by Malcom, Anne
No, it wasn’t any of those changes that stole away Liam.
It was the eyes.
The man in front of me may be alive, but the eyes told me Liam was dead.
It was with that realization that I jerked from my stupor and flailed out of his arms like his touch was acid to my skin. It was. It was acid to my soul.
He didn’t loosen his grip with my struggles, his arms only tightened.
“Let me go!” I screamed like a banshee.
It might’ve been the desperation in my voice, the animal quality to it that made him put me down.
It didn’t matter what it was.
All that mattered was that he was no longer touching me, and I was on shaky feet in front of him.
His eyes devoured me with agony. It was so visceral I could taste it. Poison on my tongue. Everything here was acid, even the air, burning away at everything, flaying the skin from my bones.
His hands were shaking.
I doubted it was because of the fact he’d just used them to pull the trigger on a gun that killed a man. No, I guessed he’d done that enough times to ensure that his hands were steady before, during and after such an act.
He was shaking because of me.
Because I doubted that he expected to be faced with me again.
Of course he didn’t.
Because you don’t go to the trouble of making everyone who knew and loved you think you were dead if you planned on seeing them again.
Funny thing was, I wasn’t shaking.
Not one bit.
I’d turned to marble.
I was oddly calm, a cold and awful kind of peace settling around me with the truth staring me in the face.
Liam was alive.
Breathing.
Heart beating.
He was right in front of me.
Like I’d dreamed of, prayed for, for years.
There was no elation at this fact. No heartbreaking joy.
Nothing.
He opened his mouth, to say what I couldn’t begin to imagine, but the loud and jarring bang of the door to the bar opening and number of motorcycle boots thudding on the concrete snapped his mouth shut.
He’d yanked me around so I was behind him as his brothers rounded the alley, guns drawn.
Interesting, he chose now to protect me.
Not fourteen years ago when it might’ve mattered.
Hansen was the first to lower his gun as he settled his gaze first on the corpse in front of Liam and then me behind him.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “This really what it looks like, Jagger?”
Jagger.
Liam was Jagger.
The man that everyone spoke about. That had been with the club for almost...
Thirteen years.
The pain almost brought me to my knees.
“Depends what it looks like,” Liam replied, voice saturated with faux laziness. The tension in his coiled body told me he was anything but lazy or relaxed.
Hansen shoved his piece into the back of his jeans. The rest of the men followed suit. “It looks like you killed the man we’re meant to interrogate, not only that, you did it in an alley where anyone could see you.” His eyes settled on me. “Where anyone did see you.”
Liam’s—Jagger’s—form stiffened, and I watched his grip tighten on his gun in the flickering streetlight.
I got it then.
I was a witness to a murder. One that implicated the Sons of Templar. I was a loose end.
Liam had positioned himself in front of me because he knew this the second after he recognized me. Because he expected his brothers to...what? Kill me immediately?
“I’ll take care of it,” Liam said through gritted teeth.
Hansen’s face was hard. “No, the club takes care of it.”
I stepped out from behind Liam because I wasn’t going to let him protect me. And because I honestly was more willing to face whatever the club was going to offer me instead of being faced with the reality of this situation. The reality was the patch on Liam’s back, staring at me in grim satisfaction.
Yes, the reaper had taken my fiancé from me.
Just not the conventional one.
He moved to try and grab my hand, I snatched it from his grasp.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” I said to Hansen, my voice even. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
He eyed me, gaze cold and probing. Gone were the easy smiles from before. This was the president of an outlaw MC gauging a threat and figuring out whether to eliminate it. This was death staring me in the face. I was used to the gaze so I didn’t falter.
“It is what I’m worried about,” he said finally. “You’re a smart woman, so I know you realize I can’t take you at your word.”
I nodded once. “I expected as much.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Surprise, maybe. Respect.
His gaze flickered over me, I followed it.
I hadn’t been wearing much, and what I was wearing was covered in the dead man’s blood. I failed to have a reaction to this. I’d been covered in the blood of the dead before.
“Claw, take her back to the club, get her showered, checked out.”
Claw moved forward, no more flirty smile in his eyes, they were cold, jaw hard.
Liam moved around me once more.
“I’ve got her,” he growled, glaring at Claw.
Hansen raised his brow. I wondered if he was going to question why this Jagger character was facing off against his brothers for a woman he wasn’t supposed to know.
I then wondered what Liam’s—Jagger’s—answer might be.
But Hansen didn’t ask.
He nodded once, and if I wasn’t mistaken, the corner of his mouth turned up in what looked like a knowing smile.
“Claw, you take care of the body. Shot wasn’t loud enough to draw the pigs, but let’s not take any chances. If they see this, they’ll want a fatter envelope than normal and I’d rather use it for bullet money. Get a prospect to clean up the blood.” He eyed Liam. “We’ll talk once you take Caroline back to the club.”
“I’m not going with him,” I said, now was when the calm in my voice began to falter.
Hansen’s eyes were hard but kind. “Honey, you don’t have a choice in the matter.”
There was a certainty in his voice.
I recognized it.
I realized it.
I’d just gone from bartender to their prisoner.
I doubted I’d have a choice in a lot of things from here on out, maybe what I’d like for my burial.
* * *
Jagger
He expected her to speak after the doors to the SUV closed and he pulled out of the lot. It felt strange being in the cage, after a month on the bike, he’d only been using this to transport the prisoner.
But strange didn’t even fucking cut it with who was sitting beside him.
Peaches.
The woman who’d haunted his dreams and soul for almost fifteen fucking years. The woman he’d loved with every inch of his soul, for every second since he met her. The woman who he’d resigned himself to bury in his past like the life he’d ended years ago.
But she was here, sitting beside him, covered in blood of a man he’d killed.
She was here, with different hair, with more curves, with more...everything. More beauty than he’d expected possible. And he’d expected a fuck of a lot. Imagined it vividly over the years.
But he never could have imagined her looking like this. He wondered why she’d dyed the pure white hair he’d loved so much.
Maybe because he’d loved it so much.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel with everything that was different about her. And everything that was the same.
She hadn’t spoken.
Not a word.
And they’d been driving for three minutes.
She was staring straight ahead, eyes glassy, stare vacant. He reckoned she was in shock. She’d just watched
a man die.
Fuck, he’d just made her watch a man die.
Then she’d seen the dead come back to life.
Yeah, she was in fucking shock.
So he’d given her the three minutes. Even though the act of keeping silent was physically painful. Even though every part of him screamed at him to pull the car over and yank her into his arms.
But then he remembered her reaction before. The desperate way she’d flailed under his grip. The fear in her voice.
Yeah, he disgusted her now.
He disgusted himself.
So he didn’t pull over.
But he spoke.
Because he couldn’t stand the silence for a second more.
Though he had no idea what to fucking say.
“Peaches,” he began.
“Don’t,” she said immediately.
And he flinched at her voice. The deadness in it.
She didn’t turn her head, didn’t look his way. Her gaze was focused straight ahead.
“Don’t...say anything,” she continued. Her voice was a plea. A prayer.
It speared through his gut.
He gripped the steering wheel tighter, grinding his teeth together to keep his jaw shut.
Silence reigned again.
But not really.
There was never really silence between them. The years fell away.
“I think we’re going to have a wonderful life,” she said after turning the radio down, settling her hand on his thigh and grinning.
She did things like that. Made statements seemingly out of nowhere, when he knew she’d been having all sorts of conversations with herself about it in her head.
It was cute as fuck.
He took his hand off the steering wheel and settled it on hers.
“I know we are,” he agreed.
She smiled wider. “Only if you promise to always play my favorite songs on the radio, never judge me when I sing the wrong words, or tease me when I cry at movies.”
He lifted their intertwined hands and laid his lips on her tiny one.
“I can make you a lot of promises, Peaches, but I can’t promise not to tease you when you cry at movies. You’re a big softie.”
She ripped her hand away and smacked his shoulder. “You ass! My soft heart should be endearing to you.”
He sobered and snatched her hand again. “Baby, I promise everything about you is endearing to me. But the softness of your heart is the most precious thing about you. I promise I’ll do everything in my power to keep it that way.”
Jagger had broken his promise.
That much was apparent as he sat beside the same girl in a different and uglier world than the one in his memories.
She had a hardness about her, something calcified over her eyes that told him she wouldn’t cry at movies anymore. He traced a scar on her cheek with his eyes. One that hadn’t been there before.
He tortured himself with what that tiny mark could’ve been from. What sharp edges of this world had cut through his beautiful soft girl.
But did it matter?
She was scar tissue, and nothing could change that.
He didn’t know what to expect from her, but the continued silence all the way to the club wasn’t that. He expected her to yell. Cry. Demand to know why he wasn’t dead. Why he was wearing a cut and a scar that marred half his face. Why he didn’t come home to her.
He asked himself those questions daily.
But she didn’t utter a single one.
As if the answers didn’t matter.
He guessed they didn’t.
* * *
Caroline
The clubhouse was silent as we walked through the common area I’d only ever seen littered with bodies and pulsating music. Now it was eerily empty, rogue beer bottles scattered around the place.
Someone had obviously called ahead of time to clear it out. I wondered if it was so they could kill me. But they wouldn’t have bothered to bring me back here to do that. They would’ve killed me in that alley, easier to clean up, easier to dump my body in whatever deep grave they were currently digging.
I almost wished for that grave for the seven minutes and thirty-six seconds it took to drive from the bar to the clubhouse. To sit inside an enclosed space with Liam. No worse torture had been invented. I clenched my hands so hard that I cut the insides of my palms with my nails. They were covered in blood now.
What was more blood?
Liam opened a door at the end of a hallway. It was small, clean with an impeccably made bed, military corners and no personal effects.
I walked in silently.
He closed the door behind us.
I held my breath so I wouldn’t have to breathe in his scent.
“Pea—Caroline,” my name was a plea. It was a prayer. Coming out of a familiar mouth but spoken by a stranger. “Please say something.”
I turned, slowly and purposefully to face him. I didn’t look at him, though. I focused on a small rip in the wallpaper to the left of his head.
“I’m covered in blood, Liam,” I said, my voice a sigh. I couldn’t call him Jagger. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. “I can’t believe I have to say that to you.”
I can’t believe I’m saying anything to you, was what was left unsaid.
“Though it’s not the covered in blood part that should come as a surprise, really, this isn’t the first time. Likely won’t be the last,” I added, thinking of the many times I’d stared at dull crimson water draining in the shower as I tried to wash death and reality away.
Liam’s face was cold marble, sculpted with fury, sharp edges, not even counting the long scar marring the face of a stranger who’d once known me better than I knew myself. “It’s the fucking last,” he gritted out.
I smiled at him coldly. “Like you have a say. The fact that you’re standing in front of me and that’s more shocking than being covered in blood means that you don’t have a say in my life, ever.”
“Babe—”
“I need to shower,” I interrupted him. I didn’t have the energy to snap at him for calling me that. I knew the term was throwaway for bikers—which was what he was now—it wasn’t that for Liam. It was a term of endearment. But there was nothing dear between us now.
He clenched his jaw but nodded once, violently.
Everything that he did now was violent. It wasn’t just that jagged scar on his face. It was him. Every moment, every inhale and exhale was fierce. Foreign.
“He pulled open drawers to expose neatly folded tees, similar to the one he was wearing now. Simple gray, pressed, with flecks of blood staining it. I wondered if he would go to the trouble of trying to wash the blood out or just throw it in the trash.
The fact that this was his room should’ve surprised me. Liam had always been disorganized. Messy. Of course, all teenage boys were messy, I guessed. All I knew of him was a boy, long dead. This was a man who made his bed with military corners, had neatly folded tees in an impersonal room at a biker clubhouse, and a man who shot people in the face without hesitation.
He threw some sweats on the bed, along with a tee, eyes moving up and down my body.
I shivered at the intensity of his gaze, as if the air had turned to winter.
He snapped his eyes up. “Change into those.” He jerked his head to the bed.
I wanted to argue against putting anything that had been on his body, that smelled like him, on my own. But I couldn’t. My clothes, what little there were of them, were ruined. No great loss. But it wasn’t like I was free to go home for jeans and a tee.
I wondered when, or if, I’d be free to go home. Home to the shitty apartment that definitely wasn’t home. Home to the town that should’ve felt safe to me but was now filled with emotional landmines with this ugly truth staring me in the face.
“I’ll find somethin’ from Macy, something your size,” he continued.
Ah, so I guessed I wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. I hoped Macy—who I was yet to meet beca
use she’d just given birth—had a more covered sense of style than Scarlett.
“Towels are in the bathroom,” Liam continued. His eyes darted sideways, fists clenched. He was obviously struggling. Uneasy.
I couldn’t find it in me to care.
“Wait,” I said as he turned to leave.
He stopped immediately.
I sucked in a harsh breath.
Fuck, I really didn’t want to do this. But there was no other choice. I was covered in blood. I needed to shower. I could’ve tried to do it the alternative way, but that would’ve likely had me having a panic attack on the bathroom floor for an hour, I didn’t have an hour. And if I was honest with myself, I didn’t have the emotional strength to get through it.
“Can you stay?” I asked, trying not to make my voice sound small and pathetic. “In the room, I mean.” I pointed to the bed. “While I shower.” I paused. “I can’t, um, I don’t handle it very well...showering in strange places alone.”
I held my breath as the words sunk in. Waited for the inevitable question. I was a reporter, so I knew there were always questions. I was used to them. Answering them investigative mode worked so it barely even took my breath away when I explained it like I was reporting from a war zone, where I was more comfortable than the war zone that was my head.
Every part of him changed as my words hit him. He was a man that knew trauma, obviously. And from what I’d seen, he knew pain. In a different way than him, I knew it too. So I knew there were ways to spot it in what people said, the tone of their voice, everything. He was clocking mine, likely running through all the scenarios that would have me needing to make such a request.
I’d thought he was violent before, but as my words ran into the air and over him, he physically changed. Something etched into his body, into his bones. Something that made it impossible to deny that he cared about me.
He clenched his hands into fists at his sides, not taking his eyes off me, not moving.