by Malcom, Anne
His words gave me pause.
I turned. “No, you’re not.”
Cain’s entire body was shaking. “My woman is visiting the psychopath that murdered her fucking family and...raped her.” He ripped the word from his throat like it caused him physical pain. “Without me at her side.”
“You try and come in with me, see what happens,” I warned. “This is not a place for you. And if you don’t respect my wishes, I swear I’ll never talk to you for as long as I fucking live.”
I was sincere. He somehow could tell, because did nothing but nod once. But then he stepped forward as if he were going to take me into his arms. I scuttled back, holding my palm to him. “No,” I whispered. I couldn’t have him get stained with the dirt of my past. I couldn’t have him touch me right now when I felt so dirty.
“Angel, you can’t expect me not to touch you after that,” he hissed, voice raw.
I didn’t let it affect me.
Outwardly.
“That’s exactly what I expect.”
And then I turned and walked away.
Chapter Eight
Cain’s bike followed my car the entire way to the prison.
I hated that I felt comfort in that.
That the sickness I usually felt on this drive was somehow mildly bearable. But my past had been shaken up, and now it was churning through my mind, memories of my parents assaulting me every time I blinked.
I hadn’t let myself think of them since they died.
I hadn’t cried at their funeral.
Hadn’t kept a single picture.
Never spoke about them.
Didn’t let myself miss them.
And now the pain of losing them was somehow as fresh as the moment I discovered their bodies. My vision swam as I entered the gates of the prison.
That couldn’t happen. I couldn’t break down right now. I was not to show an ounce of emotion, of weakness to face this man. That was the point. Every visit was designed to taunt him with the lie that he hadn’t beaten me.
My door was open before I could undo my seatbelt. Cain reached over, undid it for me and pulled me out of the car and into his arms. I wanted to fight him. I should’ve. I didn’t.
His lips landed on my head as I leaned into his embrace, as I sought asylum in it. He let me go enough so our eyes met. “Fuckin’ breaking my heart, angel,” he murmured.
“That’s why I’m not good for you,” I whispered. “I only know how to break things, how to be broken. I’m toxic.”
“No,” he hissed. “You’re the fuckin’ cure to the poison I’ve been livin’ with.” He clutched my neck. “I know what happened to you fucked you up. Chiseled off pieces of you that made it impossible for you to live normal. Without pain. But I’ve got missing pieces too, babe. I’m not askin’ you to cut yourself to fix me, I’m askin’ you to pay fuckin’ attention to the fact that your empty places fit with me.” He stroked my bottom lip with his thumb.
I glanced to the building. “We can’t do this now,” I hedged.
“No, we have to do this now,” he argued. “I know there’s nothin’ I can do to stop you walking into that building because your will is stronger than anyone’s I’ve ever met. But I’m not havin’ you walking in there without knowing that you’re mine. Without fuckin’ admitting it.” His eyes bore into me. “Fuckin’ admit it, angel.”
My eyes shimmered. I wanted to. With every cell in my body. “I can’t,” I choked.
And then I ripped myself out of his arms and walked to the building that housed all my nightmares and horrors built into a person.
* * *
Cain
He watched the doors his woman had disappeared into for forty-six minutes. Didn’t move his gaze from them. Mostly because he couldn’t move a muscle, despite the fact it was fucking freezing. He knew if he moved, it would be to those doors, to get her, his angel, to make sure she wasn’t facing her devil alone.
But he didn’t. Because he had been telling the truth, her will was strong. Strong to her detriment. She promised she’d never speak to him again if he went in there. He believed her. This was a girl who would cut off her own limb without hesitation if it meant surviving. And she had tricked herself into thinking she had to cut out her fucking heart to survive.
He wasn’t going to let her.
The shrill alarm sounding inside the prison gave his thoughts pause. Gave him time for pure and naked fear to run through his veins.
Then he moved.
He sprinted to the entrance.
He managed to get in just as the doors locked behind him.
And there was fucking chaos.
“Hey!” a guard yelled at him as he tried to fight his way through the metal detectors, that obviously screamed as he was still wearing his piece. “You can’t go in there, don’t you hear the alarm? We’re in lockdown.” The guard snatched onto his arm.
Cain paused, though his fury didn’t. “Lockdown?” he bit through his teeth.
“Yeah, there’s a riot—”
Cain started struggling the second the guard spoke. It took two more to hold him. “Let me go,” he roared. “My woman’s in there!”
His woman was in the middle of a fucking prison riot. With the man who’d killed her parents and raped her.
Scarlett
I had gotten all the way through security on autopilot. It was only as I sat in front of the plate glass did I realize I hadn’t been thinking about...him, the entire time. My stomach hadn’t been churning with dread, I wasn’t grinding my teeth with the effort it took to keep my face blank.
Even though I’d left Cain standing in the parking lot, I’d taken some of him with me. His words. His promises. And though I wanted them to be as empty as my fucking heart, they filled me up. And though I hated to admit it, they filled that up too. But there wasn’t something even Cain could do to take away the effect of the man who sat down in front of me.
He didn’t look like much now. The years had not been kind to him. There was an ugly, jagged scar down one side of his face and he was missing his left eye. His skin was wrinkled, spotted with old and new bruises. He was balding, hair almost entirely grey.
He obviously hadn’t made many friends in prison.
But he kept himself busy. Despite most of his face declining to make him look grotesque—nothing like he was on the inside, of course—he had obviously spent his spare time not bettering himself or repenting, but doing push-ups.
He was lean, but all muscle.
“Ah, my favorite part of the year, my Scarlett coming back to visit me,” he said, grinning.
He was missing three teeth.
My stomach turned.
I sank my nails into my palms, digging in hard enough to cut the flesh. I needed pain to get through this, like I did everything in life.
“No, I’m not yours. I’m coming back to remind you of that. And remind you that I’m out here, free. And you’re rotting, from the inside out,” I said evenly. I knew he wanted a reaction. He was a leech. Willing to feed on any emotional blood I spilled in my words, my expression. I gave him nothing.
He didn’t stop smile. “Ah, so strong, Scarlett. That’s what you come here to remind me, right?” He tilted his head. “Or is that what you come here to remind yourself? Because I know that you’re lying. That I haunt your dreams. In those quiet hours, you feel me. You know how I know that? Because I feel you.” He licked his lips.
I tasted bile.
He glanced to his side. “But this visit’s special. Because I get to feel you again. Feel the woman you’ve become. Taste her.”
I jerked with his words, I didn’t have time to rebut, because all hell broke loose.
I didn’t quite know how it started. It had been planned, that much was obvious. Because it was chaos. But organized enough to somehow get the prisoners’ control over the doors that separated the prisoners and the visitors. Some people were screaming as the prisoners filtered through. Others ran into the arms of the criminals
, some covered in blood.
Sirens were deafening, ringing my ears as I stood frozen amongst the chaos. Some people were trying to run, pounding on a door that had likely been locked for security.
Guards fought off prisoners, screaming at visitors to get behind them.
I watched it all with outward calm.
Watched the man who had indeed haunted my dreams for the past twelve years walk calmly through the chaos and to me.
He was still smiling.
Because he likely expected me to be a victim again.
I surprised him with a smile of my own.
Then I attacked.
My blows were true. All of my training had worked me toward this. That dark kismet that put his prison to be so close to where I lived also served me the ability to pin him to the ground, fight the shiv he’d been clutching out of his hand and put it to his through. I met his wide eye.
“You were right,” I said. “This visit is special.”
Then I slit his throat.
Cain
His heart stopped beating the second he stopped pounding on the glass that separated him from the prison, from his angel, the moment she came into view. She was escorted by two guards. And some other visitors who were crying, hysterical. Of course, she was calm, not a tear in sight, no sense of panic in her expression.
She was also covered in fucking blood.
He had never felt more fear in his life than right then, entertaining the feeling of not only her in pain but a world without her in it. His world without her in it. It had only been a week, but a fucking moment was all it took to ensure that his life would always be split into two...before her and after her.
She wasn’t a woman you shook off. You forgot. She was a woman you held onto, if you could get a grip. And that was the only reason she had stayed in her position for as long as she did. Not because she wasn’t good enough, like she believed—he knew for a fact every patched member wanted her on the back of his bike. But because she never let a fucker get a grip. She gave everything but herself.
And she hadn’t even realized she’d been giving it to him. He knew though. And he was sinking his fucking grip to the bone.
He lost all control seeing her, plowed his fist through a guard’s face, snatched a key card and used it to open the door that separated him from his woman. From his bloodstained woman.
He snatched her immediately, searching for an injury, a source of the blood. “Angel,” he choked out. “Did he hurt you?”
To his utter fucking amazement, she smiled. The first real one he’d ever seen on her face. “Oh, no, I hurt him.” She blinked at him. “And I’m ready to admit I’m yours now.”
He loved her.
He’d known it for awhile.
But in that moment, it hit him harder than a fucking bullet.
He was going to marry that woman who came out of a prison riot, covered in the blood of the man who’d ruined her life.
One Week Later
“That’s all your shit, angel?” Cain’s eyes were wide as he took in the small rucksack I handed him.
I grinned as he put it in the saddlebags attached to his bike. “I pack light, the emotional baggage is heavy enough.”
He paused, regarding me intensely as he had been for the past week. As everyone had been for the past week. I knew what they were doing. They were waiting for me to have some kind of breakdown.
I had killed the man who ruined my life, that wasn’t something to break down over, it was something to celebrate.
There was still an investigation going into the prison riot. But the club’s lawyers already assured me that the death was being cited as self-defense and I wouldn’t be charged. The prison was too busy with all the lawsuits from guards and visitor’s families. Two guards had been killed and three visitors injured. I wasn’t even quite sure how I wasn’t. Everything after the blood hitting my face was a blur.
Though that was likely because guards rushed in, one snatching me and hoisting me off to safety while they fired at the prisoners with rubber bullets.
Cain hadn’t let me go since he punched that guard—super hot—and yanked me into his arms with a look of pure and naked dread on his face. And the entire week, he didn’t seem keen to let me be in another room for an extended period of time. Apart from the first night after it happened, when we went to Macy and Hansen’s for dinner because she asked, as if sensing I couldn’t be in a clubhouse full of ghosts after killing one of my demons, and that I couldn’t face my apartment, even with Cain.
After dinner, I’d announced I was going for a walk. Alone. Cain’s jaw had hardened at this, but he didn’t try to stop me. Maybe he sensed I needed to walk in the desert surrounding us to let what happened to sink in.
To breathe.
I expected him to come and find me where I was sitting watching the horizon. But it wasn’t him.
Macy sat down beside me, hand on her stomach, looking out at the barren desert in silence. I knew the silence had a time limit since Macy was not well known for being quiet. Her son inherited this trait, which surprised me since I thought Hansen’s stoic silent genes would’ve won out. He definitely looked outwardly stronger than his tiny, pixie haired wife.
But strength was not about size. Looks could be deceiving, it was usually those who looked the weakest that could surprise you.
Plus, Xander had gotten almost all of Hansen’s physical features, and I guessed craziness was a dominant gene. I liked the kid, I liked all kids. They weren’t full of the world’s bullshit.
They were unguardedly happy. Honest.
But I didn’t like to be around them, since I knew the world’s bullshit would eventually trample all over that happiness.
“I’m sorry,” Macy whispered, surprising me by not spouting some shit about a movie with short guys and hairy feet.
Then again, she wasn’t really up to lecturing us about stupid fucking Hobbit movies lately.
I glanced sideways at her in question.
“For what happened to your family.” She paused, moving her hand from her stomach to lay it atop of mine.
I jerked inwardly at the contact. The warmth of her hand, her kindness against the chill of my soul.
“Hansen told me,” she continued.
I snorted. “And of course Cain told him. Those men gossip like fucking women. No, worse than women, since women know when to keep their mouths shut.”
Macy smiled sadly. “I don’t disagree with you there. But don’t be mad at him...he was worried.”
I sighed. “I’m not mad.”
It was true. It’s not like I swore him to secrecy. He had no reason to guard my ugliest and most horrific memory, banish it to the shadows like I did. Such a thing was not necessary for his survival like it was mine.
“I literally slit the fucker’s throat, it’s not like I expected it to stay quiet,” I continued, thinking about what lay ahead for the Sons of Templar trying to find whoever murdered an entire chapter. “I’m thinking it’s gonna get sufficiently loud before it’s all over.” I looked to her. “And it’s going to end in a grave. Lots of them, probably. Just a question as to who’s gonna be in it.” I picked up some dirt, liking how it crept under my fingernails. “Not that the soil isn’t stained with enough blood as it is.”
Macy’s hand jerked in mine and her eyes welled up.
She was not one to handle death as coldly and callously as I did. She was soft. Her heart was open, big. And why not? She had been safe with a man who would kill the Devil for her. She had a family. A life.
And then death tore that all apart.
It hit her hard.
I knew she considered the club her blood. Knew that they saved her from something I’d never asked her about. I didn’t need other people’s demons taking up residence in my mind. The real estate was spoken for.
Macy sucked in a harsh breath to pull herself together.
I waited.
I didn’t give her kind words. Kind words in the face of deat
h were empty. They were a lie. Plus, I wasn’t the woman to offer kind and comforting words to anyone. I felt about as uncomfortable with a crying woman as every man in the club—and on planet earth—did.
“My parents were murdered in front of me,” she said, now looking out at the desert again. She moved her hand to lightly touch her cheek. “Their blood was warm. Hot. I thought it had burned the skin off my face. I was a kid and I was in shock. I didn’t have a home to go to and spent the rest of my childhood with a bitter and ugly woman. I didn’t have a home until the Sons.”
I blinked in surprise at how similar her story was to mine.
Then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised.
It wasn’t well adjusted women from happy families that found themselves in a biker clubhouse, acting as their property and letting various criminals fuck them whenever they wished.
“We’re both orphans through violent circumstances, are we supposed to braid each other’s hair now?” I asked, hating that I didn’t have the emotional intelligence to respond in any other way.
Macy didn’t flinch away from my harsh tone or cruel words. Instead, she smiled.
That caused me to flinch.
She was a kind person who didn’t blanche at my cruelty, yet I was a cruel person who couldn’t handle kindness.
“You can do with it what you will,” Macy said. “Right now, despite having a husband who loves me, a kid who I adore and a life I didn’t even dare imagine for myself, I feel incredibly lonely without people who had become my constant. You might not show it, because you’re stronger than me, but you’re also kinder than most people give you credit for. So this is just a reminder you’re not alone.”
I chewed at my lip.
She was wrong.
I was alone. Not since the moment my parent’s throats were slit, but from the moment I spouted ugly words to my mother on the night of her death. Because that’s when I separated from a girl who might’ve had a different life. Who knew what would’ve happened if I’d not wanted to go to the party. If I had stayed up with my parents. If I hadn’t lain in my bedroom, my music blasting so I couldn’t hear their screams as they were murdered.
