of a rather oddly shaped chair thing. A mirror set in the mouth of the den area showed me a reflection of more items deeper within, though I couldn’t entirely make them out.
I thought I saw a sex swing hanging from the ceiling. And along the back wall of the space—an array of colorful looking bits and bobs. Some I recognized, and others I didn’t. It was quite the collection of…toys.
Oh my.
Immediately, my breaths came heavier, and an ache spread low in my belly, making my thighs squeeze together and a swelling heat fog my mind.
I glanced back to Blake, mouth agape. I knew he was still hurting, but it was clear he was trying to change the subject. To take his mind off of it. And since I was the reason he’d had to reopen those long-scabbed-over wounds. I supposed it was sort of my duty to help him forget again. If only for a little while.
