Shane (Damage Control #4)

by Jo Raven

  “I stopped doing what she does.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Going out and getting wasted every night. Bringing random guys home.” She shrugs and sits down on the bed. “Can’t do it anymore.”

  I sit down beside her. “Your mom wants you to do that? Is she fucking nuts?”

  She cracks a tiny smile. “Like mother like daughter, huh?”

  “You’re not…” Hell. “You’re not nuts or stupid, Cass.”

  “She’s upset with me. Because of you.”

  Christ, I want her on my dick. I want to sink inside her, but this snaps me out of my trance. “Me?”

  “I told her...” She swallows, looks away. “Told her I want to be with you.”

  “Jesus, Cass.”

  “See? I am stupid.” She pulls away from me, swings her legs off the bed and prepares to stand.

  “Where are you going?” Shit. “Cass, wait.”

  “She was right,” Cassie is muttering, tugging half-heartedly on her sweater. She won’t turn around, let me see her face, but her voice is cracked. “Don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I shouldn’t have said it, shouldn’t have expected anything, but I couldn’t stop myself—”

  “Cass.” I throw myself at her, grab her around the waist before she gets up. I wrap my arms around her slender frame, hold on tight. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You never said it back.”

  Okay, I’m officially lost. “Said what?”

  “Let me go.” She twists in my hold, breaks it and gets up. She spins around to face me. “You don’t get it.”

  That much is obvious. I get up, eyeing her warily. “What is it that I don’t get?”

  “This.” She waves a hand between us. “Me.”

  The headache is back, hammering behind my eyes. “What the fuck do you want from me, Cass?”

  “Are you seriously asking me this?”

  “You know what? Fuck this.” She won’t even explain, and I knew. I knew from the start I wasn’t what she needed.

  “Really? That’s what you got to say to me?”

  “I don’t know what the hell you want me to say. I ain’t no mind-reader, and I’m fucking tired, so I’m going home. Enjoy your day off.”

  I take her pendant off my neck and the rubber band off my wrist and throw them on the bed, then cross the apartment and walk out.

  Someone with as much baggage as myself, so damn fucked up in the head, well, I should have known I’d end up on my own after all, and that this wasn’t real.

  It was too fucking good to last.

  ***

  I miss her. Miss her so damn much.

  I find myself reaching for the pendant every single fucking time. Reaching for her. When I wake up from yet another nightmare, she’s not by my side. When I pour my darkest memories on the paper, she's not near.

  She’s gone.

  The days go by, slow, empty. Dark. The therapist keeps asking me what happened. Says I’d been doing better, but now I’m backsliding.

  Without her, I’m tethered to the past, not the present. Losing sight of the goddamn future. If ever there was one for me. I used to doubt it, and now those doubts are back.

  I need to fight for myself, I know it. Can’t live for someone else. But the blow of losing her is heavy, and I’m fucking lost, too. Adrift.

  Even drawing won’t help. I think about the drugs again, how they took the pain away.

  Fuck, no.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” Seth is muttering under his breath as he paces the length of my living room. “You didn’t show up at Damage for your training, didn’t show up at the gym, won’t answer your phone. I thought to check the hospitals to see if you were in an accident or something. What the fuck, Shane?”

  I scowl into my glass of Jack and shrug.

  “Your therapist says you’re doing better.”

  She does, huh? Not what she told me last time. In fact she asked the exact same question as Seth.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  “Cassie,” Seth says, and I blink, looking around before I remember she isn’t here, and won’t be coming over. “So that’s the problem.”

  “There ain’t no fucking problem, Seffers.”

  “Fuck you.” He marches up to me and jabs a finger at me, getting in my space until I’m pressed back against the sofa. “Don’t lie to me. Not after everything we’ve been together.”

  Whoa, he’s pissed.

  “She told me I don’t get her.” I press the pencil tip into the paper until it snaps. “That I never said it back.”

  “Never said back what?”

  “That’s exactly what I asked.”

  Seth straightens and rakes his fingers through his short hair. “Dammit. Then you probably weren’t listening, idiot. Women are like you and me. They want you to listen. To understand them.”

  “What the fuck ever.” I throw the pencil against the wall, dump my drawing pad to the floor. “I was listening.”

  “And then you have to tell them what you feel, fuckhead. They can’t read your mind. Tell them you want them, tell them how much they mean to you.”

  Her mother told her she’s stupid not to go out and meet other guys. And I said her mother is nuts. She told her mother she wants to be with me.

  She wants to be with me, and I told her… Nothing. I frown at my fingers, dirty with the graphite from the pencil.

  Should I have said something? Isn’t it obvious how much I want her?

  “Do you love her, cuz?”

  “Yeah.” I push to my feet, wipe my hands on my pants and almost laugh at his shocked expression. “I… need her.”

  “Have you told her?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell her.”

  The tips of my ears burn. “Fuck, I don’t know, man…”

  “Okay, cuz, listen.” Seth rubs a hand over his face. “Cassie came to me weeks ago, when you started having these flashbacks.”

  “What for?”

  “She came to ask me how to help you. If I knew what triggers you had, which I fucking didn’t. Anyway, she said, and I quote, ‘Tell me who hurt him, and I’ll hurt them back.’ Unquote.”

  I stare at him. “She said that?”

  “Yep. So get your head out of your ass, man, and talk to her. Clear this up. Don’t sulk like a baby because you had a fight. Because she wants to know how you feel. No offense but sometimes I wonder that, too. You don’t exactly wear your heart on your sleeve. She cares about you. Hell, the girl has been following you around, checking up on you, making sure you’re all right for some time now. Only you, Shane. She changed. For you. Now go talk to her. Get!”

  Could it be that simple? “What if I’m not what she needs, what if—?”

  “Oh shut up.” Seth leans against the wall, and scratches his jaw. “If I thought I was good enough for Manon I’d have married her and had kids with her already. We’re never good enough, cuz, but we learn. We improve. We’re turning ourselves into the men they need, and they love us enough to give us the chance. So take it before it’s too late.”

  A smile tugs at my lips for the first time in days. “Fine. I’ll talk to her.”

  Seth’s face splits into a grin. “Can’t fucking believe it. Shane is in love. Never thought I’d see the day.”

  The burn spreads over my face. Yeah, well. “That doesn’t mean this will work out, though,” I say.

  “Because you’re a mess?”

  I don’t even reply to that. No need.

  “You can do it, Shane. You’re a good guy, and you deserve to be happy. And I think Cassie is good for you.”

  Only one way to find out, right? By trying. “I have to go by the construction site. They called to tell me they need the helmet, the boots and the jacket back today.”

  “Need a ride?”

  “Nah, I’ll take the bus. Then head over to Cassie’s.”

  He pushes off the wall and unexpectedly grabs me in a bri
ef hug. “It’ll work out fine. I know it.”

  Startled, I say nothing when he pulls back.

  “Call me if you need anything. And call me to tell me how it all went. You owe me that much for giving you love advice.”

  “Love advice? That what you call your stupid ranting?”

  He cuffs me lightly on the head, snickering. “Dickhead.”

  Right back at you, I think but don’t say it until after he’s left, closing the door behind him. And I hope you’re damn right about it all.

  ***

  The bus ride is familiar, the same route I took every day for the past year when going to work. It feels weird and a bit unsettling that I’m carrying my helmet, my boots and heavy, reflective jacket and not wearing them. That I get off at my stop and walk through the wind and driving snow toward the chain-link fence with its “no trespassing” signs and know I’m not here to work.

  Instinctively I reach for the pendant as I enter through the open gate and shiver when I don’t find it.

  What the hell’s there to be afraid of? I’m only here to dump my things and go.

  Get it together, Shane. What’s the matter with you?

  Wiping snowflakes from my eyelashes, I look around, but the place’s deserted. Can’t see anyone. Strange. Even stranger when I enter the office and nobody’s there, either. Just a couple of hours ago Peter texted me that he’d be here, waiting for me.

  I pile the things on a chair and pull out my cell to call him. Can’t just leave the stuff here, in an unlocked office. Anyone could take them. Someone has to be on site. The gates are open, office unlocked…

  Peter’s cell rings—from the desk. Frowning, I disconnect the call and reach for it, then stop myself, the back of my neck prickling.

  Don’t be paranoid. There’s a perfectly good explanation for all this. Peter went… somewhere. To take a leak. He’ll be back in a minute. As for everyone else, maybe they’re having an early day off.

  A scent is winding itself into my senses. Cinnamon. Bleach.

  Fuck, no.

  It’s not real, I tell myself, it’s all in my mind. This place really gets to me, no fucking idea why. I turn toward the door. I’ll check around, see if anyone else is here so I can officially return my stuff and leave.

  Someone’s standing at the door. Two guys. They’re chewing gum, and the cinnamon smell is so strong I can’t breathe. One of them is holding an open can of bleach. He smirks as he walks inside and puts it down.

  “Shane Tucker, right?” He blows a gum bubble, sucks it back inside his mouth. “Wouldn’t want to get the wrong guy.”

  The blood is rushing in my ears like a rising wave. “What do you want?”

  “Payback, little bitch,” the blond one says. “Did you think you’d get away so easily?”

  I’ll make you pay. You know you fucking wanted it. You should never have talked.

  “I don’t know you,” I say, taking a step back. They aren’t Christoph and Marco. I don’t know these assholes.

  “But we know you, don’t we, Cole?” The blond winks to the other. “You betrayed our friends in prison, and we’ll be their hands out here.”

  The fuck. I can’t draw a deep breath. My chest hurts. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Betrayed them,” the dark-haired one says, closing the door, locking it, and the snick of the key turning fires into my mind like a bullet. “Went and blabbed about them to the prison therapist. Don’t you know better, you moronic retard? You don’t tell on the prison kings and go on your fucking merry way. You pay.”

  Oh shit. Even if I could get my brain to work, I don’t have time to reply before they’re on me. The blond grabs me by the hair, pulling my head back, and the other kicks my feet from under me. I go down hard, hitting the floor on my ass.

  I’m on my back. The light dims. Everything twists. The walls are melting, the faces above me distorting.

  No.

  “Miss me, little bitch?” one of them hisses, and I’m slammed back into the memory with no way to escape.

  Fear wraps icy finger around my spine. Pain lances my bones with fire. My skin crawls and burns.

  “No!” I throw punches right and left, blindly. Randomly. Desperately. “Please, no.”

  A heavy work boot hits my ribs and the agony strangles my words. “Your blabbing got people into trouble. Got Marco and Christoph into trouble. So this is their gift to you.”

  Hands rip my jacket off, and when I fight them, I get a punch in the face for my trouble.

  “Did you enjoy our little gifts?” Another kick in my ribs. “The cinnamon chewing gum, the bleach? Marco said you’d remember. He practically conditioned you with those smells. And this.”

  A hard tug on my wet hair, sending spikes of fire into my skull.

  Fuck.

  “Thought you were losing your fucking mind, huh?” he asks, sounding pleased. “Well, guess what. You are.”

  My vision is coming and going, blurry. Someone’s tearing off my sweater, and undoing my belt. I kick wildly, my lungs laboring but no air coming in. My chest hurts like a bitch.

  A pendant. I had a pendant. I reach for it, but there’s nothing there.

  No. This isn’t the past. I left the prison. I lived on the streets. I am training to be a tattoo artist. I met people.

  I met Cassie.

  Cassie.

  She loves me. I need to talk to her. Need to get out of here so I can see her.

  Though I can barely breathe, my eyes clear enough to see the desk, my helmet and jacket and boots on the chair, the two unknown men who’re beating me and doing their best to make me think I’m helpless, caught in the past.

  But I have changed. I’m not the boy who was raped in prison. I’m a man now. I work out, I know defense techniques, I have replayed what happened in prison in my head a thousand times.

  I only need to believe it. Believe this is the present, not an unchangeable memory. This is now, it’s real, and I can fight back.

  It takes me a long moment to gather all my scattered wits and feel my body again, solid and heavy, lying on the floor, feel every limb, test every joint.

  I’m not a puppet to the memory anymore. I can move. I’m free.

  “Hear me, bitch?” the blond is saying, pulling me by the hair. He has a knife in his hand, glinting in the dim light. “I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t forget in a hurry.”

  “I never forget,” I mutter between gritted teeth, grabbing his wrist and pulling, throwing him off balance.

  I lean back as he crashes to the floor with a shout, barely avoiding his flailing arms. My skull burns where he pulled some hair right out as he fell, but I ignore it as I twist around, bracing for the other guy.

  “You wanna play games?” He kicks at me, catches me in the arm, knocks me back. “Then let’s play.”

  “I don’t play games.” A sixth sense makes me move, throw myself sideways as a knife slices over my shoulder from behind, leaving a track of fire.

  “Come on, then,” the guy in front of me says, as the other one grapples me from behind.

  Don’t hesitate. Don’t give them time to get a better grip.

  I knock my elbow back, into the blond’s stomach, my fist up into this face, and turn the second his hold slackens, not waiting to see if I’ve done any damage.

  Good thing, too, as the knife slices at me again, only managing to cut through the layers of fabric and nicking my arm.

  Have to get up. That’s my only chance.

  “Need a hand up?” Hard fingers grab my shoulder, pressing into the wound, startling a yelp out of me.

  “What he needs is to be reminded who he is,” the blond says, staggering to his feet, wiping blood from his nose.

  The brief flash of satisfaction at seeing him bleed fades when he lifts the knife and comes at me.

  Fucking hell.

  I buck up, try to get my feet under me, but the other guy is pushing me down, the pressure on my bleeding shoulder hurting like a mot
herfucker.

  “Not gonna kill you,” the blond says, “yet. First let’s see what I can cut off.”

  A surge of panic swallows the pain, sends me turning and pushing the dark-haired guy away. The blond grabs ahold of my hair again, and as I make a grab for the knife, he slices it through the long strands.

  What the fuck is he doing?

  “I’ll send this to Marco,” he sneers, lifting my hair and sawing it off. He lifts the black tufts like a trophy, grinning widely, like a rictus, his teeth covered in blood.

  My head is suddenly too light.

  I’m taking him down.

  A fist crashes into my kidneys from behind, and I cry out but don’t fall. Turning, I kick at the guy, shatter his kneecap the way Rafe showed me during our training sessions at the gym. Then I bowl into the blond, grappling for the knife.

  My shorn-off hair flutters to the floor around us, light like black feathers.

  The blond tries to kick at me, but I sidestep him, pull his hand back, putting him off-balance. Then I slam my elbow into his back again and again, kick the back of his knees, and wrench the knife from his hand as he goes down.

  A quick glance at the other guy tells me he’s out for the count, clutching his knee and weeping.

  Yeah, that hurts, doesn’t it? You know nothing about pain, fucker.

  I point the knife at the blond, point first. “Stay down.”

  He hesitantly lifts his hands, his eyes wide. Maybe he sees a gun in place of the knife I’m holding. Nothing weird about that in my mind. Happens to me all the time, seeing monsters in place of humans.

  But those who hurt me were humans every time, and I’d do well to remember that.

  I pick up my cell phone from the floor where it fell at some point, and think of calling Cassie—warm skin and soft laughter, love and understanding and acceptance, and she’s all I need in the whole wide world.

  But I hesitate. There’s someone else, someone who needs to save me and let go of his own demons.

  So I call Seth.

  Chapter Twenty

  Cassie

  I miss Shane.

  God, I wish we hadn’t fought. I spend the entire day at work at the gym unable to concentrate. I keep glancing up, hoping to see him.

  He doesn’t show up. Instead of him, I see Rafe pass by, but I’m explaining the enrollment form to a customer, and by the time I surface, Rafe is gone.