by Cole McCade
Good girls didn’t say no, she’d been taught. Good girls didn’t say no because no didn’t make them strong-willed; it made them cold and selfish. Good girls didn’t say no because good girls were supposed to be kind and sweet and accommodating, and as long as she didn’t say no she was still all the soft things that made up a girl instead of the hard boyish edges Erin had liked to pick on, that her mother had sighed at in despair, that her father had called her tomboy streak. Good girls didn’t say no…because when good boys heard no, good boys got angry and then came the blood, the bruises.
Good girls didn’t say no, because girls who said no were punished.
“I didn’t tell you the truth,” she whispered. “I had a boyfriend. Once. In college. For about…four days.”
If she didn’t know better, she’d think the tightening of his hold was possessive. “What happened?”
“I wouldn’t put out. God, I don’t even remember his name. Tony or Toby or…I think it was Toby. But he said nice things to me and said he didn’t mind my ugly hands, and told me I had a pretty smile.” Even if her smile right now didn’t feel very pretty. It felt painful and tired and brittle. “No one ever told me that. I was weird and quiet and always tinkering with things, and too smart and too awkward. Not pretty. So when he wanted to take me to the movies, I said yes. And when he wanted to go back to my dorm room, I said yes. But when he put his hand up my shirt…I said no.”
“Did he hurt you?” Priest growled.
“…a little,” she admitted. “I shoved him first, but I…I freaked out. My whole body has always been so sensitive, and when he touched my breasts it was too much. This shock like I’d been hit with a Taser. It scared me, and I told him to stop. He got rough, squeezing really hard and pinching my nipples like…really, really hard. Like he was trying to pop them like little balloons. Saying ‘come on, baby, don’t be a bitch.’” The memory alone made her shudder, made ugly things crawl up from her stomach to swim in her throat. “So I kicked him and shoved him off the bed. And then I stopped being pretty and started being ‘you fat dyke cunt’ and ‘not even worth a pity fuck.’”
Priest shifted to curl around her—as if he could shelter her from her memories, as if…as if this was something other than what it was. “Small men speak that way,” he murmured into her hair. “Men who think they can take their worth from you, and keep it for themselves.”
“But it was because I said no, don’t you get it?” She twisted enough to look at him over her shoulder. “Because no one lets women say no. When my Dad needed help, it was expected that I would do it, and it wasn’t even a question. The counselor at the disability service center just assumed. I’m the woman in the house, it’s my job to be the caretaker, if I say no I’m a heartless bitch. When my mother tried to take me away, punishment for saying no was never seeing her again. When I told Toby no he tried to force me, then tried to humiliate me. You see it everywhere, all the time in the news. Women are beaten and raped for saying no. Killed. Publicly humiliated, threatened. So I never say no, I never ask for anything, and I…” She shook her head. “You keep telling me to say no, wanting me to choose…but there’s this part of me in the back of my mind that says the consequences of saying no are worse than what will happen to me if I don’t.”
Stillness settled over him—so motionless it was as if his heart had stopped beating, his blood had stopped flowing. “Is that the only reason you did not refuse me?”
She turned to face him, shifting in the circle of arms suddenly much looser than they had been, lax and almost dead. There was something in his face, something that writ lines of struggle large and carved furrows in those princely features, and it was strange to be able to read him the way he could normally so easily read her. Strange to know him in ways so intimate and personal that she could trace words in the furrows of his brow, and hear the unspoken things in his voice, in the darkened shades of his eyes.
He wanted to know she’d wanted him. Desired him. And yet he couldn’t bear to ask, when he knew as well as she that he didn’t have the right; he knew the situation he’d put her in, where consent was such a minefield that it was hard to separate yes from no from do I really have a choice.
She wasn’t sure she knew the answer. When everything in her, everything that had tried so hard to be a good girl, said it was wrong, stupid, life-threatening to crave his touch. Depraved. Wanton. And she’d tried to deny it, tried to deny herself, even as she’d writhed and gasped and burned so hot for him not even the wetness he coaxed from her in flood after flood could ever quench that fire.
“No,” she finally replied, and touched his cheek, tracing the high, graceful crest of it, following the lines of a face so handsome he was almost beautiful in women’s ways, with that slyness and knowing grace. “You do things to me, Priest. It terrifies me, but once it starts…” She traced the line of his brow, then stopped to the edge of one golden eye. “It’s like I’m going to die if you don’t end it.”
That quiet stillness in him eased, and he breathed again, lived again. He reaffirmed his hold on her with a quiet strength, and that embrace was like a prayer repeated time and time again to settle it deeper than deep. “I will not punish you for refusing me, firefly.”
“No.” She lowered her eyes. “But you’ll kill me for staying, nonetheless.”
“You could have left.”
“What…?”
“You had me handcuffed,” he pointed out. “You know where the padlock key is. You weren’t particularly subtle about watching me work the doors, and you know how to get out. You had the opportunity to leave. Why didn’t you?”
Realization slammed her between the eyes as hard as a physical impact, dizzying and ringing in her skull. Oh…oh God, she was so stupid. She’d had her chance. The perfect chance.
And she’d been too caught up in that mad haze of desire to take advantage.
She took a rapid, hyperventilating breath. No—no, she’d had a reason, she had to have been thinking pragmatically. “I…I…my ankle…”
“Would have held long enough to get to the car.”
She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t look at this. Couldn’t look at herself, at the crazed hungry beast made up of wants that spoke louder and stronger than sense, than self-preservation. “I didn’t…didn’t even think about it. It wasn’t even on my mind.”
“Interesting, that.” He purred the words, his accent rolling over them like smoke, enticing and rhythmic. “I do wonder why.”
So do I.
Her heart was a quagmire that barely managed to beat, yet her blood still moved too fast, a living thing that didn’t need the dead engine of her heart to run wild through her veins. She pushed at his chest, turning her face away. “Just…go to sleep.”
“I am afraid I cannot.” His grasp loosened, then slid away, leaving her cold as the heat of his body retreated. He pushed himself up on one arm, looking down at her with the fall of his hair spilling over his skin as if someone had spilled pale golden wine to soak into deep dun earth. His fingertips grazed her brow, then tucked her hair back. “Work calls.”
He rolled away from her, every inch of his body working in beautiful tandem like symphonic music to bring him to his feet, but his beauty was a dull and distant thing when those two simple, terrible words meant only one thing:
That powerful body that had writhed underneath her would once again become a weapon, and blood would run red across the floor.
“Priest.” She sat up quickly, clutching the sheet to her chest, and reached for him. “Vin. No.”
“Saying ‘no’ doesn’t quite work that way, firefly.” He offered a small, melancholy smile as he bent to step into his fatigue pants. “I took the job. I took the pay. I must honor the deal.”
She watched helplessly as he dressed, slipping into his combat boots and that Kevlar shirt as if slipping into armor; slipping into another self. She didn’t like this Priest, this man who killed coldly and methodically because some d
ark, frightened thing inside him had learned what it meant to be vulnerable, to be weak, to be everything the small and broken and forgotten of this world knew every day.
“Who is it this time?” she asked. “A serial killer? A mob hitman? How are you going to justify it this time?”
He slipped a blade up his sleeve, long and sleek, the kind of thing that looked like it could filet a man like a fish. “Do you truly wish to know?”
“Tell me.” Her throat closed. “Because I can’t…I can’t wait for you thinking you may be out there murdering an innocent, someone who…whose worst crime is being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Someone like you, you mean.”
“…yes.”
He regarded her with a sigh, then sank down to sit on the edge of the bed and offered his hand, palm up. After a hesitant moment, she slid closer and slipped her trembling fingers into his, letting him envelop her in that warmth as if it could ever be any comfort when those hands would soon take another life.
He rested their clasped hands on his thigh and looked down at them; the pad of his thumb traced the outer curve of her palm. “He’s a drug runner,” he said. “But he uses the hinóno’éí in the Nests as mules. Promises them a hot meal and a place to sleep if they will deliver a package. If the cops pick them up, they’re the ones who go to jail…and he thinks he is doing them a favor. A meal and a bed in a prison cell at the cost of their freedom. At times their lives, if they run into the wrong type behind bars or cross the police on the wrong day.” He turned her hand over and idly stroked the paths of the life-lines in her palms. “He treats the hinóno’éí like animals. Less than human. There for him to use and discard. He has cost too many lives.”
“Oh,” Willow said thickly. Just oh, because God, Priest was right and yet so very, very wrong, and there had to be a better way to do this. A better way to tip off the police, herd the drug runner into giving himself up…something. Anything.
But if there wasn’t…was it really better to let him run free when he took advantage of so many people and ruined so many lives?
She closed her eyes. Don’t. Don’t let his sick logic get inside your head. You aren’t the Harley to his Joker…you can’t let him turn you into that. You can’t let him start to make sense.
You can’t even begin to think you can save him.
And you can’t fool yourself into thinking he cares.
She pulled her hand free from his and curled it against her chest. “If that’s what they told you,” she said dully. “If that’s what you need to believe.”
“You think it’s not true?”
“All these people get arrested for this guy, right? They must all know what he looks like, or what his associates look like. Even if they don’t have a name, they can describe him…but he’s never been picked up by the cops. Someone needs you to take him out.”
Priest’s lips thinned. “I told you. I investigate my targets thoroughly.”
“But how thoroughly can you investigate someone without a face or a name?” She knotted and fretted at the sheet. “He sounds like you. Someone who doesn’t exist unless you want people to know it. If someone made a target out of you…wouldn’t you expect the person who put the hit out to be skeptical of it, and of the person who paid?”
“I’m already skeptical of the person who paid, considering they’re a rival drug dealer.”
“…oh.” She stared at him, then laughed, pale and more shocked than anything, barely a gasp of air. “Using one evil to find another. Like you said. But…Priest, what if…?”
“What do you want from me, Willow?” His eyes narrowed. “What are you trying to do?”
“Trying to make you consider for even the smallest moment that maybe the person you’re about to kill might be innocent. Even the smartest people make mistakes. Even the best hunters can fall for a false trail. And you…are you so desperate for someone to kill that you won’t even consider the possibility?”
Fox-gold eyes glassed over, cold and impenetrable, and her heart ached. She hadn’t realized how soft he’d become, subtle warmth infusing that strange inscrutability of his, until it closed off from her as abruptly as a closing door.
“Is that what you think of me?” he asked, deadly quiet.
“I think you’re trying to answer a need,” she answered. “But this isn’t doing it. What you need isn’t out there, and it’s the definition of insanity to keep killing thinking maybe this next kill will change it.”
“You think you have the slightest idea what I need?” he flared, a snarl darkening the harsh edges of each word to smoke and flame. “You’re so busy trying to diagnose me; did you ever consider the pathological? The psychopath. The sociopath. Those with a kill impulse find it undeniable. Compulsive. Something they need to do, as much as those outside the pathological spectrum need to eat and breathe and love.”
“I know that.” She couldn’t look away from eyes lit from within like amber flame. So much anger; as if he was glass with acid caged inside, smooth on the surface and yet corroding himself to pieces from within. She reached up, cupping his face in her palms, drawing him closer. “But you said ‘they’. Not ‘I.’ I don’t think you’re a psychopath or a sociopath, Vin.”
He looked like he would crack at any moment. Crack, and fall to pieces. “Then what am I?”
“Broken,” she whispered, and stroked her thumbs over his cheeks. “That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”
She almost thought she’d gotten through to him. Almost thought he’d break down, give in, let her hold him here. He’d chained her to him, and if only she had the power to pull on him as hard as he pulled on her, and draw him back from this edge that would kill them both. His shoulders were tight, his eyes stark pools of raw, liquid pain. There. There was the man he’d been, the man whose name was on those dog tags, the man who had loved and lost and convinced himself he was something he wasn’t so he wouldn’t have to feel the pain.
But the moment was lost between one breath and the next. His eyes glazed. He wasn’t seeing her. No—he was seeing that dark place inside himself that couldn’t turn away from the fatalistic inevitability of this, from the shadowed path he’d taken through a place she couldn’t begin to understand.
He caught her hands by the wrists and gently pulled them away from his face, looking down at her with something like quiet, calm regret. “I won’t be long,” he said. “But if you are hungry, I’ll make something before I leave. You should rest your ankle.”
So that was how it was going to be. Her first breath shook, but her next steadied, and she shook her head. “Do you think I could eat, knowing what you’re doing?”
“No. I suppose not.”
“Will you bring him back here?”
“I have to.” His touch caressed gently against the undersides of her wrists, then let go. “Look away, when the time comes. I won’t force you to watch.”
He stood once more. She reached for him. “Priest…stay.” One last desperate gambit, catching the back of his coat, clinging tight. She pressed herself against his back, pushing up on her knees to bury her face between his shoulder blades. “Please. Please stay with me. Be with me. It’s not too late to stop. It really isn’t.”
“Firefly…”
With a gentle sigh, he pried free from her grasp, then turned, bent, and kissed her. Softly, sweetly, and yet she couldn’t stand it when that kiss was an apology, a consolation, a compensation for the fact that he couldn’t, wouldn’t change. And she whimpered as he pulled away, as he took the taste of his lips and replaced it with the touch of his fingers against her mouth, a caress that said please…please don’t ask me again.
“It’s been too late since long before you brought me your light,” he whispered, and slipped his rosary over his head.
She didn’t understand until he cupped her hand, and dropped the rosary to pool in her palm, the beads as smooth and warm as living skin. She stared down at it, her fingers curling over the carved wood.
“Why…why are you giving me this?”
“Hold my faith for me.” He traced a fingertip down her jaw, then pulled away. “For a little while longer.”
And then he walked away from her, yet again. But this time felt different; this time felt horrid, frightening, as if she’d hexed him with her questions, her doubts, her pleas. That was what she did; she wished and thought terrible things, and made them happen. There was still that small, childish part of her that said she’d never seen her mother again because Willow had said go away and don’t come back; she’d jinxed it with a little girl’s magic, and now she’d jinx Priest with a woman’s magic. She clutched the rosary beads against her chest.
“Priest. Vin. Vincent.” She didn’t even know what to say. He wouldn’t stay, no matter what she said. And finally she settled on a soft, “Be careful.”
He stopped, looking back with that aloof, cocky amusement that was so very Priest. “Worried for me?”
“Maybe a little.” She found a smile somewhere, tired and weak. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Monsters only die in fairy tales.” The garage door rolled up, letting in the night. “Don’t worry, firefly. I’ll be back.”
Then he was gone, and Willow looked down and counted the rosary beads with her thumb, and closed her eyes.
And for the first time in a very long time, she prayed for someone other than herself.
But she didn’t think anyone was listening.
CHAPTER TWENTY