Fable of Happiness Book Two

by Pepper Winters

  Which meant I...

  Ah, fuck...

  I love her.

  I slammed to a stop in the dark corridor as horror slipped through me.

  I.

  Love.

  Her.

  She’d cracked my shields and ruined my mental walls.

  She’d brought me right to the edge where my past and present did its best to merge.

  I loved her, and that was the worst thing I could ever do.

  I buried my face in my hands.

  Why?

  Why did this have to happen?

  Why did she have to find me? Care for me? Be so goddamn perfect?

  How was I supposed to say goodbye after weeks of admitting there was no way in hell I could ever let her go? How could my thoughts suddenly flip from selfishness to doing the right thing?

  Schizophrenic, Kas.

  I groaned.

  No, I didn’t think this was a symptom of psychosis. This was just me. A product of doing whatever it took to keep those I loved safe.

  I’d condemned myself to a childhood of rape and abuse, taking as much pain as I could to shelter those I loved. And now, now I finally had a chance at being happy with someone strong enough to stand up to me, and I couldn’t allow her to stay.

  I wouldn’t.

  Because if I did...she’d die.

  Because of me.

  All my prior possession slipped away.

  She wasn’t mine to keep.

  She was never mine to keep.

  I swallowed hard, rubbing my temples to ease my constant headache.

  She had to go.

  There was no other option for her.

  Because I fucking love her.

  And I won’t hurt her again.

  I swallowed another groan, forcing myself to keep walking. I’d been up for the past hour, patroling the hallways of Fables, skulking in the shadows, hunting bastards who might hurt the woman I’d fallen head over fucking heels in love with.

  That was my sole purpose now.

  To guard her, watch over her, protect her from everything...including me.

  I shuddered as I cut through the rear of the house, padding barefoot past the laundry and surveillance room. What happened in the garden returned to haunt me. How incredible it’d been to sink inside her while pinning her against the wall. How she’d kissed me back. How she’d reacted to my touch, my tongue, my everything.

  She’d made me feel wanted.

  Real.

  I remembered now.

  I remembered who I’d been when I’d had a family to care for.

  I remembered how nothing was more important than their welfare.

  She’d shown me how good it could be between us. How right it felt to have her in my arms, willing and smiling, panting and squirming. How I could finally have someone to call my own after a decade of nothing.

  She’d welcomed me.

  All of me, and God, I wanted that.

  But you can’t have it.

  It didn’t matter she’d consumed me body and soul. When she was in my arms and my body was deep within hers, I lost the ability to keep my walls up.

  I slammed to another stop, recalling the sensation of having no barrier between my present and past. There’d been no labyrinth to hide in. No fortress in which to block certain things.

  My mind had been open.

  My memories stark and ready to swarm.

  For the first time in my life, I’d had the urge to give words to the sickness inside me.

  And that would not have ended well for her.

  A noise wrenched my head up.

  My ears pricked as ice slid down my spine.

  A voice.

  A masculine voice.

  Fuck!

  I bolted.

  I grabbed the walls and hurled myself through Fables, chasing the man’s voice, panic overflowing that they’d hurt her. Touched her. Trapped her.

  Gem!

  A male laughter echoed through Fables.

  Flickers of Storymaker and Levin and all the other men who’d hurt me swamped my mind.

  My gut twisted as I bolted through the foyer and skidded into the library.

  I slammed to a stop.

  Gemma.

  She sat cross-legged on the floor with a bunch of rope, metal, and climbing gear before her. Her head was bowed, and a sound, half a laugh, half a cry, spilled from her lips. With her back to me, I couldn’t see what she held in her hands, but the voice came again.

  A stranger.

  A male I didn’t know.

  An enemy I needed to protect her from.

  Stalking forward, I jerked as Gem’s head suddenly swung to face me, her eyes flaring wide, her hands latching around something black and large. “Kas. Crap, you scared me.” Her shoulders rolled with relief, a tentative smile on her face. Her gaze slid over my naked chest, lingering on the waistband of my jeans. Heat sparked in her eyes as her cheeks pinked. “Where the hell did you come from? What are you doing up? Did I wake you? I’m sorry if I—”

  The voice came again.

  “Who the hell is that?” My legs moved on their own accord, shooting forward. I almost kicked her over as I stumbled to a halt and dropped to my haunches, my attention locking onto the video playing in her hands.

  There, on a tiny screen, was Gemma dressed in a yellow skirt and white T-shirt. Her golden hair glimmered in the sun, and her radiant smile lit up from within.

  And she was in some asshole’s arms.

  An asshole who whirled her around and threatened to throw her to the ground, only to toss her over his shoulder instead.

  My temper soared, breaking through my barriers, ensuring I was seconds away from snapping. “Who the fuck is touching you?”

  She flinched, studying me instead of the video. Whatever she saw on my face made her slip to her knees and angle herself toward the sharp letter opener resting on the desk above her.

  My heart panged that she was unsettled enough to reach for a weapon, but my fury fired through me, uncontrolled. “Tell me who the hell is holding you.” My knuckles cracked as I flexed my hands, activating pain from cuts and bruises I didn’t remember how I earned.

  She licked her lips, her voice breathy and wary. “It’s my brother. Joshua. He, eh...he likes to throw me around. To prove that even though I can bench press more than him in the gym, he can still toss me like a soccer ball.”

  “He’s your brother?” I snatched the device from her, drinking in the sight of a shaggy lawn, a purple-painted house, and a laughing, carefree Gemma in the arms of another man.

  I didn’t fucking care if they were related.

  It wasn’t about that.

  It was about her happiness.

  How she glowed with it, burst with it. Her laughter clear and unafraid. Her face tipped up to the sun as Joshua lowered her carefully to the ground, then tickled her waist before snapping upright and running. Gemma shot to her feet and chased him, threatening to kick his ass all while absolute affection beamed on her face.

  Whoever was recording chuckled and turned the camera on themselves, revealing an older woman who Gemma would resemble in forty years’ time. Wrinkles around her heavy, saddened eyes, and lips a bit too pink with lipstick. Sunshine twinkled on her graying gold hair, granting her beauty even if her grief tried to steal it. “Children.” The woman rolled her brown eyes. “Who would have ’em?” She sighed heavily, her sadness so obvious after witnessing Gemma’s squeals of joy before Joshua spun back into the frame and ripped the recorder from the woman’s hands.

  Angling it up at himself, he winked and ran a hand through his dark blond hair.

  I could see the family resemblance. He and Gemma could’ve been twins.

  “My dear ole mother is only complaining because Gem is such a bad cook. She burned the cupcakes she was baking for us.” He ducked suddenly as Gemma reappeared, snatching the camera and angling it on herself. “Lies! He deliberately picked me up, dragged me out of my house, and proceeded to demand a ca
sh allowance for being a jerk.” She sniffed and bolted around the garden, still holding the camera as Joshua chased her, filling up the view behind. “You ruined those cupcakes, Joshykins, not me!”

  “Grrrr. Come back here, sparkly Gemstone. I deserve payment for being your sibling, and you owe me for that ridiculous nickname. Who else puts up with you and your midnight texts about you going off on some boulder hunt, huh? Piss me off, and you have no one!”

  “Oh, you love it,” she yelled back. “Admit it. You have no one else to bother you at midnight ’cause you suck at women!”

  “I do not.”

  “Do too!”

  “Argh, you wait!” He sped up and launched himself on her. The camera went flying, sending the video spinning before it crashed into the grass and filmed the two squabbling siblings sideways in the dirt.

  “Pay me a million dollars, or else I’ll...I’ll post online that you’d rather kiss a frog than go out with anyone who shows a tiny amount of interest in you!”

  Gemma squirmed and pinched him hard in the side. “Excuse me if I have standards and don’t just hump anyone who smiles at me.” She giggled—a sound I’d never heard, never earned—and added, “Not that you succeed in even doing that. Like I said, totally pathetic in love.”

  “Now, now.” Their mother walked toward the camera, plucking it from the grass and zooming in on the two demented siblings as they rolled onto their backs, kicking each other like toddlers. “Don’t kill each other over cupcakes. And Gem, don’t pick on your brother. He’s not pathetic in love.”

  “He’s demanding money for that very reason.” Gem laughed loudly. “Tell you what. I’ll give you twenty thousand if you go out with my friend who’s been ogling you for months.”

  “Katie?” Joshua wrinkled his nose. “She could kick my ass in her sleep. I’m not safe.”

  “I could kick your ass. And do.” Gemma winked.

  “Yeah, and that’s why I don’t like you. Climber girls are weird.”

  “You like me. You lurve me!”

  “Only if you pay me to!” Joshua threw himself back on her with an animalistic roar. “I’ll show you just how much I’m worth, Gemstone. A far sight more than you, that’s for sure. I mean, who’s calling who pathetic when you choose rocks over a man and can’t bake to save your life?” He grabbed a handful of grass and stuffed it down her T-shirt, making her squeal. “Not to mention a girl who’s too cheap to buy a lawnmower and actually do some gardening!”

  “Okay, that’s enough. The neighbors will talk.” The video suddenly cut off as if their mother had turned off the recorder and gone to discipline her children.

  I tripped backward, falling on my ass and finding it hard to breathe.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  Shit!

  Icy claws sliced my back as panic quickly flooded my bloodstream.

  Gem’s laughter still rang in my ears. Growing louder and louder, a direct contradiction to the heavy silence in the darkened library.

  I couldn’t...

  I can’t breathe.

  My heart felt like it would explode from my chest. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t handle seeing what she’d been like. How carefree she’d been. How light and young and happy.

  Before me.

  Before I’d imprisoned her, used her, dimmed out the light that’d been so wonderfully bright inside her.

  I’d done more than just captured her—I’d snuffed out that light inside her. I’d done so many unforgivable things, but that? God...that was the worst.

  I’d changed her.

  I’d made her sad and scared and—

  “Fuck!” I launched to my feet and backed away, tripping into Storymaker’s throne as vertigo hit me. Gemma’s giggle, her light-hearted wonderful goddamn giggle, continued to echo in my ears.

  I drove both hands into my hair, ignoring my broken arm twingeing, doing my best to yank that giggle free. To rip out everything I’d ever done to her. Doing my best to ignore who I’d been, what I was, and what I’d become because of her.

  I growled at nothing. At everything.

  I wanted to kill Storymaker and all the Fable guests all over again for taking my one chance at happiness and stealing it before I’d even had a chance to try.

  “Kas? Kas, what is it? What’s wrong?” Gem swooped to her feet, placing her recorder on the desk beside the letter opener. I waited for her to grab the weapon. I wanted her to. I wanted her to be armed and threaten me. To force me to keep my distance all while I fucking unraveled.

  But she didn’t.

  She came toward me, arms open, worry blazing in her stare. Worry for me. Kindness for me. So brave. So forgiving, yet...no sign of that effortless happiness she’d had with her brother, in her home, far, far away from me.

  I wanted to be sick.

  I wanted to run.

  Instead, I shot out of the chair and stumbled backward. My legs locked, and I slammed against the wall. The same wall where my blood stained the wallpaper and signs of an earlier breakdown whispered through my memories.

  I flinched as something teased on the outskirts of my thoughts.

  Something black and grave; something I didn’t want to recall.

  “Stay away from me, Gem.” I braced myself, twitching with determination, doing my best to keep my memories at bay.

  “It’s okay.” She held up her hands, acting as if I were a cougar about to attack. “I keep forgetting that all of this will be so new to you. You’ve lived in the place without TV or movies. You’ve probably never seen a home video before—”

  “It’s not that.” I bit out, doing my best to get control of my hurt, my temper, the part of me still so fucking possessive of her. “I know what a video is.”

  Panic licked through me, building into an attack. My nostrils flared, inhaling too fast, doing my best not to give in to a blackout that could arrive at any second because she was too much. Far, far too much for my pitiful mind to handle.

  God, she’d been so happy.

  So free.

  She’d had everything I’d always wanted. A family who joked and jested. A sibling who was whole and not scarred. A home that protected and kept her safe at night instead of housed a hundred monsters.

  I was jealous.

  So fucking jealous.

  And I was also horrified.

  Horrified that I’d changed her from a giggling, happy woman into one who watched me as if her very life was on the line.

  Which it was.

  I was so, so close to snapping.

  I could feel it.

  The looseness of my psyche.

  The shadows of my past.

  The hissing memories just waiting to snatch me.

  She touched me.

  I sucked in a tattered groan.

  She cupped my cheek and interrupted my chaos, and...

  And I couldn’t stop myself.

  Grabbing her by the wrist, I spun her around and shoved her against the wall.

  She let out a little squeak as I placed my palm on her sternum, keeping her trapped. Her eyes widened, the hazel color swirling with golds and greens, hesitation and wariness but no fear, no hate.

  “How do you do it?” I hissed. “How do you look at me like that after everything I’ve done?”

  She flinched, locking her fingers around my wrist where my hand pinned her against the wall. Licking her lips, she whispered, “Because I see you.”

  “But you don’t. You don’t see. You don’t know. Not really.”

  “I know enough.”

  “But you don’t.” I bared my teeth. “You don’t understand that it’s fucking killing me knowing you’re not safe around me. That I lie in bed at night, wanting you so damn much, but not knowing how to treat you. I’m terrified that any moment, I’ll snap and hurt you. I’m afraid, Gem. All the goddamn time. I’m afraid because one kiss from you, a single passing touch, and my mind is no longer mine to control. It lets go. It remembers. And when it remembers, I blank.” I added mo
re weight to my hand, driving her harder against the wall. “I don’t know how much longer I can take this. I feel like I’m going around in circles. I want to keep you, but I can’t. I need you to go, but I honestly don’t know how to say goodbye. But you have to go. You need to leave because I’ve gone and done something really fucking stupid.” I cut myself off, panting hard.

  She trembled in my hold, her tongue wetting her bottom lip. “What have you done?” True fear licked through her stare. “What did you do, Kas?”

  I slid my hand from her sternum to her throat, closing my fingers around the column of muscle. “Something that I can’t undo. Something that means you can’t stay here anymore.”

  She went unnervingly still, highly aware of my fingers locked around her neck. “Kas...”

  “I’m not well,” I groaned, part of me loving her sudden wariness and the other part screaming to stop. Two sides of me. Two sides that would forever rule and condemn me. “I think you already know that though, don’t you?” I ran my thumb over her silky skin, seeing faint bruises from the previous times I’d hurt her.

  How many marks had I left on her?

  How many souvenirs of ownership that were never meant to be given?

  “Kas, look at me,” she murmured, twisting her head a little, asking silently for me to release my grip. I loosened my hold, even though it cost me. Even though I continued to battle between the good and the bad and the monster inside me.

  “Tell me what you did. Did you remember something? Did you do something in your sleep?”

  Fuck, her worry was all about my welfare, not hers.

  She searched my face for signs that I was the one hurting. She didn’t for a second fear for herself. Her kindness reached into my chest and ripped out my godforsaken heart.

  Tipping forward, I wedged my forehead against hers. I breathed her in. I smelled faint threads of woodsmoke and papaya.

  Something hissed on my memories—slithering like a snake, hissing with a forked tongue with things I didn’t want to remember. Things that made sweat roll down my spine.

  “What did you do, Kas?” She nudged her nose with mine, shattering me into pieces.

  I pressed my body against hers, aligning our hips, grazing my lips over her mouth.

  I fell in love with you.

  The sentence flew into my head, loud, obnoxious, flapping on wings made of worry. I tasted them on my tongue. I felt them in the back of my throat. It would be the biggest confession of my life. A heart-breaking admittance that I no longer wanted to be this man. This loner. This beast.