by Ace Gray
I was a fucking idiot.
“Have you ever been in love?” Brye asked me from where he swirled his wine, shoved up against his headboard in shadow.
I eyed him for a moment. He didn’t deserve my secrets, my stories, but he’d been vulnerable…
“No,” I answered as I twirled the spaghetti on my fork.
“Always falling for the wrong guy?” His dark laughed pulled a wry one from me.
“All things considered, I was pretty sheltered.”
“You saw the world,” he countered.
“With neither of my parents much farther than an arm’s length.” I sighed as I saw their closeness in a new light. “It always felt like we just belonged together. Now it feels a little bit like a lie.” I kept twirling the half eaten bowl of spaghetti, chewing on my lip instead of the pasta.
“Just because they were being overprotective doesn’t change anything.”
“They weren’t being overprotective of me, they were keeping one eye on this life. They were watching their own backs.”
“Filly…” he sounded almost like he was scolding me.
“After the story your dad told me about them and the way I’ve seen you live your life, I’m not surprised either. Something wicked was always going to catch us, I just never dreamed I’d be the one caught in the snare.”
“That’s my fault.” He leaned back and looked for absolution on the ceiling.
“Mine too.” I took another big bite.
“You got yourself locked in a basement? Twice?” The sarcasm made both of our smirks quirk up.
“Three times actually.”
I pushed my bowl to the side and I pulled my knees to my chest. “I wanted you, Brye, more than I knew how to put into words. I could have painted it. I have a feeling that it would have looked like my insides.”
“And now?”
A deep breath pulled on my chest, unable to lose itself from under the weight of all this. The right answer was I hate you, but the two dead bodies and the bandages on his chest stopped me. The memory of those first moments too. Even some after.
“Life is complicated,” I sighed.
He smiled, small and sad. There was something so tortured but so…hopeful in that look that my heart shuddered. I stood without meaning to, and he twisted toward me. “Wine?”
“Never again.” My eyes went wide remembering how that was where tonight started, what had made my fingertips burn, why I had touched Deirdre. I shuddered.
“It’s just regular wine. I promise.” He took a sip. “I couldn’t handle that again tonight. I may not be able to handle that again ever.”
I nodded, but before he could rise to fill my glass, I crossed the cold floorboards between us. I slid on to the bed and settled against the headboard beside him then reached for the bottle. The glass against my lips felt good. The company…
He took the bottle back and we sat side by side, drinking in silence until the bottle was almost gone.
“So about those bodies…” I started because I honestly didn’t know what else to say. It earned me one of those deep, delicious, honey chuckles of Brye’s. “What’ll happen to them?”
“I imagine they’ll end up at the bottom of the lake or in some fresh concrete.” He shrugged and passed the last sip to me.
“You put bodies in concrete?”
“Well, Emmett will. When I find him.” The edge in his voice raised the hair on the back of my neck.
“Is he missing?” I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“Not even I would have left you down there alone.” The edge from before became a blade. “I can’t believe they tried to brand you. I have half a mind to do it to him.”
I recalled the marks I’d seen on the other girls at dinner. “Is that commonplace around here?”
He didn’t answer at first, but he started to nod. “You’re in the family or against it unless you have that brand.”
“What does the brand mean?”
“That your ours. A possession, not a person, for us to use however we fucking please.” Disgust was thick on his voice. “I used to like it, like that they were toys for me to play with.”
“And now?” I sucked in a deep breath and held it.
“This life looks a lot different today. Seeing it through your eyes… Seeing them almost ruin a woman that I…” His voice trailed off and he let his head hit back against the headboard. “That I’m trying to protect, shook me.”
“You’re doing a crap job of protecting me.” I leaned over onto his shoulder and blew out a deep breath.
“I’m not sure when it shifted from just keeping you alive to something more.”
“I don’t know why it makes me happy to hear that.”
“Emmett said you’d ruin me.” His words were a sucker punch to my stomach. “Look at me in bitch-ass smithereens.”
He shoved away from me and my head fell a little bit before I caught myself just in time to see him raise the bottle in a flash before smashing it against the wall beside us. Glass shattered and tinkled down to the floor and the last few bits of red wine dripped down the frames on the wall. The angel wings on his back fluttered as his rib cage rolled.
“No, Brye.” I reached for him.
As soon as I grabbed him, he winced and a pained cry broke the silence in the room. The scrapes, scares, bruises and the brand he’d suffered because of me kept me from holding him. They kept me from screaming at him too.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine.” He pushed my hands aside then stood. The crunch of glass beneath his feet made me cringe.
“It’s not fine,” I countered.
“I’m fucked up and broken. I can’t really protect you, I can’t really love you. I’m no good for you. Or even to you.”
“Stop.” I darted after him doing what I could to dodge the glass. “Please.” I rounded his big body and pressed my hands to his chest. Well, the spots that wouldn’t hurt him anyway. God, I don’t want to hurt him again. “I know. I know what it’s like to be shattered. To not be yourself. I am so far from feeling normal. But whatever these broken pieces of me feel, they feel it for you.”
My words stopped him cold.
“You have feelings for me?” He sounded like a small little boy. “After everything?”
“Sometimes they’re vengeful, hateful feelings but sometimes…” I sighed. “I feel everything for you.”
He stepped toward me and slid his hands around my waist, pulling me to him.
“I feel everything for you too,” he breathed the words as he bent down, angling for my lips.
So close. Those lips that I admittedly missed so much that I ached on a primal level were a whisper away. His body was sturdy in my hands despite the wounds, and I felt his heart speed up in his chest. The smell that was so uniquely him and spoke of home and happiness filled my senses. If I lifted onto my tippy toes, I would have him. I would kiss him like my whole life depended on it.
But I couldn’t.
“Brye,” I breathed his name and his eyes fluttered open as if I’d broken through a spell. “Right now, I’m still a little stuck on hate.” I spoke softly so he’d understand. “You drugged me. You fingered someone else in front of me. Because of you, I’ll never have my family back, and even if I’m pissed at them, that means something.”
He swallowed tightly.
“You have to give me time.”
“I can’t give you space,” he said through a clenched jaw.
“I accept that.” I let my fingers follow the edge of the bandage I’d put on his chest. “Can you?”
His hands fell from me and his shoulders deflated. “I don’t have a choice.”
I cupped his cheek with my full palm. “I don’t think either of us ever did.”
Our truce was a jagged coastline, beautiful but deadly with dark and vivid colors that waves crashed and beat upon. Every word, every gesture hurt or heeled down deep and made for far too violent mood swings. He convinced
me to sleep on the other side of a pillow wall just before I took metaphorical scissors to his chest and cut out his heart with some idiotic comment. I begged him to come back to bed if only to listen to the cadence of his breath nearby.
That’s what I focused on in the dark of his room. The city lights cast warm streetlight shadows on the beautiful artwork surrounding me but they weren’t my touchpoint anymore. My entire world hinged on his inhale and his exhale.
My mind raced. How had we gotten here? Oddly enough this fucked up world was starting to make sense. Perhaps I recognized it in my genes. But Brye and I? The instant attraction had been life altering. I just didn’t know if I liked the way I had been altered.
I turned over staring at the crisp white pillows making a barricade between us and I pulled on one of the corners. His deep breaths on the other side weren’t enough.
Brye was soft when he was sleeping, not at all the man that had murdered in the basement. I watched his chest rise and fall, his lips move faintly with each breath. His fist flexed where it rested on his pillow above his head and tiny muscles rippled in its wake.
Like this, I could smile in spite of myself. Like this, he wasn’t smashing my heart or setting me up to fall. But did that change anything?
I sighed. And my fingers with their own agenda reached out and started to study the sculpt of Brye’s body. Since I was little, my mother had taught me not to touch the art. It will reach out and grab you, she always said, but I always wanted to feel it.
And I wanted to feel Brye now too.
He was sculpture personified and reminded me of the chiseled marble I’d seen in both Rome and on exhibit in the British Museum. His body was beautiful, showing musculature and veins beneath the flush of barely tanned flesh. He had a strong jaw, rough stubble and small, pert nipples that added life to an otherwise perfect specimen. Well besides the scars.
One shone dimly in the soft hint of light, one I hadn’t seen before. It was long healed, but it zigzagged across his deep valley abs. My finger was too attracted, I was too attracted. I pressed to his warm skin and followed the silky scarred tissue above his belly button as it cut down to his hip then as it dove lower beneath his sweats. His imperfections made his body that much more enticing.
The way his dick twitched when I let my fingers drag along his waistband was almost mouthwatering.
Brye. Fucking beautiful Brye.
My hand crawled down my body with the same unbidden intent as it did across his. He sparked something inside of me showing me beauty and vulnerability and a warped adoration. I slid my finger between my thighs thinking of those things and rubbed once, twice, three times then I stilled with his rough, singular snore.
His hands had been on another woman. His heart had too. He said it was drugs, he said I was different but…
I reached for the pillow I’d slid to the side and pushed it back between us. I turned on my side and snuggled into the pillow beneath me even though there was still a deep ache inside me. I couldn’t touch him, and I sure as fuck couldn’t touch myself thinking about him, but damn if I couldn’t I fall asleep dreaming of his lips pressed to mine.
“Where were you last night?” I asked Emmett when he slid into the seat next to me.
“What do you mean?” He slid sunglasses on and shoved his hands through his hair as he checked his smirk in my rearview mirror.
“You were supposed to be watching over, Filly,” I growled and had to hold back the urge to choke him out.
“Deirdre wanted to play.” He shrugged and his smile spread. “I mean, Filly is your responsibility. You were in the house. What’s the harm in bringing Dre down a peg or two after flying so high?”
“She almost got raped.” My temper was welling in my chest.
“Brye, she’s a whore.” He laughed as he threw his head back and basked in the sun that made me sweat.
“Not Dre,” I snarled as I adjusted the neck of my crisp white shirt. “Filly.”
“Wait, what?” Emmett’s head snapped up and his face drooped. “Why? Your dad will give everyone a ride on that bike when he has her parents where he wants them.”
“No one is going to fuck her,” I roared as I slammed my wrist up and into his throat. The force and the angle pinned him against the window.
“Goddamnit. I knew this would happen,” he hissed as he struggled beneath me.
“That what would happen?” I thumped his head back again and he just wheezed in response. When he turned a lighter shade of purple, I let him go. He flopped back in the car seat and gasped, dragging raw breaths into his lungs. “Answer me,” I said cold and unfeeling as my eyes flicked down and I started to clean the small details of my gun.
“She’s just some chick,” he started. “No, she means less than some chick. She’s not cattle meant to be branded, she’s your enemy meant to be destroyed.” He spoke with his hands. “Instead she fucked you up.” He shoved his finger into my chest.
“I’ll show you fucked up.” I dropped my gun and thrust my thumb into his mouth and like a fish hook, I pulled his face down to my knee. I thrust it up from the seat just when he was low enough. His head snapped back when my knee crashed into his nose. He started bleeding right away and I used my grip on his lip to whip him back.
“You forget your place,” I said as I released him. “You don’t get opinions on my life. My actions. On Filly Ryan. You follow fucking orders.”
“The orders were to keep her alive. She’s alive, isn’t she?” he said, his words muffled as he held the bridge of his nose.
“I ordered you to watch her.” I returned my gaze to my gun, picked it up and started cleaning it.
“Semantics.”
“Can I trust you?” I spat out the words and whipped the gun up to his temple.
“What kind of horse shit is that? How many times have I had your life in my hands? How many times have I saved it?” He twisted his bloody face toward me so that my gun sat centered on his forehead.
“They were going to brand her!” I cocked the gun.
“Dude.” He lifted his hands and softened his voice beneath me. “Maybe I deserve a punishment, but you’re not going to kill me. Not over a Ryan.”
I sat staring at Emmett, but I wasn’t seeing him. I was seeing her. She was so much more than a Ryan. Today, in the backseat of my father’s car, she was the hand that stilled me. I released the cock on my gun and tucked it back in my chest holster.
“I ought to.”
“After the way Deirdre blows a dick, I’d die a happy man.” He laughed tentatively, but it died beneath my withering stare.
“If Filly had been hurt—”
“I got it, Brye.” He pulled his pocket square and started to clean the blood from his face.
I didn’t answer as we slid out of the car. The shift between us was noticeable. He was leaning toward my father. Those rules, those definitions of right. Where I’d always known he would sit at my right hand, I momentarily questioned whether I wanted to sit on the throne at all. Filly made me question it all.
I circled the car letting my fury start simmering again. At him, sure but also at this circumstance. At choosing between Filly and Family, between known and wrong and the unsafe of mystery. But nothing was safe for me.
Emmett stepped away from the passenger door and walked in front of me. Just seeing him made my vision go red. I was here in this place of division and decision because of him. Because of his actions. His thoughtless fucking actions. In one swift move, I twisted and landed an undercut to his kidney. He doubled over and I crashed my knee into his chest. He hit the pavement with his knees hard.
Seeing him on the street was still oddly gratifying but not in the ways it used to be. I liked his blood on the street. I liked that he had crumpled into nothing. I liked that I put him there. But I loved that I’d hurt someone that had hurt Filly.
I had a choice to make now too. Help my friend back to his feet or leave my father’s enforcer in the street. So I straightened my suit jacket a
s if nothing had happened. As if blood wasn’t splattered on the street.
As if the make up of my world wasn’t sure to follow.
Emmett had the Italian boy tied to the chair beneath the swinging single light. Blood dripped from his swollen eye and split lip as Emmett kept up with his shakedown. I watched them as I stretched my split knuckles that had become intimately acquainted with the bones of the kid’s face.
I wanted to get this over with. We could shoot him, send a message, and all without dicking around. That just wasn’t the MacCowan way. We had to draw this out, leave the kid begging for his life, questioning his loyalty, then let him crawl home, see what he chose to do later. It was just another game to my father.
My father who was home with Filly.
“Wrap this up, Emmett.”
“I’m supposed to drag it out.”
“You’re supposed to listen to me,” I sneered. “We just went over this.” I pointed at his nose.
“I’m not going against your father because you punched me.” He shrugged as if that was answer enough.
“I can do it again.”
“I hate to interrupt but what the fuck do you want from me?” The Italian kid interrupted then spat.
I watched with detached amusement as Emmett kicked him in the stomach. He bent down and his lip curled up just before he growled, “We want payment in blood.” He threw his elbow as an exclamation point on the statement.
Emmett pulled a pair of pliers from his pocket and started in on the kid’s fingers. He waited until two of them were contorted and missing fingernails to start asking questions. They were always the same. Who’s moving up in the ranks? Who wants to take over? Are they coming for our territory? For us?
“Emmett, we’re done here,” I said with a sigh.
“Fuck you, Brye.”
I knew what was coming next.
“We’re protecting the family.”
The family I almost scoffed. This was a poor excuse for a family even if we did share a last name and blood. I’d always known that, but Filly made me feel that in my bones. Did she know that she spoke about her parents with such love that tears collected in the corners of her wide eyes? Did she know that her heart shone outward when she did? Even if she was furious.