“Lie,” he accuses. “You’re a nurse. You know what a taser does. You know I’m fine.”
I exhale purposely. “I was more concerned about this.” I tap my temple, looking away, too afraid to see what’s in his eyes.
“Careful,” he warns. “Someone might think we’re friends.”
“We are friends, asshole,” I bite out. “Likely the only ones either of us have got. I hate myself for it, but here we are.” I throw my hands up in the air, growling in frustration.
“Taser aside—which I would’ve paid money to see hit you—you lost her. It’s gotta be playing heavily on your mind. Thought I’d make sure you’re not murdering helpless animals to cope.”
He looks as shocked by my admission as I feel.
Rocco Shay and I are friends and I just admitted it to him.
What the fuck world do I live in?
“You were worried about me.”
“I shouldn’t have been,” I scoff. “You were clearly fine with your friend Maggie.”
“Jealous?” He rounds the counter.
“No,” I groan. “Put your ego back in place. More worried about your friend and whether she knows you’re not capable of deeper feeling.”
His loud laugh booms out, even his genuine amusement cut down by the rage begging to escape.
“Ah, fuck. I can’t wait to tell Mags that.” He sighs in exasperation. “Maggie uses me more than I do her.”
I look affronted and don’t care to hide it. “I doubt it.”
He shakes his head at me, retrieving the bottle of whiskey, holding it in his lap like a shield.
“Maggie is married to some seventy-year-old foreign investment manager. Guy is fucking loaded, but he prefers dipping his cock in twenty-year-old men. Maggie is for show. She’s down for it. She came from nothing. She pretends to be his devoted wife until he carks it and she’s an instant multi-millionaire. Win-win for them both.”
The judgment within me eases, understanding tipping my bottom lip out in appreciation.
“I’m not the only cock she likes to ride. Not that we talk about it, but I go months without seeing her and then she pops up for a quick fuck. She’s got plenty of money, a cushy companionship with a nice guy and a selection of cocks she can service herself with. She ain’t complaining.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” He grins. “Oh.”
Unsure of what else to say, I choose my silence, watching him carefully.
He does much of the same.
“So are you?” I finally ask. “Okay?”
He drops his head, letting his feeble act of composure drop away. Lifting his head, his eyes look black in savagery. A storm of violence overtaking, making his large frame quake with barely held onto restraint.
Head tipped back, he releases a yell so broken down with agony, I step back in fear. The bottle of whiskey he had in his hand is thrown across the room, smashing against the wall on a loud and haunting shatter.
I didn’t see him stand, too focused on the glass exploding against the plasterboard. But I watch him pace. Up and down.
He throws anything that stands in his way.
A table.
Chairs.
A vase.
His phone.
Only stopping when he reaches the mantel. His mom staring back at him from the worn photograph.
“Do I look okay?” he roars. “Does this fucking look okay?” He gestures around his apartment.
“No.”
Most people would leave him. Let him descend into madness, afraid he’d cause them harm. But it shocks me to realize I’m not scared. Not for myself. For him, absolutely.
His hate and rage are filtered inward. Aimed directly at himself in animosity and loathing. Being left alone is the very last thing Rocco needs right now.
“Anything I can do?”
“Wanna suck my cock to help me forget?” he asks sarcastically.
“No.”
“Then leave.”
“No.”
He smiles viciously. “No?” He steps toward me, a warning painted across his face.
“You don’t scare me,” I tell him confidently.
“I should.”
I shake my head. “Why? Because you’re losing your shit right now? We’ve all been here, Shay. Your temper isn’t anything I haven’t felt before.”
He looks saddened by my declaration. “You’re nothin’ like me, beauty. Trust me when I tell you it’s a good fuckin’ thing. Everything I touch... everything I love... it dies.”
A statement. One he whole-heartedly believes.
“Mom. Mira. All my doing. Parker was smart,” he urges me to understand. “He found someone to love more than he does me. He saved himself by finding purity to erase his sins.”
“Surely you don’t believe that?”
“Give me another reason why anyone that gets close to me seems to be stripped of their last breath.”
He looks so broken down by his own unreasonable belief.
“Anyone who got close to Marcus died, Rocco. Lila, Mira, even Kane... they’re on Marcus. Not you.”
Eyes boring into mine, he looks disgusted by my argument. How could I think anyone but him is the reason for life’s downfall? Every shitty thing that this world has on offer is a weight on his shoulders he’s burdened with holding.
“You know,” he ponders, refusing to discuss his responsibility in his mother’s death any further. He drops his ass onto a kitchen stool, thick arms crossed over his chest. “Control is the one thing in my life I crave. I pride myself on it. I can stand in a ring and have some jerk lay blow after blow to my body, but I control that. I let them hit me,” he confesses candidly. “I want them to think that they’re in control because there is nothin’ that fucks with your psyche more than realizin’ you have no fucking control. That you’re helpless. I wait until they’re at their most confident and then I claim it back.”
“Sarah played you at your own game,” I guess.
His head shakes side-to-side, a look of distaste twisting his features. “She didn’t need to. I was outta my depth the moment I stepped into that room. She knew it. I knew it.”
His large palm rubs down his face.
“You have it back now,” I push. “Your control. You could’ve gone out and lost your mind but you didn’t.”
Shame stares out at me from the agony in his eyes. “That’s not true. I couldn’t fight, Cami. I would’ve fucking killed someone. I locked myself in this cage, all but beggin’ Maggie to come over to stop me leavin’.”
“She could stop you from leaving?”
“She can be pretty persuasive.”
“Ew.”
He stands. “Doesn’t matter, you interrupted before I could tell her to fuck off and go on the search for a concussion.”
He’s telling me he didn’t fuck her. That he didn’t want to. Not in the end.
“Who you fuck is none of my business.”
“Was just letting you know,” he murmurs distractedly.
“What about Parker?” I change the subject. “Why not call Parker?”
He eyes me with contempt. “I haven’t shared that your father and I are workin’ together. Add that to the fact that I have no intention of sharin’ that I’m on the search for your mother. He’ll go all sensitive Parker on me. He’ll tell me he needs me, that I matter to him. He gets in my fuckin’ head,” he complains.
“Oh, no,” I gripe sarcastically. “Not someone who loves you. How inconvenient and insensitive of him.”
“Fuck off, Rein,” he grumbles, opening and closing cupboard doors in search of something. “You came to see if I’m okay. I’m clearly not, but I’ve had my meltdown. Your conscience can rest easy.”
Grabbing a bottle of tequila from the last cabinet, he holds it up in triumph. “I’m about thirty shots away from being comatose. Can’t fucking kill anyone then, can I? You can go now.”
I move into the kitchen. “You’re unhinged, Shay. You’re about two-poi
nt-five-seconds away from severing someone’s head from their body. Congratulations, you have a babysitter once again. Where are your fucking limes?”
He glares at me for a beat before tipping his head to the fridge.
Chapter Nineteen
Rocco
My nightmare won’t end.
The screaming. High-pitched and panicked. Over and over again. Their pain is so real, it beats inside of me in time with my heart. A thick and steady strum of surrender.
I can’t place the voice, my head throbbing with recognition, but mind a step behind.
My stomach turns, ten tequila shots too many twisting in my gut, even in sleep.
Please, the voice begs.
No, it cries.
A woman. One begging for her life.
“Mira?” I groan, pushing through the clouds in my head. It’s not just a fucking storm. It’s a tornado of its own making. The horrors of my past rotating so rapidly, I can’t tell the collateral of one fucked-up decision from another.
“HELP!”
Startled into consciousness, I sit up in my bed. My breathing wracks through my body sluggishly. My shoulders lift as my chest expands, dropping back wearily as it deflates. I suck in the deepest breath I can, filling my lungs to capacity.
Thumb and finger to my eye sockets, I press, working to relieve the throb in my temples.
Crying.
It’s soft. A haunting echo in my eardrums.
It also wasn’t part of my nightmare. It was, is, real, infiltrating my unconscious and forcing me awake.
It hasn’t stopped. Gentle whimpers of pain filtering from my living room.
Stumbling down the hall in a sleep-induced stagger, I take in the scene before me.
Camryn sits alone on my couch, body quaking with stuttered sobs. Dark hair, loose from its usual confines, hangs in a knotted mess, shielding her face from view.
Unsure if she’s still asleep or awake, I approach slowly.
“Camryn,” I test, afraid to startle her.
Shaking shoulders aside, she doesn’t move.
Kneeling in front of her, my chest tightens. Beautiful enough to be a painting, memorialized for eternity, she’s the saddest muse I’ve ever laid eyes on. Misery shades any light shining from within her. Caught in the dark corners of her mind, she’s hollow, her soul looking for escape.
I recognize the despondency she’s trapped within. Her haunted thoughts and memories her very own straight jacket, keeping her as an unwilling prisoner. I recognize it because I’ve sat in that very spot, I’ve seen it all from her view and it’s an ugly place to be.
Caught between the limbo of slumber and consciousness, she stares at nothing. Heavy, wet tears dropping from her eyes and sliding down her sleep creased face.
“Beauty,” I call, my hands framing her face, trying to get her eyes to look at mine.
Blinking slowly, she brings me into focus.
“Rocco?” she stutters quietly.
“I’m here,” I assure her.
Hands lifting to touch mine, she looks at me like you would a ghost. Both afraid and intrigued.
“Are you real?” she whispers.
My heart thunders in my chest, my ribs piercing it in pain. “Yeah, baby, I’m real.”
She can’t tell the difference between her own nightmares and reality. To her, they’re one and the same.
After a softly, stuttered breath, her head nods in relief. Eyes closed, she leans forward, pushing the damp touch of her forehead against mine, needing to feel me to believe me.
“You’re here.”
“You’re safe,” I murmur, the salty smell of her tears tickling my nostrils.
“Safe,” she repeats, moving to touch her lips against mine.
“Safe,” I hum against her mouth, too afraid to move.
She kisses me tentatively. A soft press of her tear-stained lips tasting mine. I don’t kiss her back, not confident enough to know that’s what she wants. This is her coping, managing whatever is fucking with her head enough to make her need to kiss me.
She explores my lips slowly, gentle brushes of her mouth caressing mine.
It’s a foreign feeling to be kissed without frantic need. Without the carnal need to fuck. I feel more exposed than I care to be. Stripped bare for her to read with her heart on her lips.
I should pull back, push her away, stop her before I’m tangled up enough to let her keep going. But she stops herself. Her mouth pulling back, teeth grazing along her bottom lip to savor my taste.
What we shared wasn’t a spike of need. It wasn’t a push of desire surging through. A thirst needing to be quenched. There were no lustful urges fusing our mouths together or forcing my hand to grip her hair to not lose her taste. We weren’t fighting to tear off one another’s clothes, to feel each other, skin to skin. I didn’t need to fuck away her fears in the same way she couldn’t fuck away mine.
It was more. So much fucking more.
What Camryn just shared with me was a broken moment full of gratitude. A not-so-simple thank you. An intimate recognition of bearing your soul completely. Of letting another see it, in all its ugly glory and recognizing they didn’t make the decision to turn their back.
Her eyes open, looking directly into mine. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“We’re good,” I refute. “Nothin’ to apologize for.” An uncharacteristic gruffness catches along my throat, making me cough.
Comfortable that she’s settled, I pull my hands from her face, dropping them to the couch.
“You taste like tequila.”
I smile. “You brought the salt.” I glance to her lips, annoyed at the craving I have to touch them again with my mouth.
She pushes my chest, her cheeks darkening in embarrassment. “Twice now you’ve rescued me from me battling monsters in my sleep.”
“Hey.” I grab her chin, forcing her to look at me. “Don’t you dare ever be embarrassed about that. I told you, I’m no stranger to nightmares, Camryn. Do I look weak?”
She shakes her head as best she can with my hand still gripped against her jaw.
“The shit that haunts you in your sleep doesn’t make you weak. Fuck, even the shit that haunts you when you’re awake doesn’t make you weak. Those monsters up there…” I lift my chin, gesturing to her head. “They’re weak, having to wait until we’re at our most vulnerable to gain traction. Fuck them for being too pansy-ass to go up against us at our strongest.”
Her eyelids drop in acceptance, a small smirk pulled along her lips at my bad joke.
“Do your nightmares cause you physical pain?”
Desperate to know she’s not alone, her eyes widen in anguish, begging me to tell her that they do. She wants to hear that I wake up with a rope tied around my heart, the frayed edges squeezing tight enough to stop it from beating. She wants to know that my body aches, recalling every blow I’ve taken against my skin, my bones feeling brittle enough that they’ll break if I breathe. She needs me to acknowledge that the simple act of breathing feels like the world’s greatest burden.
Fear grips my vocal cords. It strangles my voice box, stopping me from speaking. I look like the world’s biggest cunt, but I can’t tell her there are days I wake up in so much pain, I wish for death to claim me. To rescue me from this existence I’ve twisted myself up in.
I can’t confess that my nightmares are enough to make me bleed. That I wake up with tears tracking down my cheeks, making me feel like the fragile little boy who lost his mom and not a grown-ass man who shouldn’t be crying over something that happened almost twenty years ago.
“Pick a movie,” I sniff, standing abruptly, ignoring her plea in favor of my own self-preservation. “I’ll make you a herbal tea.”
She looks torn down, humiliated that she showed me the inner workings of her mind and I all but shit on them. I, like her bad dreams, have taken her power. I pushed her down. Happy enough to let her feel fragile to save myself.
“I’m just gonna use your bat
hroom,” she mumbles.
Standing in the kitchen, I launch my knuckles against the marble of the counter, infuriated at myself, at her, at whatever fucked her so badly in the past.
I should’ve just told her. I should’ve just admitted that I live in a constant state of pain. That she should be stronger than me. That I’ve let my past mistakes define who I am now and I pay for it in blood.
“Fuck.”
Without second-guessing myself, I follow her to the bathroom, ready to confess my sins. Wanting, needing her to know that if she’s alone in this world, she doesn’t have to be. My mind is as chaotic as hers. We share a devotion to pain neither of us can evade.
“Cami,” I call out, pushing at the bathroom door, still currently ajar.
She doesn’t speak, choosing to keep her silence. Her breathing is thick. Long, measured breaths forcing the hairs along my arms to stand on end.
“Look, I’m sorry.” I step into the bathroom, refusing to let her ignore me.
Sitting on the closed toilet lid, her eyes are mesmerized by the river of blood sliding down her thigh, tracking along the back of her knee and along her calf in a ribbon of red.
“What the fuck?” I bellow. “What are you doing?”
My voice startles her enough that the small grey razor blade in her hand falls to the ground, bouncing in a chime that resembles the elevator down to Hell.
I rush forward, grabbing a towel to push it against the cut along her tanned skin.
“It feels better,” she tells me. “To hurt from something I’ve done. I’m in charge.”
It’s then that I see them. Too many to count. Scars littered along her upper thighs confirming this isn’t the first time she’s harmed herself in the search for power.
“Cami,” I whisper.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she accuses quietly. “My nightmares hurt, Rocco. They—”
“Why the fuck do you think I fight?” I yell. “I lied. Of course, my nightmares fucking hurt. They carve away everything that I am, slicing me open and letting me bleed out.”
Her hand grabs onto mine, still grasped tightly to the towel at her skin. She’s shaking, or maybe that’s me. I can’t tell.
“I fight to find power. I let others make me bleed in search of freedom. The agony their fists cause distracts me from every fucked up thought drowning me.” I sigh, dropping my head. “I’m always fucking drowning, beauty.”
Reining Devotion: A Chaotic Rein novel Page 14