On light feet, I make it to his closed bedroom door. There are sounds coming from behind it. Sounds of a struggle.
I push open the door on instinct and prepare to swing at whoever comes at me, but freeze on sight.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, all the air from my lungs expelled with the agonizing contraction in my chest.
It’s Lucas, gloriously and beautifully naked.
And lying wrapped up in the arms and legs of a black-haired woman.
The scent of liquor and sickly sweet perfume turn my stomach and my arms wrap around my belly as crippling pain slices through me. My eyes heat and as much as I want to run from the room, I’m transfixed on the vision before me.
His sleek body moves in a punishing rhythm, his weight braced on his elbows, his biceps flexed, and his fist knotted in her hair. For a moment it’s as if I’m standing outside my own body, watching in the light of day what we did together just last night. In this room. This bed. Where I confessed my love.
And he didn’t return it.
As if in slow motion, his eyes move from the woman below him to me. The molten gray rages with a fury I’ve come to know well.
Come to love.
“Gage,” I hiccup the single word.
A slow smile curls his lips and he thrusts hard into the woman beneath him. “I love an audience.”
The woman doesn’t seem to hear him, or care, only locks her ankles at his ass.
He slams into her, his eyes still fixed on me.
She cries out and rips at his shoulders with bright red fingernails. “More,” she moans.
He blinks and looks down at her; the grin he was wearing dissolves. “You know the rules, baby.” He dips low and plunges his tongue into her mouth, the wet sound of their connection blaring in my ears.
She rips her lips from his, catching her breath from his kiss.
“Come on, don’t be Shy.” He stretches out my name while drawing out a long slide into her body.
A single tear tracks down my cheek and my heart shreds.
His gaze finds mine and his eyes flash with concern for a fraction of a second before the woman beneath him cries out, “Fuck me, Lucas…”
Gage blinks and rams his hips forward so hard the girl would fall off the bed if it weren’t for his hold on her hair. “Say my name again.”
“Lucas,” she moans.
He’s an animal. Why did I ever think I could trust him? Or love him.
Whatever progress I thought I’d made with Gage was nothing but smoke and mirrors, the conniving behavior of a liar. He led me to believe we were past all this, that we’d found some common ground and our goals were aligned.
We both only want to love and protect Lucas.
But love isn’t enough to endure this kind of pain.
Feeling rushes back to my legs as the reality crashes down on me. Lucas and I could never work because Gage will never allow me to get close enough. When I get within arm’s reach of capturing Lucas’s heart, Gage throws me back with a cruel reminder of where I stand.
My feet move through the house, down the steps, and to my truck and by the time I’m turned around and headed to my dad’s house, I’ve managed to break into soul-racking sobs. Wiping the moisture from my eyes enough to see the road in front of me, I blaze past my dad’s house and hit the highway with a skid of rubber and cloud of dust.
I can’t go home.
Hell, I can’t be in this town. I’ve saved enough money to get myself to Los Angeles; if Trevor can help me with a place to stay, it might not be too late to salvage my career, go back to the world of emotionless news reporting and surface relationships.
I got too close, let someone in, and paid the price. I need to put enough distance between us so that he can’t hurt me.
I point the truck to the closest road that leads out of Payson and hit the gas.
Gage
A little pain now is better than a lot of pain later.
That’s the shit I keep telling myself as I drown my liver in booze. Hell, it’s the mantra I kept chanting just so I could stay hard enough to screw that Shyann look-alike.
My plan couldn’t have worked any better. Even though neither of us ended up getting off and I kicked her out of my bed the second Shy’s tires disappeared down the drive, it’s the illusion that did it. A finely played ruse that worked out better than I could’ve planned. Luke waking up to this mess would’ve been enough; he would’ve felt guilty, confessed, and Shyann would be out of his life for good. But no, she actually walked in and saw it. Perfect.
I’d pat myself on the back if I had the balls to do it, but there’s one disturbing visual that’s sucking all the fun from my victory. No matter how many shots of Jack I swallow, I can still see Shy’s face. The subtle changes as I watched every emotion move through those big blues like a kaleidoscope. First shock, then confusion, devastation, and finally complete destruction.
I tilt the bottle to my lips, toasting to my success.
It’s what I wanted.
Hell, I’d have been happy for her to walk in on any part of that impromptu date with the drunk I picked up in the bar.
What luck that she walked in at the best part?
Luck.
Right.
Then why the fuck do I feel like spooning my heart out and setting it on fire?
I tell myself this is what needed to be done. Shyann was fucking Luke, then had her lips smashed against that pet fucker’s mouth in the middle of the hospital for the entire town to see.
She humiliated us!
Luke. She humiliated Luke.
I’m sure she’s out there somewhere cursing my name, blaming me for breaking our newly fledged confidence in each other, but fuck her.
She broke it first.
How could she even speak to that asshole after how he treated Luke?
All Luke wanted was to be there for her, but to walk into the hospital and see her hands on that scumbag hours after she was naked in our bed? Fuck her!
I drain the rest of the Jack and toss the bottle across the wood floor, watching it bounce, then spin. My head feels exactly like that damn bottle but pain and dizziness is a motherfucking party compared to what’s going on in my chest.
Right now she must be feeling betrayed, used, fucking walked on. Good. Now we’re both in hell and miserable.
I groan and drop my head into my hands, refusing to acknowledge what my heart is demanding.
“She didn’t love us. She didn’t.” The only bit of love I’ve ever felt from another human being is a long-forgotten memory of my siblings. Except what I felt from Shyann before she stabbed me in the back seemed like love. She accepted me, challenged me, and protected me.
She believed in me, not just me because I’m a part of Luke, but in me.
In Gage.
Oh shit…Did I make a mistake by throwing that drunken slut in Shy’s face? A flash of her hand on that pet dick and then her lips pressed to his pours fire through my veins.
No, this had to be done.
It’s not like I could’ve fought for her, stormed into the hospital and beat that fuckface senseless before dragging her out of there by her hair. Would she even want that, or would she finally see me as the monster I really am? Pretty sure practically drowning her exposed me long before today. Yet she never ran, always came back and even went so far as to try to understand. I didn’t make it easy either. I put up a fight, pushing her away at every opportunity, and she never gave up on us.
She loves us.
Loved us.
“Shit, Luke.” I rub my eyes, hoping it’ll squelch the burn. “Think I may’ve fucked this up.”
Thirty-Five
Shyann
It’s quiet. And for the first time in my life I force myself to welcome the silence.
Staring at the small clearing in the forest they call “a park” because they’ve tied two swings to low-lying branches and threw in a few benches and a garbage can, I contemplate my life.
My bre
athing sounds loud in my ears as frustrated breaths saw through my lungs and eventually turn into defeated puffs of air.
Whatever was left of my heart after my mom died, Gage devoured it whole.
The memory of him with that woman plays through my head on a loop and I think of all the better ways I could’ve handled it. I see myself walking to the bed and ripping Gage off that woman. I envision her scampering for her panties and having to walk down the dirt road tugging on her clothing to cover her naked slut-whore body.
Aaaand I’m back to spitting mad.
This is all Gage. That poor girl did nothing more than fall for a handsome face, solid body, and a shitload of charm. She’s not the whore. He is!
He will stop at nothing to push me away and he knows my feelings for Lucas are also my biggest weakness. I should’ve been on guard rather than opening my heart and freely offering it to be crushed.
Good job, Gage. You win.
What better way to hurt the woman who loves you than to fuck someone else in the bed you’d just made love in?
Love? Ha!
What a joke. I’m starting to wonder if Gage is even capable of the emotion. My guess is no.
Protection, sure.
Love, not so much.
He sure as shit wasn’t protecting me today. Nor was he protecting Lucas. Clarity washes through me and my spine stiffens. His purpose is to watch after Lucas; how is sleeping with someone else helping his cause? It makes no sense. Everything Gage does is calculated, but this feels more like an emotional response. Rash and dirty. I shake my head and against my better judgment attempt to figure him out.
After contemplating the situation, rolling it around in my head and obsessing at all angles until the sun drops behind the mountains, I give up. Chilled and more confused than I was when I got here, I climb back into my truck for the trip home. My phone flashes with multiple notifications; missed calls, messages, and texts.
I swipe at my screen and see two missed calls from my dad, another one from my brother, and then another couple from Trevor. Perfect, now I can call him back and beg for his help. Yay.
I’m sure my dad and brother were checking on me. The text I sent saying “I’m headed to Strawberry for a bit” was probably more worrisome than me not texting at all. After all, no one just goes to Strawberry. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re organizing search-and-rescue this very minute.
I groan and dial my dad’s home phone, wishing his damn cell would get reception at his house so I can just fire off a text and avoid the awkward conversation.
“Nash here.”
I clear my throat, hoping it doesn’t sound like I’ve been crying. “Hey, Dad. Just letting you know I’m on my way—”
“Shy, where are you?”
“I’m just leaving Strawberry.” I turn the key in the ignition to punctuate my words.
“What the hell are you doing in Strawberry?”
I chew my lip for a couple seconds, fighting the urge to break down and confess my shittiest of shitty circumstances with Lucas. “I was at the hospital most of the day, saw Sam…” My words trail off as if that alone is all the explanation he should need.
“Well…you need to come straight home.”
I blink and my foot lays a little heavier on the gas at the seriousness in his voice. “Okay, what’s going on?”
“You got a visitor,” he mumbles under his breath.
“A visitor at your house?”
“Yeah, Shy, where do you think?”
In my head I rattle off the very short list of people who would care to even visit me at my dad’s. But I come up with only one name.
It has to be Lucas.
My stomach churns, knowing full well what he’ll be asking.
He wants to know what happened when he blacked out. He’ll be begging for me to fill in the blanks. And I’m going to have to break him with the truth.
Gage had to know this was going to happen—matter of fact, this was probably all part of the torture. Having to relive what I saw in vivid detail and watch Lucas crumble under the guilt. Chances are Lucas woke up to a similar scene to what I saw and was confused. Surely he’d know he’d been used, and knowing Lucas he’d want to confess and beg for forgiveness.
God, this is all so fucked up.
If I were stronger, I’d keep what I saw to myself, pretend like none of this happened and smother Lucas with all the love I have just to piss Gage off and prove he can’t break me.
A slow grin curls my lips and the sting of Gage’s unfaithfulness dulls.
My heart throbs with excitement and a flicker of evil satisfaction melts the icy freeze of betrayal. Just because Gage is meaner doesn’t mean he’s better.
He thinks he can humiliate me, turn me away by using the man I love as a tool in his sick game.
Funny, I thought Gage knew me better by now.
“Shy, did you hear me?”
I snap out of my thoughts with the sound of my dad’s growled question.
“Yeah, Dad. I’m on my way.”
* * *
Twenty-three minutes later, I pull up to my dad’s house. It’s the second time today I’ve had a fire to race out of my truck and into Lucas’s arms, and the second time today shock has me rooted in place.
“What the fuck…?” I sink into my seat as confusion and the weight of disappointment makes it impossible to move. “What the hell is he doing here?”
The kitchen window fills with the silhouette of my dad, and I wish the earth would open up and swallow me so I wouldn’t have to face what’s going on inside. But it doesn’t.
I drop like dead weight from my truck, dragging my feet to the door. With a fortifying breath, I walk in to see two men. One big and looking way past the point of his tolerance. The other scrawny in comparison with an eager expression I haven’t seen on the man’s face since college.
“Trevor? What’re you doing here?”
He sets down what looks likes a warm and barely touched beer—typical since the snob only drinks IPAs, not the good-ole-boy American labels my dad prefers—and hops off the couch. “Hey, honey.”
I catch the look of disgust on my dad’s face as it mirrors my feelings exactly.
He wraps his arms around me and kisses the side of my head. “Missed you.”
I give him a weak smile but step out of his embrace, feeling somehow like I’m cheating on Lucas—even though Gage was fucking another woman just hours ago. I shake that off and look between the two men.
“What’s going on here?”
Trevor shrugs. “Simple. You’ve got some psycho on the loose, and I need a story to blow LA away. I’m here to cover it.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “The Shadow story got you fired; together we can use him to bring you back.”
“You want me to cover the story?”
His eyes light with excitement. “It’s the break you’ve been waiting for. If we nail this story, it’s your ticket to Los Angeles.”
He’s right. If I report it, the fact that this is my town, that I grew up here, should give me an edge the other reporters don’t have. I could line up some interviews; the people here trust me.
“I guess it could work.”
Trevor laughs. “Of course it’ll work. With you we have a direct connection to the victim as well as a possible connection to someone related to the Menzano Massacre.”
I step back as if I’d been slapped. “Lucas has nothing to do with this.”
“Lucas?” Trevor’s eyes pop open, wide and hungry. “You’re telling me the Menzano who is here in town is the fucking killer himself?” He presses his palms to his forehead, absorbing the information and practically giddy with excitement.
My dad’s eyes narrow on me. “Lucas ain’t a murderer.”
Trevor laughs. “The hell he’s not!”
“Hold on!” I roll my lips between my teeth, searching for calm in a situation that’s about to spin out of control. “Trevor, I’ll help you if you keep the story about the Shadow. Luc
as was already on trial and found innocent.”
“Who cares? It’s sensationalism, sure, but it’s Los Angeles for crying out loud. They don’t want the truth; they want a good story.” His eyes get a faraway look and he scratches his jaw. “We need to talk to the victim. You can set that up, right?”
“No, no way. I’m not helping you frame an innocent man and exposing my friend to this bullshit.”
His face gets hard and he steps in close. “You want the LA job? Get out of this dirt town for good? Because I’m telling you right now, Shy, this is your in.”
A job in Los Angeles is tempting. I’d be free of Payson and its memories, make all my career dreams come true. Go back to a life of detached emotions and save my heart from being rebroken by Gage. The cost? Losing every single person I care about.
I can’t do this. I can’t continue to alienate myself, build walls so high I become the callous career-driven person I was on track to be. Become like Trevor, who no longer sees people as living, breathing, feeling beings but as stepping-stones that’ll lead him to success.
I’d rather experience the pain of loving than be numb to human suffering.
My muscles tense. I move into Trevor’s space, and even though he’s taller, I feel bigger as he shrinks beneath my gaze. “Go home. There’s no story here, at least not one you’ll get from me.”
“Shy, don’t be stupid.”
“Trevor.” My dad’s growled warning has my ex’s eyes darting between us.
A knowing look hits his eyes and his lips twitch. “Mr. Jennings, you’re aware that you’re currently employing an accused felon.”
“Trevor, don’t—”
“Don’t believe that for a second.” My dad pushes up from his leaned stance at the counter and crosses to us, his eyebrows dropped low.
“Dad, he’s lying.” I turn to Trevor, pleading with my eyes and praying he’ll let this drop.
Trevor crosses his arms at his chest as if they form a barrier between us, making him impenetrable to my nonverbal message. “Lucas was accused of killing his entire family when he was only fourteen years old.”
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