Beyond Ecstasy (Beyond #8)

by Kit Rocha

Laughter shredded his throat. It came out rough and mean, and he didn't care. He didn't fucking care. Maybe if it hurt her enough, she'd change her mind about throwing away her fucking life over a future he didn't even want anymore. “You really think that, don't you? Did you ever know me at all?”

  She looked down.

  He clenched his fists against the temptation to advance on her. To press her back against the wall and kiss her until she melted, because he knew her. He'd learned her, studied her, memorized everything he could about her so that she'd be safe trusting him. So he wouldn't hurt her.

  Either she didn't know this would destroy him, or she didn't care. He didn't know which hurt more. “Look at me.”

  Trembling, Jeni met his gaze. She was breathing too fast, shallow and almost panicked.

  Instinct clashed within him. The need to soothe her, to hold her. The need to rage because she'd taken away any chance he might have had to save her.

  “You can't do this,” he whispered. “What if they break you?”

  Her breathing slowed, almost stopped, and a tear slipped down her cheek. “You can't break someone who's already broken.”

  They were both shattered. All his precious control lay in shreds, and his tongue was running away from him again. Not with dreams though, not this time. Nightmares. “You think you can send me back out there, with my home burned down and Shipp's blood—Luna's blood—still on my hands and…what? You think I'll want to live, knowing that I failed you like I failed them? That any time I touch someone, I wreck their lives. That no one trusts me to save them and they're fucking right not to.”

  She pressed one hand to the center of her chest. “What's the alternative? This is all I can do, Hawk.”

  “All you can do now.” He closed his eyes to block out her big, sad eyes, because he couldn't do it. Helplessness could give way to fury, but her pain stirred something worse. “You took away my choice, Jeni, without even fucking asking.”

  “I know I did.”

  Nothing he could say or do mattered now that she'd proven her worth. He could offer himself up, and they might keep him, too. But they wouldn't let her go. Not unless he offered them something they wanted more.

  Like the sectors on a silver platter.

  He considered it. For a few seconds, he actually fucking considered it. Striking a deal for Jeni's safety, betraying the O'Kanes and his family and everyone in their fucking world. Because they wouldn't give her up for information, not when she could convince them she had all they needed. No, they'd want something serious, like sending him back into Four to plunge a knife into Dallas's damn heart.

  And, because she'd backed him into a corner, he had to wonder if he'd do it.

  Maybe.

  His stomach churned with loathing. For himself. For her, for finally dragging him all the way down to the very darkest part of his soul. To the possessive monster who'd do anything, kill anyone, destroy everything if it meant keeping her.

  “You ruined us,” he rasped. “You killed us both.”

  It was too much, too far. The emotion drained from Jeni's face, and she held out the collar. “You should take this. They won't let me keep it.”

  He couldn't touch her. He couldn't take the damn chance. The brush of her fingers against his might be enough to tip the balance, and the monster would slip free. He'd betray himself and everyone he knew, and it wouldn't matter.

  Even if he saved her, she wouldn't be his. Not if he hurt the people she loved to do it.

  “It's yours,” he said, turning away. “I'm not taking it back.”

  He heard her moving, but she didn't say anything for a long time. Then, finally, she sighed. “I didn't expect you to make this easy. I wouldn't ask for that. I don't have a right to. But I thought…” She sighed again. “It doesn't matter.”

  He couldn't touch her, but he couldn't do this, either. Let her spend her last hours standing here, alone and small and scared and bleeding from verbal wounds. He should fill up the rest of the time they had with each other. Try to live the life they'd never have, try to make her feel the love he'd waited too long to offer.

  All of his dreams, all of his fucking naïve fantasies—and this was what he'd built for her. The choice between a slow, painful death, or watching him burn down her family to keep her safe.

  Almost as shitty as what he'd built for himself. Live knowing that he'd let her die, or die knowing he'd ruined what was left of her life.

  “Jeni—”

  The click of the door cut him off. It started to slide open, and Hawk stumbled back, instinctively shielding Jeni.

  A plump blonde woman in white coveralls ducked inside, her ponytail swinging. “Got to go. Not much time.”

  Suspicion clashed with razor-sharp hope. “Go where?”

  One eyebrow rose in an are you kidding me? arch. “Anyplace is better than here, sweetheart. Is that a key?”

  It was on the floor next to Jeni, where he'd dropped it on Peterson's arrival. Without taking his eyes from the woman, Hawk swept it up and started unlocking the cuffs still clasped around his wrists.

  Jeni didn't move. She just stared blankly, a reaction that seemed to elicit more sympathy than his questions. The blonde touched Jeni's shoulder gently. “Come on. Just a little bit longer, and you'll be back home. Coop is fetching Councilman Markovic—”

  “Coop.” The name snapped Jeni to attention. “Bren's friend.”

  “That's right, Bren's friend.”

  Jeni's eyes focused on the woman's face. “You're Tammy.”

  Tammy smiled. “Yeah, see? You're all right. Now let's get out of here.”

  A grunt from the hallway dragged Hawk to the door. Markovic's cell was open, too, and the councilman was on his feet—kind of. An older man with snowy white hair and a face carved with deep lines stood under one of Markovic's arms, bearing his weight as the councilman tried to take a step.

  Coop, the former MP who'd scooped Bren off the streets as a surly orphan and trained him into a soldier. He was stooped with age, but his eyes were sharp as he appraised Hawk. “You look like you went a few rounds, but you're still on your feet. Can you help Markovic?”

  If it meant getting Jeni out of here sooner, Hawk would have crawled on busted limbs over broken glass. The ache in his side bloomed into throbbing pain when he bent to get his shoulder under Markovic's other arm, but he ignored it and braced the councilman's weight. “Where are we going?”

  “Out,” Coop replied. “Tammy?”

  Tammy hustled Jeni out of the cell and past Hawk. He tried to meet Jeni's eyes, but she looked away, and somehow the pain stabbing through his heart made all the rest of it worse.

  It was better this way. Both of them alive, no one betrayed. He wouldn't have the dream or the nightmare, just the brutal, miserable grayness of life that always existed somewhere in between.

  With every miserable step, Hawk told himself it was fine. He told himself over and over, until Coop ushered them out into a loading dock, and he saw the reason Coop had been so vague about the plan.

  Dead bodies filled the back of the truck. Noelle's father lay sprawled across the top—part of his face gone, his remaining eye staring up at the night sky. Jeni balked, but Tammy wrapped an arm around her and whispered, soothing and reassuring in a way Hawk wasn't allowed to be anymore.

  It was still better than death.

  But once Jeni was in the bed of the truck, Hawk slid into place over her. She stiffened beneath him, and he knew he deserved it, but it was his turn to take this choice away from her. He sprawled over her, struggling not to wince with every rock and sway of the truck, and when they stopped at the gate, he listened to Coop's laughing claim that he had a message for Dallas O'Kane and tried not to puke.

  The tarp above him rustled as someone jerked it back, and Hawk lay as still as possible. His blood and bruises would paint him a plenty convincing corpse, but the guards might sink a few bullets into his back anyway, just for the fun of it. But Jeni would be safe, Jeni would survive—
>
  The tarp settled over him again, and the vehicle lurched forward.

  Under him, Jeni choked on an almost-silent sob.

  Broken inside and out, surrounded by death and listening to her cry, Hawk groped for some reason—any reason—to be relieved they hadn't just shot him.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jeni didn't know what day it was.

  It was dark when Coop pulled onto the O'Kane compound, dark when Dylan whisked Hawk and Markovic both off to his underground hospital in Sector Three. She started to follow before remembering that she'd used her safe word. Her collar was in the pocket of her filthy jeans, and she'd smashed Hawk's heart.

  She stayed put. People surrounded her, faces she knew, faces she loved—a tearful Lex, a concerned Ace, Dallas wearing his best stern-but-worried expression. But none of it seemed real. It was all far away, happening to someone else. Because she'd given up on this, on ever seeing home or these people again. It was the price she'd been willing to pay for Hawk's life, something she'd already accepted as fact.

  And yet.

  She sat in the conference room, answering questions, and she understood. It would have been irresponsible of them not to debrief her. She didn't flinch, even when Lex dropped her head to the table and sobbed. Even when Dallas's voice broke. Jeni answered his questions, and watched the window behind him slowly lighten with the growing dawn.

  And she still didn't know what day it was.

  By the time Ace took her by the arm and led her across the courtyard, the sun was peeking up over the eastern horizon. As if nothing had changed, and this was any other day.

  “Jeni.” Gia was waiting for them, her eyes shining with unshed tears. Her arms trembled as she wrapped them around Jeni and held her tight.

  Jeni stood there, breathing in the familiar scent of Gia's perfume. Underneath it, the scents of blood and death lingered. “I need a shower.”

  “I know.” Gia drew her deeper into Ace's bedroom. Ace followed, another familiar presence at her back. “Rachel's on her way back with food and a med kit. Are you hurt anywhere?”

  Everywhere. She didn't realize she'd said it aloud until Ace and Gia traded a serious look. “No, I'm not hurt.”

  “We'll check anyway,” Ace said soothingly, gathering her tangled hair back from her face. “We're gonna get these clothes off, okay? And maybe light them on fire.”

  She kicked off her shoes as they tried to tug her shirt over her head. Her shoulder ached where she'd smashed it against the frame of Hawk's car, but she lifted her arms anyway.

  Gia pulled at her jeans, then stilled. Her gaze flew to Jeni's naked throat as she drew the collar out of her pocket. “What should I do with this?”

  “I don't—” Thinking about it threatened to splinter Jeni's apathy. “Can you just put it somewhere?”

  “I got it.” Ace took it and tossed it onto the table. The metal medallion clinked on the wood, and the tiny sound echoed in Jeni's head as Gia and Ace helped her step out of her jeans and led her toward the open shower.

  Steam already poured from it. Ace coaxed her in and climbed in after her, still fully clothed, ignoring the water that soaked through his T-shirt and jeans. “Baby girl, you are all-over bruises. Do you need some painkillers?”

  For a moment, she thought about it. If they drugged her up, she wouldn't have to worry about anything. She wouldn't have to think. But she'd never used that particular escape, and doing it now seemed...treacherous. Like a narrow path with no place to turn around. “No.”

  “All right.” He tapped her shoulder gently. “Turn around, honey.”

  When her hair was wet, he started to wash it. The shampoo was the stuff Rachel always used, thick and coconut-scented, and Ace worked it through Jeni's hair carefully, avoiding the sore spot on her temple.

  She must have hit her head, too, but she couldn't remember when or how.

  “What day is it?” she asked as he steered her under the hot spray again.

  “What day?” Ace frowned as he drew his fingers through her hair. “Tuesday.”

  Noah had cracked the city's encryption on Sunday. She and Hawk had left for the farm in Six that evening. It had only been one day—one long, interminable fucking day—

  It didn't seem possible that so many things could change in one day. People were dead, an entire sector destroyed, the future she thought she held in the palm of her hand, in her heart, gone.

  In one fucking day.

  The first sob wrenched free of her aching throat like a bullet. She couldn't hold it back, even when Ace gathered her close with a look of alarm. She slumped against him as the dam broke, sob after sob, coming faster and faster until her knees gave way.

  Hawk woke up in a hospital bed.

  A machine beside him beeped softly. A bag hung from the side of it, with a tube leading to an IV attached to his arm. His clothes were gone, replaced by thick bandages around his waist and ribs and another around his arm. He drew his other arm out from beneath the pristine white sheet and stared at the bruises, scrapes, and the tape wrapped around two of his fingers.

  “We almost lost you,” a hoarse voice said next to him.

  Hawk turned his head, and Alya's face swam into focus. She looked tired, her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, her hair scraped back from her sorrow-lined face in a tight knot. She gripped his hand and guided it back to the bed. “You stay still until Dylan comes back around to check on you.”

  It was so bossy, so motherly, he couldn't stop a tired smile. “Yes, ma'am.”

  “Don't you yes ma'am me,” she retorted, her sharp tone in contrast to the gentle hand she laid against his cheek. “You came in here with your brain bleeding and three of your ribs broken. The doctor said it's a miracle you don't have a punctured lung.”

  He didn't? Funny, considering how hard it was to breathe. “Is Jeni okay?”

  Alya's expression softened. “Yes. I haven't seen her, but Lex has been keeping me updated. She has some bumps and bruises from the crash, but otherwise—”

  “The crash.” Hawk swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut. “God, I'm sorry. You trusted me with Luna—”

  “Shh.” His mother stroked his hair, and a memory stirred. An early one, blurry around the edges—the summer a fever had swept across the farms. He'd been four or five years old, and so sick, but his father had reserved the medication for the men and boys strong enough to work the crops. Alya had held Hawk in her arms, rocking him through the tremors, her fingers soft and cool on his forehead as she sang under her breath.

  She'd barely been Luna's age.

  “Big John sent out a search party the first morning,” she said softly. “They found your car and hauled it back. And...her.”

  “Jeni said it was fast. That she wasn't in pain.”

  Alya stroked his hair again, her fingers trembling. “We're planning a memorial for her and Shipp next week at the new farm. He'd want to feel like he was there with us, starting our new lives.”

  Hawk swallowed another lump. “Next week?”

  “So you and Jeni are recovered enough to come.”

  Oh God, she didn't know. Of course she didn't fucking know. Alya could stare at the bruises and the lacerations, number his broken bones, know about his bleeding brain, but the worst injury, the one that might never heal…

  Dylan wouldn't have found his broken heart on any of the scans.

  “Hawk?”

  He had to look at her. He opened his eyes, and the worry creasing her brow broke his heart all over again. She'd watched the man she loved get shot down in front of her, had held his bleeding body in her arms.

  Jeni was still alive. Even if Hawk never got to touch her, even if he never got to hold her, she was safe. Whole.

  And Alya's sympathy would kill him.

  “It's nothing,” he choked out. “We just—we had a fight.”

  “What, baby?”

  Maybe it would be easier to admit it because Alya had always been more like a fond, easily exasperated older sister than a mot
her. Someone not so much older than him, who knew what it was like to grow up hard and not understand all the rules about love. “We broke each other. There was a moment…”

  The horror of it came rushing back. The sick helplessness. Alya squeezed his hand tight and forced him to look at her. “What moment?”

  She traded her life for mine. He couldn't get the words out. Every time he tried, he saw Shipp on the ground, heard Alya's scream.

  He couldn't do this to her.

  “Hawk.” Her voice was as steady and unwavering as her grip. “I don't know what happened between you, but I know about regret.”

  “Alya—”

  “Listen to me.” She leaned closer, her eyes bright. “Shipp tried to love me for years. I beat him back with everything inside me because I was scared of letting anyone close. And those are years I'll never get back, baby. Years I wasted, because I didn't know how few we'd have.”

  His eyes stung. “Ma—”

  “Don't interrupt me.” Her grip tightened until his hand ached. “You take everything on yourself, Hawk. That fool girl's choice to stay with her bastard husband, Luna's choice to run off after Royce's toy. Even all the goddamn mistakes I made with you. You carry our mistakes like you made them happen.”

  The pain in his chest wasn't from the beating. It was a torrent of tears, lodged deep and fighting its way up. “I wanted to protect you. All of you.”

  “That's not a compliment, baby.” She touched his cheek, her eyes swimming. “A little bit is fine. But when you take it too far—it's just another way to make us less than human.”

  He swallowed around the knife in his throat. “I'm not trying to do that.”

  “We know,” she whispered. “It's why we keep letting you do it. But it's not good for us, and it's not good for you. And, Hawk—” Her tears spilled over. “You were a child. You couldn't have protected me. You shouldn't have had to. It was my job to get you the hell out of that nightmare.”

  Hawk wiped the tears from her cheek. “You were a kid, too.”

  “Goddammit, Hawk, stop forgiving me,” she growled, sounding so exasperated that Hawk laughed, and then she was laughing, too, laughing through the tears as he pulled her into a hug that dislodged the sensor on his finger and set the machine behind him off into alarmed screeching.