Black Light: Brave

by Smith, Maren

  He’d said a lot more than that really, but all she really remembered was the animalistic sound of Pony’s crying when the detectives told her Ethen was dead.

  God, that sound. Cynthia shivered, the echoes of it still ringing in her foggy head. She’d wanted so much to go in to her, to wrap her arms around her, hug and comfort her. The need was so intense, she would even have gone in with the police and detectives still present. But Pony had taken one look at her and gone wild.

  “This is your fault!” she’d screamed. It took a doctor and two orderlies to hold her to the bed so she wouldn’t rip the IV from her arm and come after her. “He forgave us! He wanted us back, but you killed him! I loved him and you killed him anyway!”

  A nurse made her go back to the waiting area, well out of Pony’s sight. But those wailing screams had gone on and on, drowning out the alert that went out over the speaker system, until they sedated her.

  That had been hours ago. Pony was sleeping now and Cynthia’s fog had lifted. And still she sat glued to that chair in the waiting area, as if she were bound by invisible tethers. The detectives came to talk to her, but Carlson cut them off. “Give it a rest, guys. She’s been through a lot. You can talk to her tomorrow.”

  “And you are?” one of the men asked.

  “Another witness to what happened,” Carlson happily told him, “and the guy who will lawyer her ass up, making it even more difficult for you to talk to her. I know you’re just trying to do your job. I appreciate that, but she’s been through about what she can handle tonight. You can talk to her tomorrow.”

  Sighing, the other man said, “Look—”

  “No,” Carlson cut in. “Unless you can tell me how the hell Ethen got released from prison ahead of his parole date or how he got his hands on a gun, then this conversation is over.”

  “He was already scheduled to be released,” the first man said. “The prison’s overcrowded. They let a bunch of guys go free today. Normally, they try to notify people when that happens, but they must not have got to you all yet. We don’t know where he got the gun, but we’re working on it. If we can just have a word with her while the details of what happened are still fresh in her mind…”

  Carlson remained, an unmovable wall between her and them, until they gave in and left. She couldn’t even find the will to tell him thank you. She was trapped, stuck in a dream-like existence where everything both looked and felt like a nightmare. It didn’t seem real. It had to be happening to someone else. She was sitting comfortably in a movie theater somewhere, watching this all play out onscreen.

  Two sets of jean-clad legs walked out of nowhere, stopping in front of her.

  She looked up, first at the dark-haired, grey-eyed stranger standing in front of her, and then at Spencer just behind him.

  “This is the other one I told you about,” Spencer said.

  “Hello, Cynthia,” the stranger said, and she looked at him. His brown hair was tied back in a ponytail. The paleness of his skin around the neckline and snug sleeves of his white polo shirt showed the sharp contrasting color of a man who spent time out in the sun. He wore a rodeo buckle on the worn leather belt that wrapped his lean waist. His eyes, however, his eyes were what caught her. They were slate gray, almost as pale as Ethen’s. It was a similarity that made her shiver, especially when he lowered himself to squat in front of her, bringing himself down to her level. “Cynthia, my name is Marcus Hawke. Are you all right?”

  She had no idea how even to process that question.

  “I understand you’re a friend of Pony’s. She doesn’t know it yet, but I’m a friend of hers too. I know this is going to be difficult and you won’t understand why, especially after all that’s happened, but she’s coming home with me. You’ve done everything you can for her, but now it’s my turn. I need you to go say your goodbyes. It’s going to be a very long time, if ever, before you see her again.”

  Still trapped in someone else’s movie, Cynthia looked from him to Carlson.

  “I’ll go with you,” Carlson offered, rising to stand and holding out his hand.

  Together, they walked down the hall to Pony’s ICU room. She stopped at the doorway, reluctant to go inside. With the help of whatever sedative the doctors had given her, Pony was still asleep. They’d restrained her, but somewhere in the last few moments of free will that she’d had, she’d turned her face away.

  Carlson touched her shoulder, silent and supportive. She wanted to go inside, but she didn’t. From the open doorway, she drank her visual fill of one who was her last tie to a part of her life that had been far from happy, and then she walked away.

  It was both the hardest and the easiest thing that she had done. It was also the most important.

  Now, they both could be free.

  * * *

  “I don’t want to go home,” Cynthia said unexpectedly, as he was helping her into the car in the hospital parking lot.

  “Okay,” Carlson agreed. Not knowing what else to do, he took her to his house. Two days later, he drove her back to her mother’s for the very last time. The only thing she took with her, was her backpack and the contents of her wallet. Everything else, she left behind. Just like at the hospital, she then walked without a backwards glance. It was Carlson who left a note on the kitchen counter for her mother to find whenever she got home. He had no idea what it would take to fix what had gone wrong in that relationship, but he knew it was beyond what he could do. He made a mental note to get in touch with a family therapist just as soon as the weekend was over.

  Her decision to move in with him should have been one of the happiest milestones in their relationship to date. But right from the beginning Cynthia was acting strangely. She was distant, quiet. He offered his bed, but she took the couch instead. Those first few nights were the hardest. All night long he lay there, torn, wishing she were lying close enough for him to wrap his arms around her. Offering her comfort, gaining comfort from her in return. Maybe even doing something to silence that niggling voice in the back of his head that was starting to wonder if she was only here because he made it easy for her to run away from what problems still remained. She’d said goodbye to Pony and her mother. She hadn’t said goodbye to him yet, but this silent distance she was putting in between them made him wonder if she wasn’t thinking about it. Then she would be free to start completely over somewhere new.

  A less selfish man would probably want that for her, but he just couldn’t bring himself to help her say that last goodbye.

  In the morning, he got up, readied for work at the base, and made them both breakfast. When it came time to kiss her goodbye, he kissed her on the forehead. The less contact he had with her lips, the less it would hurt when she left. Or at least that was his thought. He didn’t know how true it was, it already felt like a knife in the chest because as he was walking out the door, he thought he heard her say, “Siri, where’s the tutorial on how to use my phone?”

  He simply didn’t know if she was still going to be there when he got home that night.

  At lunch, she dutifully texted him pictures of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but he didn’t feel relief until he recognized her sandwich was resting on his plate and that was his dining room table underneath it. A few hours later, she texted again to say detectives were there for her interview.

  He called her. “Do you want me to come home?”

  “No,” she said. “I—I’ve got this.”

  She was still there when he got home that night. She met him at the doorway with her phone in her hand and a shy smile. “The library called. I got the job.”

  He felt like a fraud trying to smile for her. “Congratulations!” That knife hit his chest all over again, when her nervous smile relaxed into a real one.

  He took her out to celebrate, subway sandwiches and ice cream cones, followed by a trip to the mall for two good work outfits and a trip to Goodwill for everything else. If she was going to leave, she needed to at least have clothes, shoes and a coat to keep
her warm.

  “I’ll pay you back,” she promised, which actually pissed him off a little.

  “I don’t mind doing this for you,” he replied, trying not to sound as insulted as he felt. “I can buy my girl the things she really needs, when I think she really needs them.”

  “But I don’t need you to buy me things. I need you to make me be self-sufficient.”

  So she could leave all the faster.

  Shit.

  She slept on the couch again that night, and he slept in his room where the weight of the elephant living between them was positively stifling. His eyes hurt the next morning, he’d gotten so little sleep.

  As he passed her on the way to the coffee pot, he thought her eyes looked a little red too, but that might have been from crying. She promptly ducked into the bathroom to shower, and he couldn’t be sure.

  She burned the breakfast—toast and eggs—but she had it on the table by the time he was ready for work.

  “Pony was the one who did the cooking,” she said apologetically.

  “Tastes just fine to me,” he replied, and ate every bite.

  “I’ll make dinner too, if you want,” she offered in the car as he drove them both to work.

  Carlson made a mental note to pick up Tums on his way to get her again, but it didn’t matter what she made. Good or bad, he was going to eat every bite. Who knew how many more nights they’d have together before she left.

  And then he found out.

  When he picked her up at the library, she met him on the steps with several sheets of computer paper. “Will you take me here?”

  The papers were addresses of rooms to rent. The one she’d circled was a fully furnished house. How she’d found one in the DC area for only $500, he had no idea. But he drove her out to it, stood quietly beside her as she met the two elderly women who lived there, and even shadowed them through that small, albeit pleasantly decorated townhouse on a quiet street not far from a busline capable of taking her to Deanwood, the store, even Black Light, if she chose to keep going.

  Meeting her approval-seeking smile with a nod of his own, he watched her plunk down the deposit required to hold it until she got paid and that was it. The last tie that bound them was severed. She now had a job. She had a place of her own. She just didn’t need him anymore.

  Standing in the middle of her tiny bedroom, furnished with a lamp on a dresser, a narrow twin bed, and an adjacent bathroom that was even smaller than her closet, she hugged herself. “I have my own place now.”

  She looked happy, but in a wide-eyed and scared sort of way.

  “I’m proud of you,” he said softly. He was, too. Even if it did make him sad.

  “I’m independent now.” He heard her swallow, but she held onto her desperate smile.

  “Yes, you are,” he agreed, his heart hurting.

  “I’m not a mooch anymore.”

  He almost gave himself whiplash he looked to her so hard. “What do you mean, mooch?”

  “That’s why you’ve been upset with me these last few days, right?” She worried her hands, watching him uncertainly. “Now you know I’m not using you, so we can go back to normal. Right?”

  “I never once thought of you as a mooch,” he said, harder than perhaps he should have. “Why didn’t you tell me that’s what you were thinking?”

  Her smile died. Her hands continued rubbing nervously together. “Why didn’t you tell me why you were mad?”

  Point taken.

  “I wasn’t mad, I was upset. There’s a… very small but important distinction there.” Softening, somewhat sheepishly, he admitted, “I thought now that you don’t need me anymore, you might be looking for a reason to leave.”

  “Leave you,” she echoed.

  “That was hard enough to say the first time,” he grumbled, embarrassment mounting. “Don’t make me repeat it.”

  She shook her head. “But I don’t need you,” she said, as if that ought to be obvious.

  Knowing it privately in his own head had hurt enough. Hearing her actually say it… God, the knife pushed even deeper.

  Stepping in close to him, she looked up with those soft brown eyes of her begging for understanding. “Sir, I don’t need you. I want you. I”—she bit her bottom lip—“I love you.”

  The knife vanished, but not before twisting first, ripping a line of shock right through the middle of his chest. He gaped at her, caught somewhere between relief, joy, exasperation, irritation, and not a small amount of humility. “Honey, why didn’t you say so?”

  “I didn’t want to be a burden.”

  Exasperation immediately won.

  “I am going to beat your ass,” he promised, but not before pulling her into his tight embrace. “Love is not a burden.”

  Her hands slipped in around him, very tentatively hugging him back. “It is if you don’t feel the same,” she said, soft and sad.

  “God, I’m an idiot.” Closing his eyes, he held her fiercely tight. “Baby,” he whispered in her hair, “these are the arms of a man who loves you so much that he just spent the last few days cutting himself to ribbons on his own fear of losing you. If you want a place of your own, that’s fine. But you’re not staying here tonight.” He pulled back far enough to cup her face. “I am taking you home with me, where you belong and, honey, I’m going to fuck you, have sex with you—”

  “Make love with me?” she interjected already smiling.

  “—until we both are bow-legged,” he promised.

  It was a promise he meant to keep.

  For the rest of his life.

  The End

  About the Author

  Fortunate enough to live with my Daddy Dom, I am a Little, coffee whore, pain slut, administrator at two of my local BDSM dungeons, resident of the wilds of freakin' Kansas (still don't know how I ended up here) and submissive to the love of my life. An International and USA Bestselling Author, I have penned more than 150 novels, novellas and short stories, and am the author of the Masters of the Castle series.

  I also write under the names of Denise Hall, Darla Phelps, and Penny Alley.

  CONNECT WITH HER

  Visit Maren Smith’s blog here:

  http://badgirlscorner.blog

  Also by Maren Smith

  Black Light Releases:

  Shameless (Black Light: Roulette Redux, Book 7)

  The Red Petticoat Saloon Series:

  Jade’s Dragon

  Warming Emerald

  Masters of the Castle Series:

  Book 1, Holding Hannah

  Book 2, Kaylee’s Keeper

  Book 3, Saving Sara

  Book 4, Sweet Sinclair

  Book 5, Chasing Chelsea

  Book 6, Owning O

  Book 7, Maddy Mine

  Book 8, Seducing Sandy

  Witness Protection Program Box Set

  Corbin’s Bend:

  Last Dance for Cadence (Season 1, Book 8)

  Have Paddle, Will Travel (Season 2, Book 7)

  A Few Other Titles:

  B-Flick

  Build-A-Daddy

  The Great Prank

  Jinxie’s Orchids

  Life After Rachel

  The Locket

  The Mountain Man

  Real

  Something Has To Give

  Black Collar Press

  Did you enjoy your visit to Black Light? Have you read the other books in the series?

  Infamous Love, A Black Light Prequel by Livia Grant

  Black Light: Rocked by Livia Grant

  Black Light: Exposed by Jennifer Bene

  Black Light: Valentine Roulette by Various Authors

  Black Light: Suspended by Maggie Ryan

  Black Light: Cuffed by Measha Stone

  Black Light: Rescued by Livia Grant

  Black Light: Roulette Redux by Various Authors

  Complicated Love, A Black Light Novel by Livia Grant

  Black Light: Suspicion by Measha Stone

  Black Light: Obsessed by
Dani René

  Black Light: Fearless by Maren Smith

  Black Light: Possession by LK Shaw

  Black Light: Celebrity Roulette by Various Authors

  Black Light: Purged by Livia Grant

  Black Light: Defended by Golden Angel

  Black Light: Scandalized by Livia Grant

  Black Light: Roulette War by Various Authors

  Black Light: Brave by Maren Smith

  Black Collar Press is a small publishing house started by authors Livia Grant and Jennifer Bene in late 2016. The purpose was simple - to create a place where the erotic, kinky, and exciting worlds they love to explore could thrive and be joined by other like-minded authors.

  If this is something that interests you, please go to the Black Collar Press website and read through the FAQs. If your questions are not answered there, please contact us directly at: blackcollarpress@gmail.com.

  Where to find Black Collar Press:

  Website: http://www.blackcollarpress.com/

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  Enjoy your trip to Black Light? There’s a lot more sexy fun to be had. All of the books in the series can be read as standalone stories and can also be enjoyed in any reading order.

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