Or he’ll probably turn himself in. Go to prison and rot for the rest of his life. I was hyperventilating as I stepped out of the taxi at the hotel Ethan texted me the address of. I scoured the parking lot for his Charger, but it’s not there. I shouldered my bag and eyed the picnic benches out front. Using the awning to hide under, I tucked my legs under me and waited. He wouldn’t do anything until tomorrow night. I had to talk to him first.
He had to see me. See our magic for what it was.
Forever, the purest, darkest form of happiness.
We’d never touch the light completely, but we could turn our darkness into gold.
The night settled around me. One in the morning turned into two. Exhaustion started to burn in my eyes and temples by the time I noticed his Charger. It drove purposefully into the parking lot and into a spot. He got out and closed his door, heading to a room on the first floor. My heart seized at the sight of him.
He wore a long sleeve black shirt and jeans. His hair was combed back and his beard completely shaven off like when he’d been in the hospital. Somehow, I knew it was about his scar. He wanted them to see it. Wanted them to see what they took.
I dug into my purse and fisted my find; silver glinted under the moonlight. When I got close to Brando’s back tire, I looked around for witnesses before driving my switchblade I kept in my purse for emergencies right into his tire. The pop of treading and the rush of hot air blasted me in the face. I did it to all four tires before putting my knife back and heading for his hotel door.
The blinds were drawn, but I could hear the TV on. I felt sick to my stomach. The Brando I saw last hadn’t had murder on his mind. He’d had me. With a shaking hand, I covered the peephole and then knocked, hanging back so he wouldn’t be able to see me from his window.
“Who is it?” he growled on the other end, having figured out someone was messing with him.
I didn’t answer.
I heard him curse before the door flew open and there was a gun pointed at my head. The moment he saw me, the color drained from his face.
He dropped his gun with a growl. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“It was easy to find you. Which means it will be easy for someone else, if you know what I mean.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Do you want to be found? Is that it? You want to go out in glory, using that,” I shoved at his gun, “to avenge your family’s murder? Who are you?” I demanded, seeing a side of him I’d never met.
He stared at me, his mouth slightly ajar in shock, or maybe anger. Then he dropped every single wall he’d ever put in place. “They deserve what I give them.” He patted his chest with his gun. “They took everything from me. And they’ve walked around this earth living, smiling … alive. That isn’t fair.”
Tears immediately burned in my eyes. “No,” I agreed, “it isn’t fair. That wasn’t fair, baby. But you’re not being fair right now either. You’re taking you away from me. And you’re all I have.” I lost it, pointing at him as tears streamed down my face. “How could you do that to me? Murder? Prison? Are you out of your fucking mind? You’re selfish!” I screamed, shoving him into his room. I closed his hotel door and opened my mouth to continue screaming but then I took in the state of his room and paused.
News clippings, worn from years, from his family’s murder, were spread out on the desk, folders stacked full of what I could only assume were clues or notes, stacked precariously beside them. His safe was open on the bed, gaping empty. All the contents that had been inside were now spread out on the bed.
My anger dissipated. I fell to my knees and stared at the objects, my heart shattering.
Ashes. They were his family’s ashes. Three urns, all gleaming metal—he must have spent years polishing them—lay propped up against his pillows. Then there were evidence bags, stuffed full of bloody clothes. The clothes his family had worn that night. Bullet shell casings. The past had lived in that safe.
“Kenny would be twenty-two, you know?” His voice wobbled behind me. “He’d be graduating college. Marrying. Having kids. He’d be alive, Cat, but he’s not and I am. How can I let this pass?”
I touched the smallest urn. Survivor’s guilt had eaten him alive for thirteen years. “You think it should have been you?” Saying that broke me.
“If not me then I should have stayed in the basement. Made it easier on them to kill me. But I had to fight back. I had to be a fucking hero. Now look where it got me. Alone.”
I closed my eyes in misery. I shook my head, speaking with my eyes closed. “No, you don’t mean that. Your family wouldn’t want that. They’re probably up there right now so happy that you’re alive. That you keep them alive too.”
I heard his knees hit the floor and the sob stuck in his voice. “I have to kill them. Just to know a second of peace. You have to understand that. Understand that I love you. That for thirteen years I’ve only known pain. But with you, I got a taste of something that made those thirteen years’ worth it. I love you, Catherine Abbott. But you gotta let me go, baby.”
I fell forward and into the bed, heaving. “No!” I exploded, whirling around on my knees to find him in the same position. The only way for revenge to leave was to put myself in its path. “I will follow you to the end of the fucking earth. You won’t be able to shake me. You go down, you’re taking me with you.”
His face paled further, but his eyes flashed anger. “Really? You kill one and I kill the other?”
Kidding or not, I had no choice. I opened my arms and let my control go. “Take me down, Brando. Avenge your family and destroy me in the process. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? What you were afraid of the entire time?”
“Don’t threaten me.” He pushed to his feet and sucked back his sobs. “Go home.”
“Not happening. You just earned yourself an extremely attractive and pissed off shadow, Detective.” I eyed the gun in his hand. “I love you. I don’t know what we’ll become, but I want to become it with you.” Epiphany’s slammed into me, turning into dreams in an instant. “We can replace what you lost. We can create a new family. But we can’t do that if you go through with this.”
“I have to!” he shouted, hectic energy sizzling in his eyes. “I have to do this. It’s been my only focus for years. There was nothing else. Not until—” He stopped, running a hand through his hair.
“Until me?” I guessed.
He let his hand fall and turned his back to me. “I want that, Cat. Even the idea of forever with you made me happy. Getting it was never an option, though. I knew it, and so did you. This is how it ends. Revenge and regret. Please go home. I had to live with myself after losing my family. I can’t live with myself if I hurt you. Please,” he stressed, glaring down at me, a shimmer of heartache glimmering in his dark green eyes. “Let me do this alone.”
He still hadn’t put his gun down.
“Okay. I’ll get up and leave. Forget I came.” I snorted. “Don’t be fucking stupid, Brando. I didn’t fall in love with a moron. And you didn’t fall in love with someone dumb enough to buy that line. You didn’t do this for me. You’re doing this for your family. A family, who I can guarantee, is not proud of you right now.”
His entire body froze. His eyes darted to the urns, and every single ounce of pain he’d been holding in shone through. “Mom wouldn’t be proud. Kenny either. They were so normal. So good. Dad, on the other hand, would demand I get revenge.” His eyes turned cold and focused on me.
I wondered if he wanted to get revenge for his family, or if he wanted to prove his demons right. Survivor’s guilt probably painted an ugly picture in his head, and for all those years he’s tried his best to prove them right. But they weren’t right. They were the worst kind of wrong.
“From what I can tell, your father isn’t worth throwing your life away. Your mother and your brother want for you what they didn’t get. Be their good, not your father’s bad.”
He brought his hands to his face, the barrel of the gun aimed at the ceiling
. “You don’t even know my father.”
“I know his involvement in a gang took your whole family away. But we can have that again someday. We can create a new family. Don’t you want to be there for your kids?” I wiped my tears, struggling to see him through the blur of my heartache. “For me? I won’t be okay if you’re out of my life. I won’t be okay!” I wailed, cracking wide open. “Forgive yourself and come home with me.”
A low hum of rage grunted in his throat. He lowered the hand with the gun enough to catch my gaze. “I have to do this.”
I nodded stiffly and pushed to my feet. “So then we’re both going down. Fine. Give me a gun.”
“Stop being ridiculous.” He started pacing the small hotel room.
Other than the Texas painting on the wall, it looked identical to the one we’d stayed in on our drive to Portland. That had been a seemingly hard time. But it hadn’t been hard. It had been … us. A burst of good in the middle of bad. Beauty tainted by so much unease.
“Give me a chance. Give me an opportunity to paint your world full of magic, Brando. I only want to make you happy. Can’t you see that?” I approached him, and he paced faster, a caged animal. “If you ever loved me, let me have a chance to mean more to you than your revenge.”
He stopped mid-pace and gaped at me. “If I ever loved you? Are you hearing yourself? I’ve only loved you!” he hissed.
“Then put the gun down and stop fighting. Come home with me. Be with me.” When he hesitated, I saw red. “You know who you’re reminding me of right now?”
“Who?” he shot. So ready to be the bad guy.
“My family. If you let me walk away, you’ll be like them. You lost your family? So did I! But we have this chance, and you’re going to piss all over it.”
Trying to argue with him in that state was like talking to a wall. He heard me, I knew he had, but a mind focused so intensely on retribution couldn’t see reason. It didn’t want reason. It wanted blood.
“Don’t push me away like my family did. Don’t let me walk right back into hell.”
“Catherine,” he begged, desperateness etched in his brutal, handsome face. “I can’t stop this.”
“Yes, you can. That’s what’s so hard. It’s all up to you. And you hate that, don’t you?” I moved closer to him, until I was standing in front of him. I put my hands on his chest and held his red-stained gaze. “Give me the gun.”
He stiffened under my touch, the red in his eyes looking a lot like unstableness.
I had to get him out of there. Out of that hotel. Out of that state. Out of that frame of mind.
Out of his pain and into our love.
He urged the gun into my hand. The moment it was mine, he dropped to his knees and stared helplessly at his family’s urns.
The weight of the last thirteen years pushed him down.
But I would always be there to pick him up.
Chapter Nineteen
Brando
Cat didn’t understand.
I was so sure tomorrow night would end my suffering. I’d planned it out, could envision never feeling that empty again. Knowing my family was at peace.
Their urns ripped me apart. Three bodies amassed to practically nothing. My knees dug into the worn hotel carpet. I wasn’t mad at Cat for knocking down my walls. If the roles were reversed, I’d have done the same. In fact, when I thought of it that way, I didn’t even feel regret. I’d never want her to be where I was now. Desperate for a kill.
It was an ugly place to be, to be on the edge of nothing and knowing that’s all there would ever be.
“What do I do now?” I asked, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears. I didn’t know myself without revenge in my blood. I didn’t know myself without a way out.
“Now you mourn,” she said softly.
My eyes spun, and I pushed unsteadily to my feet. “Wrong. Now I drink.” I grabbed my wallet off the dresser and stuffed my pockets with that, along with my room key. I couldn’t look at her right now. I’d said goodbye. Now she was here. Begging me for forever. “I can’t do forever!” I shouted, wrenching the door open. I tried to close it, but she followed, stomping after me.
“You can’t, or you won’t?”
I’d never been upset with her, and the thread of anger in my chest made me feel fucking terrible. I made a move for my Charger, wanting to put some distance between us. But the moment I got close, I noticed my car was leaning at an odd angle. My eyes shot to the tires, and rage began to bloom in my chest. My cold eyes settled on her. “You popped my fucking tire?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, completely and utterly unperturbed by me and my rage. She was fucking cute, and she was fucking maddening, and she wanted to be mine. But I was fucked up. Didn’t she see that? My entire existence revolved around tomorrow night, and now that that was gone, what was there left? Certainly not the things she’d painted in her mind. Love, family, forever—I wasn’t allowed those things.
“No, I popped all four of your tires, actually.”
I gritted my teeth together and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“To stop you from becoming a soulless murderer, that’s why!” she screeched.
“News flash, sweetheart, I have no fucking soul.” I pulled out my cell to call a tow service, but she stomped forward and grabbed my phone, sending it careening into the oil-slicked asphalt.
“What did I fall in love with then? Your beard was fucking hot, but even that wasn’t enough to keep me coming back.” She shoved me against my car, sending my back into the metal.
My ribs screamed. I relished the pain. That made sense. “Why are you doing this?” I demanded, only feeling slightly bad when she flinched from my tone.
But Catherine Abbott had faced monsters. She wasn’t afraid of me. She stiffened her jaw. “Because I want your magic forever, Brando Hawkins. I want to marry it, and make babies with it, and I want to do it all with you. And I’m not letting you get in the way of that. This is the first time I’ve ever wanted a future with a man. It will be the last time, too. Chin up, Detective. We’re going to be really fucking happy together.”
“That so?” I glared down at her, fury and pain turning my blood toxic. But on the edge of my emotions, there was something else. Something akin to longing. I rarely longed, didn’t think it made sense. But right then, looking into her deep brown eyes thriving with her own cocktail of anger and longing, I wanted to be happy together. “Who say’s we’re allowed that?”
She shrugged, stepping closer to me. She pointed to the sky, she pointed to herself, and then she pointed to me. “We do.”
“You could do better. I’m not going to make you happy. I can’t even make myself happy.” I leaned close, the explosion that detonated between us had created a ruthless wildfire. It singed its way across my heart and turned what piece of it still existed into ash.
Love could be reborn in ash, the same way it could fizzle out.
She put her hands on my chest, her fingers trailing their way down my abdomen. She watched her fingers, following them as she touched me. “You don’t worry about your happiness. I’ll take care of it. You worry about mine.” She peered up at me, vulnerable softness melting her eyes.
My cock hardened in my jeans. I knew I had to do it. Knew I’d never know peace any other way. I crushed her lips with mine. I nodded as we kissed. “I want you to be happy,” I whispered, biting down on her plump bottom lip.
“Then exist. That’s all I need.” She threaded her fingers in my hair and kissed the love out of me. I settled my hands on her hips and turned us around, pinning her to my car. “You popped my tires? Really?” She smiled against my lips, so I kissed her even harder, turning her smile into a moan. I suckled on her sweet tongue, grinding my cock against her belly. She writhed against my car.
I didn’t care that we’re in the parking lot. I wasn’t doing her in my hotel room anyway. Not when my family was in there, and their killers were free.
> I tore my lips free of hers and buried my face in her neck. “What if they don’t forgive me? What if they’re never at peace because I didn’t set them free?”
She reached down to palm my cock through my jeans. Heat flooded my groin as she stroked my shaft through the denim. “There’s nothing to forgive, but yourself.”
I returned my lips to hers, kissing the shit out of her in the parking lot, against my Charger, in my arms. She returned my kiss, matched my depths. Wanted them. I had a feeling this woman would go to the end of hell for me. But she already had. That wasn’t fair. To drag her to hell, to force her into any version of it. I had to keep my focus on something I could achieve. That was to make her happy. And for some twisted reason, I’m who her soul chose to find happiness in.
I knew because I found happiness in hers.
I slid my hand between our hips to cup her pussy through her jeans. Her heat radiated from her mound, burning me sweetly. I palmed her. “I want your pussy. Right now.”
“Right here?” she panted, arching into my hand. “What are we? Sixteen?”
I kissed along her jaw for her neck, pulling on her tender flesh with my teeth. I bit down, lost in her and never wanting to be found. “Right fucking here.” I pulled back enough to reach her button. I ripped it apart; I heard the gold buckle hit the asphalt. I pulled her zipper down and then shoved her jeans and panties down her hip. I kneeled on the ground. It was late. The moon shimmered on the top of the car and shone onto her. There weren’t many people around. I tugged her jeans down her legs and forced her shoes off, leaving her bare from the waist down. The sight of her pussy glistening in the moonlight undid me. I’d almost gave this up. I met her eyes. “I almost lost you.”
She cupped my face in her delicate fingers, the moon shining brightly on her tattoos. Her story. Her life. “You’ll never lose me.”
I rubbed my cheek against her palm. “Spread your legs.”
Her bare feet moved a few inches on the asphalt. I loved the look of her pale supple thighs against the dirty street. I licked up her inner thigh until I found her cunt, and then I buried my tongue between her slick, hot folds. Her taste melted on my tongue and I was rabid in seconds. I spread her thighs farther, licking my way up to her clit. I gathered it between my lips and sucked. I made love to her little pink clit until she was scrabbling at my scalp, until she was screaming at the top of her lungs in the middle of the night as the moon and stars shimmered off her onyx hair.
Hard Love Page 20
