“That’s not fair,” I cry out.
“What isn’t fair is tomorrow when you look in the mirror you’re going to see the bruises on your neck, bruises that should never be there but you won’t care. You’ll make excuses for me and that’s not fair. It’s not fair to the strong girl I selfishly weakened by making her mine.”
“What are you saying?”
“I can’t even look at you,” he whispers. “I can’t fucking look at you knowing I put my hands on you, Gina.”
“It wasn’t your fault!”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he screams right back at me. “Don’t be that woman.”
“Stryker,” I plead, tears falling from my eyes as I frantically try to stop him from what he’s about to do.
“I’m not that guy, Gina. Honest to God, I’m not the guy who puts his hands on a woman. Once is enough for me. I won’t be the man that hurts you,” he rasps.
“You’re hurting me right now.”
“Words, they’re just words,” he mutters. “You’ll forget them but you won’t forget that I almost choked you. I could’ve killed you.”
“You’re being dramatic,” I sneer.
“No, pretty girl, I’m being real,” he whispers. “I promised you I’d protect you, I just never figured I’d be protecting you from myself.”
“Please stop this,” I cry. “Please, let’s just cool it okay? Think about what you’re doing.”
“I know what I’m doing and I should’ve done it before I let it get this far,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“Stryker don’t leave. You just need to talk to somebody. They have these…” My voice trails off as I run my fingers through my hair trying to find my words, “…they have dogs for men and women who suffer from PTSD. We’ll go tomorrow and get one, maybe it will help.”
He steps forward and his eyes soften as he lifts his hand. I breathe a sigh of relief and close my eyes, anticipating his touch but it never comes. He shoves his hands into his pocket and takes two painful steps backward.
“I’ll make sure your brother knows he needs to make arrangements for your safety.”
I want to scream.
I want to shake him.
I want to fucking smack him for making me this vulnerable girl.
More than anything I want to heal him.
I want to take the nightmare he’s living and bury it.
I want to be his hero.
But he doesn’t ask me what I want.
He walks out the door, leaving a trail of blood and the pieces of my broken heart in his wake.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Someone banging on my front door drags me from sleep. I lift my head from the carpet and for a moment I wonder why I’m on the floor. Then the horror of the night before smacks me in the face as I stare through my swollen eyes and spot Stryker’s blood stains on the rug. The knocking on the door persists and I scramble to my feet. My eyes burn and the lids feel like lead. I guess crying yourself to sleep will do that to you.
I haven’t cried like that since my mother passed away.
Death.
It gets me every time.
The death of my mother.
The death of my relationship.
Both endings left me an emotional mess.
Wearing nothing but Stryker’s t-shirt, I make my way to the front door and pull it open, praying it’s his apologetic face that greets me.
A part of me knew he wouldn’t come back, but I still held onto hope.
Wondering when I became such a girl, and if this hopeless romantic disease I have is just a temporary thing or if I will remain a lovesick fool forever, I stare at my cousin.
“Christ, what the hell happened to you?”
The real Gina would have a witty comeback but that girl flew the coop and the one she left behind burst into tears. Being able to count on one hand how many times you’ve cried in your life becomes a real hardship when you fall apart. Nobody knows how to deal with the broken fragments of you and they panic.
Celeste totally panics, kind of ironic considering she’s had her fair share of breakdowns and should be an expert in tears and heartbreak. I suppose it’s different when it’s your own heart you’re scraping off the floor.
A heart only breaks when you give it to someone and trust they won’t commit the crime of breaking it.
I can’t tell if I’m more sad or angry.
Sad it’s over.
Angry because I allowed this to happen.
“Okay, deep breaths,” Celeste instructs as she wraps an arm around my shoulders and walks me toward my couch. “In and out,” she whispers.
Drawing in a deep breath, I wipe my eyes with the back of my hands and stare back at her.
“Why does anyone ever fall in love?”
Her eyes widen at the question but she quickly recovers.
“Well, that’s easy,” she says, tilting her head to the side. “A world without love isn’t really a world worth living in. Love makes everything worth it.”
“Then why do people lose it.”
“Because they’re not tough enough to keep it. Love isn’t easy, it’s a test of will,” she says thoughtfully, pausing to study me. “You fell for the bodyguard slash biker didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I admit miserably.
“You always have to go big or go home, that’s your problem, Gina. Your first love couldn’t be the devoted nerd who can’t believe he snagged the hot stockbroker. No, you had to play with the big dogs and fall for the bad boy.”
“He’s not really a bad boy,” I argue, reaching for the box of tissues on the coffee table.
“I beg to differ. He wears a leather jacket with a reaper on his back and declares himself a Satan’s Knight. None of those guys are choir boys and when they hold church I’m pretty sure no one’s passing out communion wafers.”
“You’re not helping,” I groan.
“Sorry, you’re much better at this than I am. I’m usually the one in hysterics,” she sighs.
“Tell me about it,” I mutter. “Maybe I’m over reacting. I mean this all just happened, maybe he needs time to cool off and get his bearings. Then he’ll come back and everything will be fine.”
“What exactly happened?”
I glance down at my thumb, bring it to my lips and chew on the cuticle, a nervous habit I developed after my mother’s death.
“What do you know about PTSD?”
Leaning back against the couch, she brings her knees up to her chin and sighs.
“I know it’s no joke, and that society doesn’t take it nearly as seriously as they should. Seventy million people in this world suffer a traumatic experience at least once in their lifetime and twenty percent are diagnosed with PTSD, most of them veterans.”
“Stryker is a veteran. He served in Afghanistan not too long ago and the things he saw, the acts of war he committed, they all resonated with him. He lost every one of the guys he was stationed with on some mission,” I reveal, dropping my thumb. “He left war, but it never left him.”
She nods in understanding.
“I’ve seen so many men come into the hospital at the end of their rope, with nowhere else to turn begging the doctors to ‘fix them’. One guy told us he we went back to his recruiting officer and pleaded with him to send him back because coming home and being forced to live a normal life wasn’t an option for him anymore. It’s really sad because our government will invest billions of dollars sending humans to Mars but they won’t adequately fund treatment for our vets. There’s a man, as soon as you get off the Victory Boulevard exit on the Staten Island Expressway, he’s there every day, with no legs sitting on the side of the road in a wheelchair begging for money because he fought for his country and when he was done, after he lost his legs...we washed our hands of him.”
“How do you help them?” I whisper, lifting my eyes back to my cousin. “If not all of them, how do you help one? How do
you save one man before it’s too late?”
“What do you mean too late?”
“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head. “All I meant was how do you save them before they’re the man on the side of the road,” I lie.
Listening to the facts, having the ugly truth forced down my throat is too much and I stop worrying about my broken heart and think about the man who sat on a bench with me, in front of the ocean, and admitted that he’s tried more than once to end his life. How do you ignore that? How do we as human beings get to ignore that? It’s a goddamn shame that a man like Stryker can come back home and live a nightmare.
“I don’t know that you can save them,” she whispers. “I know you can try but all we’re guaranteed in this world is taxes and death,” she says sadly, reaching over to place her hand on my knee. “If he’s suffering from PTSD don’t write him off just yet, Gina. Put yourself in his shoes and be sure before you close the door on him.”
“I didn’t close the door he did. I know he needs help, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to help him but how do you help someone who thinks they’re not worthy. I’ll sit here and wait for him to come back but I don’t think he’s going to, he’s too selfless to come back to me.”
I don’t think it.
I know it.
The same way I knew when I first met him he’d be unlike everyone else in my life. Like I knew he’d be the guy that came into my life and reminded me of the things I wanted that I had long buried. He’d make me want to be the girl no one saw, the one I kept hidden. He’d make that girl shine.
And he did.
But the light has been turned off, and it’s not just me left in the darkness but him as well.
I only pray he doesn’t let it swallow him whole.
Sitting on the cobblestone path in front of the gates of Rocco’s mansion with a loaded gun in my lap and the terror of what I’d done weighing heavy on my head and heart, I wait for the gangster who hasn’t shown his face or answered my calls in days.
I want to blame him.
I want to blame my club.
Hell, I want to blame my country, anyone but myself and these hands that were wrapped around Gina’s neck.
Her pretty green eyes wide with shock and fear are all I can see. Her cries for me to stay are all I hear. Her touch lingers as she gently tries to bring me back to her, away from the rooftop and the rifle in my hand, away from the mother using her son in a plot of terror. I taste blood in my mouth from biting my cheek as I watch her make excuses for me. She’s completely tarnished my senses, leaving me useless and at the mercy of the memory of what I did.
I knew better, but I ignored everything embedded in my soul to indulge in her and my twisted need to protect her.
Some protector I am.
I let my head get the best of me, let myself believe I could be a man worth the dick between his legs, but I’m no man, no hero I’m no better than my piece of shit, father.
It doesn’t matter if I have an army behind me or a band of brothers willing and able to have my back, I’ll never be able to save her from the man I am, and no threat is more severe than the one of a man with a loaded gun, ready to take his own life.
Lifting my head to watch as a black Lincoln Navigator rolls up the street, I wrap my hand firmly around the gun and stare blankly at the SUV until it comes to a complete stop in front of the gates. Rocco jumps out of the back of the car, a disheveled mess and stares at me in horror.
“She’s fine,” I tell him, watching as he grabs his knees and draws out a sigh of relief. He stares at the gun in my hand and then diverts his eyes to the dried blood that stains my pants.
“You need to put your boy Johnny back on her,” I say. The tone of my voice demands he bring his attention back to my face and I stare at him long and hard. “You make sure he guards her with his life. If he’s not willing to sacrifice his own life for hers then you find someone better, someone who only gives a fuck if she lives.”
“Johnny’s gone,” he informs me. “I’ve got my men—”
“Find someone else,” I demand, not giving a damn about the details of his right hands disappearance. “Or do it yourself. Tie her up and drag her by her hair if she doesn’t listen. She won’t listen so that’s probably what you’ll have to do.”
“What happened?”
“It doesn’t matter what happened. What matters is that you listen to every fucking word I’m about to tell you and you take them as serious as you would your next breath because if you don’t I’ll see to it that you don’t get a chance to fill those lungs again.”
He narrows his eyes as I wrap my finger around the trigger and push myself onto my feet. Grunting through the pain in my leg, I stand and aim my gun at him. The man in the driver’s seat jumps out of the truck and reaches for his gun.
“It’s okay,” Rocco tells him. “He won’t shoot me.”
“You sound sure about that,” I comment, taking a step closer.
“I am because I’m listening to everything you're saying,” he replies.
I nod.
“Good,” I hiss, keeping my gun steady. My leg feels like it’s on fire but I try to ignore it and keep my weight balanced between both legs. “You call Jack Parrish and tell him everything you know about Yankovich. Every fucking thing. Do not leave out anything. Make him understand how serious it is. Tell him about Gina, fucking show him a goddamn picture of her, make him see beauty in a world full of ugly and demand he and the club help you keep her safe. Admit defeat, tell him you’re in over your head, get down on your fucking knees and beg him if you have to.”
“You could do that you know. He’ll listen to you before he’ll listen to me,” he tries to persuade me.
“I could but I’m not going to. This is all you, pretty boy,” I inform him as I limp toward my bike and lower my gun. Closing my eyes, her face comes into sight and I wonder if every time I close my eyes if that will happen. I wonder if it’s her face I’ll see the final time I close my eyes. Will her face be the last thing I see?
Groaning, I throw my leg over my bike and tuck my gun into the waistband of my cargos before turning back to Rocco.
“Keep our girl safe,” I say.
My words are meant to be a warning but they sound more like a plea.
I stare at him long and hard as I grip the handlebars of my bike and send him another plea.
A silent one.
One my eyes beg him to understand.
Keep the beauty alive in the ugly.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I thought I had it all figured out. I measured success by the designer shoes lined in my closet and the handbags I had to match each pair. I prided myself on being an independent woman who didn’t need to rely on a man to support her financially or to buy her nice things. I didn’t need a man to lavish me with fancy presents. I bought them myself. I didn’t need a man to take me on vacation. I had a passport in my top drawer waiting for its first stamp.
I didn’t need or want for anything.
Lies.
I wanted all the things I couldn’t give myself.
I wanted to be loved.
I wanted a man to look at me and take my breath away every single time.
I wanted to belong to someone.
I don’t know if I always wanted them, if I was always this lonely and simply too blind by success to realize it or if they became my wants after he came into my life.
The biker full of dirty promises who fulfilled every single one he ever made.
Except one.
Except the last one.
Stryker promised he’d never allow himself the risk to hurt me again, but walking away from me, from us—it hurt me more than anything.
I waited for him to come back, prayed for it even, but he never did. For the first few days I worried what he might do to himself. I feared for his safety and his state of mind. Then worry and fear turned to anger.
Old habits are
hard to break and so the world doesn’t know I’m broken. No one knows I’m grieving a love I never truly had in the first place. I’m the girl with a smile on her face, strutting down the avenue like she can buy and sell every store front. I’m the girl with her head held so high that everyone thinks has the perfect life.
I’m the lonely girl who should get a fucking Oscar for the performance she puts on every damn day of her life. The girl who’s going to go home to her empty apartment and fix herself a bologna sandwich because that’s all that’s left of the man she fell in love with.
Powering down my computer and pushing back my chair, I move to grab my briefcase off the floor when my office door swings open. Forgetting about the briefcase, I brace my hands on the desk and stare at the intruder.
I’m firing my secretary.
“Don’t you ever knock?” I ask my brother. I’m shocked to see him here; since Stryker disappeared, Rocco has supplied me with a not so subtle guard, one that sits on the corner of my office eating hot dogs from the food truck. Maybe my brother got wind of the shitty employee he hired, or the poor guy had a heart attack from ingesting all those hot dogs, either scenario would explain why the big, burly beast didn’t trail me to my office this morning. It would also give my brother an excuse to barge into my office like he gives a damn.
“Hi, Rocco, it’s good to see you,” he mocks. “Thanks, sis…”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was in the area,” he shrugs his shoulders, lying through his teeth. “Thought maybe we could grab dinner.”
My eyes widen at the suggestion as he sticks his finger into the collar of his dress shirt, tugging it away from his neck.
“If you hate wearing a suit, why are you always dressed in one?”
“Why do you plaster a smile on your face when you’re so miserable?” he fires back and shrugs his shoulders as he stuffs his hands into his pockets. “It looks good. Come on, I hate to eat alone,” he urges.
So do I.
Staring at him, my eyes begin to water. For a moment we’re not two siblings ripped apart by the death of their parents and the different paths they chose. For one moment he’s just my big brother and I’m still his little sister. We’re two kids walking home from school together, fighting over who would eat the last of mom’s cookies.
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