That’s the last word he gets out before he’s jerked backward. The motion is hard. Furious.
Stone. He crashes the man headfirst into the hard cinder-block wall. There’s a yell. A crack.
I fall to my hands and knees, panting, reeling from what almost happened. From what did happen. A stranger had his hands on me. The dark, shadowy vision of him looms in my mind.
“You okay, baby?” Stone’s touching my hair, touching my face—gently, as if I’m made of spun glass. Light as his touches are, I can feel him trembling. “Tell me you’re okay,” he gusts frantically. “Say you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.” I don’t know whether that’s true or not. Am I okay? All I know is that Stone looks sick with worry, and I don’t want him to worry. He shouldn’t ever have to be afraid.
The trucker is up, though. And coming for Stone.
Before I can even utter a warning, Stone is whirling on him. The trucker is bigger than Stone by far, but Stone goes at him with explosive fury like I’ve never seen. He drives the trucker back into the wall. The trucker’s body jolts from the impact. But he recovers fast enough to slam a fist into Stone’s jaw.
I back up, looking around for a weapon, some way to help Stone, because the trucker is so huge and scary, and he’s hitting Stone again and again, but Stone slips the next hit and drives his knuckles into the man’s jaw, and then he punches hard, right into the man’s neck.
The man starts coughing and staggering, holding his neck.
“You think you can touch her like that? Her?” Stone’s voice sounds funny. Like a demon got into him. “Make her cry?”
Stone is merciless now, hitting and punching.
No longer bothering even to protect himself, the trucker falls to his knees, clutching at his neck. I know with a weird certainty that something inside that man is broken, and I mean, really broken. He might die. One hand flies up in surrender.
Stone kicks him in the face. The man’s head hits the floor.
“Stone!” I scream.
Stone is on his knees, wild, raining down hits on the guy. He sees nothing. Hears nothing. “You would hurt her?” Craaack. “Hurt her?” Craaack. “Make her cry?” Craaack. Craaack.
The puddles on the floor are turning pink.
I scream because I think the man might be dead.
“Stone! Stop!” I grab him by the shirt. “Please! Don’t kill him.”
“He deserves it,” he growls, pulling his arm back for another blow. I latch onto his arms from behind, holding him with all the strength in me.
My toes brush the ground as he lifts me. That’s how intensely he’s fighting right now—he can turn, and my whole body lifts. I’m riding him instead of pulling him away.
It must register, though, because he twists to look at me. His brows are low, eyes glowing with fury. He looks like a demon, something that rises from hell to drag men down.
“Please,” I say softly.
For a long moment we remain frozen, and I think I’m going to watch this man die. Then Stone’s fist unclenches. He releases the man, who falls in an unmoving heap onto the floor.
Stone straightens, but I stay with him. I won’t let go.
“He deserves it,” Stone says again, quieter this time.
“I know, but you don’t deserve to do it.”
He looks bemused. “It doesn’t hurt me.”
It does hurt him, but I don’t only mean physically. I press my hand to his chest, feel the ragged rise and fall. I wish I could calm him, soothe him. “It hurts you here.”
“Ah, sweetheart.” He covers my small, pale hand with his big rough one, knuckles dark with blood. “There’s nothing in there. Nothing at all.”
I won’t believe it. I rise up on tiptoes, reaching for him. I’m not tall enough, not strong enough, but he meets me halfway, his lips impossibly soft in contrast to the hardness of his body. Our kiss isn’t one that moves, not with lips or tongue, only a press of mouths—something moves inside me instead. I know he feels it too, in that heart he claims not to have.
It’s dirty and dangerous that we’re kissing in this dark rest-stop bathroom, a man’s blood drawing a pink trail toward the drain in the floor. This is the life Stone has led, and I can’t flinch away from it any more than I can turn away from him.
When I pull away, his eyes search mine. “Did he touch you?”
My shoulders still ache from his harsh touch, the skin on my face crawls from when he pried my mouth open. I want to tell him no, to lie to him, but a shudder works its way through me, revealing the truth.
Chapter 14
Stone
Rage shakes me from deep inside as I watch the fear flash through Brooke’s pretty eyes. All I want to do is crack every bone in this man’s body. I want to run him over with his fucking 18-wheeler, forward and back, again and again until he’s paid the price.
Something deeper than vengeance keeps me steady.
I know too well the kind of pain, the shame that can follow an experience like this. And I’m more concerned with making sure Brooke is okay than with beating this man even more.
The realization takes me by surprise—her well-being is more important than the darkness inside me.
“We’re leaving,” I tell her. “I’ll take you back to school.”
She lets me lead her out of that dirty bathroom, a place she never should have been. Even the air here doesn’t have the right to touch her.
I’m trying not to limp, not to show her how messed up I am. Nate would have a fit if he knew I went out beating on a guy in this condition. Kind of a shock the man didn’t rearrange my face. Well, he would’ve had to do more to get through me to Brooke.
Sunlight beams onto the sidewalk, almost blinding, unaware of what tragedies unfolded only a few yards away. This is where we stood when I told Brooke I’d never see her again, when I mocked her school uniform and little-girl problems.
Guilt is acid in my veins. If I hadn’t said that, she wouldn’t have felt the need to get away from me. She would have stayed near me.
I guide her to the passenger door and open it. Is this what it feels like to be a gentleman? To take care of a young lady, to have her look at me with trust shining in her eyes.
“I’m not driving?” she asks, her voice small.
She’s not in any shape to drive. And somehow I feel compelled to take care of her. Not to order her around, to tell her where to go, but to kill for her. Except a bloody body is the opposite of what she needs…much as I’d like to end that guy in there. “Get in.”
“Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” she asks.
She’s worried about me? “I was hurt already. Now get in.”
Her eyes turn shiny. Is she going to cry? She should. She’s been abducted by me, multiple times. Attacked by that fucker in the bathroom. This girl who deserves only silk and lace. It’s a miracle she’s lasted this long by my side. I never should have gone near her.
She surprises me by straightening her spine. Not a single tear escapes down her cheeks. “Is this the last time I see you?”
I wouldn’t have thought less of her if she’d cried. My brothers in the basement cried when they were little. It’s how humans cope with horrible things, which is how I know I don’t have a heart. I’ve never shed a tear. I don’t think I would know how. My body isn’t built that way.
“I told you this would be the last time.” The words rip out of me. It’s not what I want. It’s what she needs.
She turns, eyes huge. Wary.
Christ, this girl. I want to rip her to pieces so she can’t look at me, so fucking innocent and brave. “I’m not angry at you. I’m angry at the world. You haven’t figured that out yet?”
“Then why is this the last time?”
There’s a shadow on her cheek. That fucker touched her. It’s going to be a bruise. “Because all I do is hurt you.”
“You don’t hurt me.”
“Have you forgotten what just happened in that bathroom? I’m not good
for you.”
“You protected me.”
“I brought you here. I made you come here.”
“I wanted to come.”
“I don’t have anything you want, little bird. You need to get that. There’s no taking me to the movies. You can’t bring me around to your prep-school friends or put my picture in a locket. And you sure as hell can’t bring me home to Mom and Dad.”
She touches my arm. “This is what I want.”
I have to laugh, because women have wanted to use me for my dick before. I can rough them up a little in bed and walk away before morning comes, a dark little memory for them to use with their vibrators when their husbands can’t get them off.
But this girl isn’t using me for my dick. She doesn’t want to fuck me—or more to the point, I can’t let myself fuck her, even though there’s nothing I want more.
She wants me for my company, and that feels strange. Satisfying. Sickening.
I pull away.
“Fine.” She spins on her heel and gets into the car. “Take me back to school.”
I love the imperious way she says that. Like I’m a fucking chauffeur. That’s more like it.
In a matter of minutes, we’re back on the highway, cruising toward town. Except I’m not planning on taking her back to school, not at first. Because I know what she’s thinking—that we’ve still got something going on. That all she has to do is wait and I’ll show up again.
I almost never see her with guys her own age. It’s always made me happy. The idea of her being with a ham-handed high school boy who can’t appreciate her, some kid looking to get his rocks off, it fills me with fucking rage.
But what does it mean for her that I never see her with a boy alone? What if she’s waiting for me? Comparing boys her age to me? Am I making a mess of her life without even being around? The thought horrifies the fuck out of me.
You don’t hurt me. You protected me. I wanted to come.
She doesn’t get it. She thinks I can give her something I can’t. She needs to understand.
I’m heading there, of course. Without really even thinking about it.
She begged me to let her in. Careful what you wish for, I think.
Most of the guys have never been back there. A few try not to think about it. It’s possible Nate goes entire days without letting his mind sink into the pain and hell and twisted-up feelings of that place. Working on his animals. I’ve seen him work all night to repair a broken wing on a fucking crow. And Knox, losing himself in all his tech. But I never turn away. Not ever.
We head southeast. To Ferndale, the scrubby little suburb with boxlike homes fronted by grass gone to seed. And near the very end of an especially decrepit block, the burnt remains of the house, jutting up from the ground like charred teeth on a long-buried demon.
She was a witness to me killing Madsen. Hell, she had a front-row seat to me almost killing her, for fuck’s sake, but she still has things twisted around in her mind—I’m getting that now. Her and her campfire fantasy.
You don’t hurt me. You protected me. I wanted to come.
She’s looking at me like I’m a fixer-upper that maybe needs some sanding to smooth the rough edges. Maybe a bright coat of paint. She doesn’t get that I’m wrong from the inside out.
“This place,” she says. “Have we been here before?”
I pull around the corner, park along the side. No sense in having her car connected with this place. She doesn’t want to get out. I go around and open her door for her, but she just stares up.
“Out.”
She doesn’t move. She senses something’s wrong. She has no fucking idea how wrong. “Isn’t this what you wanted? Me opening the car door for you? Me taking you home to where I grew up? A visit to the folks?”
“That night you killed that guy. We came here.”
“Come on, little bird.” I pull her out. Not rough. She comes. She just doesn’t want to.
“This is where you grew up?”
“Grew up might be a nice way of putting it.” I help her over the wrecked part of the fence, which is posted with no-trespassing signs, and lead her to the edge of the place. To the spot where you can see beyond the charred remnants of walls and into the basement.
It’s just a deep, dark pit with a few cinder-block partitions here and there. There are dried leaves and garbage in the corners. Some scrub brush looming up toward the sky. “Come on.”
I jump onto what’s left of the steps, surprised when she willingly follows. I lead her all the way down and help her as we near the bottom.
She’s too pretty, too pure to be down in this open pit grave where the best parts of us died. What the fuck am I doing?
Teaching her a lesson about me, I remind myself. Showing her what’s in me. She won’t wait for me once she sees this. Won’t get in a car if I’m inside.
I flick on my iPhone light, play it over the dank walls, weathered and cracked. “You have your whole life ahead of you, but this is where mine started and ended.”
She says nothing. I can’t look at her. Already the place is closing around me.
I walk around the familiar corners, so different but so much the same.
I kick a rusted paint can aside and kneel by the metal carcass of the hot-air furnace, a rusted box just a bit smaller than a coffin, once painted blue, but now it’s mostly gray from years of dirt and weather. I crouch there, remembering how it would heat up like a motherfucker in the winter.
I touch a rivet on the side. Cool. Dirty. “We’d be down here twenty-four seven. Well, more like twenty-three seven. They’d keep us down here except when they needed us. You know, when a guy like Madsen would show up. Sometimes women, but mostly men. They’d make us go upstairs. Clean us and dress us like little whores. Me and my brothers. And they were my brothers. Never mind that I’d never seen them before. That we came from different mothers, from different cities. We were a fucked-up family.”
“Stone.” Her voice is shaky. She’s finally getting a clear picture of me.
“It’s cool. While you were getting aspirin and Band-Aids for your skinned knees, we were getting the good stuff. I don’t know what it was they gave us, but it made it like you weren’t there. Sometimes we’d even get off with the customers. The line between feeling good and bad was pretty thin in this place.”
I hear the soft intake of breath. This is hurting her, but it’s better that I tell her what I am all at once. She needs to take on a little damage, or she’ll keep holding out hope.
“This rivet would get really hot in the winter. I’d make the boys touch their finger to it. Like when they came down from up there in a bad way. Or like if they wouldn’t stop crying. I’d tell them that if they touched this really hot rivet, it would take whatever happened up there and suck it out their fingertip and burn it inside the firebox. I convinced them that if they touched their finger to it long enough, it would make it like it didn’t happen.”
There’s a sob from behind me, but I don’t stop.
“It actually worked. Got a lot of burnt fingers, but I made them believe it.” I scrub away the area around the rivet, revealing blue metal. “Took us six years to get out of here. We fought our way out. We were getting fucked before we knew what it meant, but when we killed, we knew what we were doing. Fucking bloodbath like you’ve never seen.”
Still I’m not looking at her. I keep my attention fixed on the dirty furnace box. I listen to the hum of traffic. A distant train blows its horn, long and low. She’s probably wanting to get the hell away from me right about now. Probably going to throw up just looking at me.
“We set this fire. We burned this place. Three men toasted to a nice crisp, but I can pretty much guarantee you, they were dead beforehand.” I sniff. “Whatdya know, folks? Turns out that when a boy touches his finger to a bolt on a furnace, it doesn’t actually suck out all the murderous fucking darkness.”
I’m breathing hard.
I meant to use the story as a club to beat her o
ff, bring her down here to make it all more awful. Instead she’s diluting the darkness of it somehow.
She’s making the memories almost bearable.
I rub the dirt off the rivet. “Sometimes I would touch my finger there when my brothers weren’t looking. I knew it was bullshit. I mean, hello, I made it up myself, right? But it worked with them, and sometimes, when I was feeling like shit, I wanted it to work with me, too—to suck out the bad and burn it away. I wanted to believe my own stupid lie.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “I really wanted to. I almost sometimes could.”
I don’t know why I’m telling her. I’m supposed to be making myself scary, not pathetic. I turn, finally, because I have to.
Because she’s the one bright thing in my life, even if she’s not really in my life.
She’s there, straight and tall, brown eyes shining, but not with tears. She’s looking at me with admiration. “That’s the bravest thing I ever heard.”
I give her a cockeyed look. Like she made a joke. “You caught the bullshit about the rivet, right?”
“That’s my favorite part. You helped them when they needed it most. When you needed help as much as any of them, but you were the leader, weren’t you? You made it better for them.”
My heart thunders. I absorbed all the darkness. She’s not supposed to be making it into a good thing.
“How old were you when they…trapped you?”
I shrug. “Nine or ten. Most were younger. Grayson—the one in prison—he was like five.”
She sucks in a breath and comes to me, throws her arms around me, as if to shield me from the world. She puts her face to my shirt.
This is wrong. I should shake her off, get her out of here.
I don’t.
I rest a tentative hand on her back. “Shit, sweetheart,” I say softly. “I’m ruining you.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, a broken litany. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“For what?” My voice sounds remote to my ears. “A lot of bad shit happened in that basement. Which part are you sorry for?”
I feel her flinch. I unwrap her arms from me and step back. “You don’t even know.”
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