Battles of the Broken (The Sons of Templar MC Book 6)

by Anne Malcom

  He didn’t snatch me into his arms. Didn’t rip at my clothes like I ached to do to him. He didn’t touch me at all, and I almost screamed in the frustration of it.

  My body jerked forward as I prepared to pounce on him, to assert myself in a way I never had before.

  “Don’t fuckin’ move,” he growled.

  My entire body obeyed.

  My core pulsated with his command.

  His eyes darkened as I snapped back to stillness, the cords of his neck carved from steel, his reaction to my obedience stark and immediate.

  I wasn’t a submissive.

  I wasn’t submitting to Gage.

  I was surrendering to him.

  And he liked it.

  He loved that.

  But something mingled with the sex in his gaze. Something that had been underneath the cold and cruel man who had been present tonight.

  The man who wasn’t entirely Gage.

  The man who was both something more and less than the Gage on the surface. The Gage I itched to know.

  “You don’t drink. Alcohol. Coffee. Fuckin’ soda.”

  It was a statement. And at the same time, there was a question in it, even if there was no inflection at the end.

  I was beginning to understand that was how Gage worked. He didn’t ask questions. He watched. Came up with his own answers, and then, if he wanted to know more, he’d all but force more out of you.

  It was becoming apparent that he didn’t need to force anything out of me.

  Not even my heart.

  It had been his for longer than I cared to admit.

  Longer than was sensible—two freaking weeks, if you wanted to get specific.

  But I didn’t know about his.

  Because I may have known that one thing about Gage and his questions that weren’t questions, but that didn’t mean I knew everything.

  Or anything.

  I still didn’t know what those brutal scars on his arms were from. But just like Gage didn’t ask questions, he didn’t answer them either. He didn’t even invite them.

  But even though he was unwilling to give me something, anything, or everything, there he was forcing everything out of me.

  And there I was letting him.

  “How do you know that?” I asked, trying to delay my answer. But I couldn’t delay forever, and Gage wouldn’t wait forever.

  His gaze was unyielding. “Notice shit about people,” he said, voice still hard and empty. “Handy, knowin’ how they tick. Especially if I’m plannin’ on destroying them. Considering you’re not people, and I’m makin’ it my life’s mission that no one—including me—destroys you, I notice more shit.”

  Holy. Crap.

  The words screamed in my mind as the silence after them screamed around us.

  What the freaking heck did I say to that?

  “No, I don’t drink soda, coffee, or alcohol,” I responded to his question, cowering out of doing anything else.

  Like jump him.

  I was also trying to leave it at that, draw out his curiosity, make him show something more than his eyes betrayed.

  Make him ask me a fricking question.

  So maybe I knew something about him.

  Like he thought I was something to him.

  Something enough to change the formula he had with every single other person in the world.

  But he didn’t.

  He just watched me, eyes drawing out my soul like venom from wound.

  “I keep away from anything mind-altering,” I said, proverbially blinking first.

  He raised his brow. “Soda is mind-altering?”

  I shrugged, picking at a loose thread on my pants while my mind began to pick at the loose threads of my soul.

  No, while Gage picked and yanked at those threads with little more than an eyebrow raise and an intoxicating stare.

  I could’ve told him I didn’t like soda. Or that drinking my calories didn’t line up with my diet. Or that there were studies showing how sugary and caffeinated drinks accelerated tooth decay. The increased risk of diabetes. Or any of the number of excuses I’d memorized and rattled off to whoever decided to comment on the fact that I didn’t drink coffee or soda.

  Like it was the same as being a murderer.

  Or worse.

  Murderers were much more common in our country than people who didn’t drink stimulants, something to keep them awake, alert, get them through the day. Or get them through their life.

  I had so much practice at my many excuses, I almost fooled myself.

  Almost.

  I might’ve been able to fool Gage, if I’d wanted to.

  But I didn’t want to. “My twin brother, David, died of a drug overdose when we were twenty-one years old,” I said, my voice flat. Empty.

  I was surprised.

  Because it was the first time I’d said it out loud. Ever. I’d excelled at avoiding all conversations about family and siblings when I had to exchange pleasantries with people. And since both David and I had somewhat kept under the radar at high school, then gone off to college out of state, not keeping in touch with the few friends we had—we had each other and that was enough—it wasn’t really ‘big’ news in Amber.

  It had shattered my whole world.

  But in Amber, it barely made a ripple.

  Mom and Dad had friends, of course. But the circle was small, and though they were respected by people who knew them in the community, they also kept to themselves. When David died, they pretty much folded in on themselves, shut everyone out and moved out of Amber within months.

  And when I came back, the few friends I’d had from high school had moved on. A couple of people recognized me, maybe in passing, enough to screw their noses up trying to figure out where they knew me from. Some gave me a smile and a nod. Very few actually talked to me.

  I could count on one hand the number of people who had not only talked to me, but expressed their condolences for David’s death.

  And I’d barely spoken through the shards of glass in my throat when they did so. I usually nodded, garbled out a “thanks,” and escaped as soon as it was socially acceptable.

  But those people had already known.

  I hadn’t had to lay it out for anyone. Because I didn’t have friends, people I opened up to over cocktails, made bad decisions with. I had my grandmother, and she made enough bad decisions, so when we were together, I forced her to make some good ones.

  But she already knew.

  And she knew my policy on talking about it—which was not at all. Apart from her most recent visit, when she’d opened up her pain and my own. Even then, I’d never actually spoken the words.

  And when people asked me if I had siblings, I’d shake my head and then escape the conversation. There wasn’t a single photo of him inside my apartment. There were other things in the room I hid from everyone, the room meant to be a broom closet, but instead of brooms it held chopped-up pieces of my insides.

  But no photos on display. On the rare occasion someone came into my apartment, photos would raise questions.

  It was like I’d erased him, my brother, the other piece of me, right off the face of the earth. Outwardly, at least. I might not have said his name in nine years, but I thought it. Every single day. Didn’t look at a picture of his face in around the same amount of time, but I didn’t need to. It was seared into my brain.

  So I was surprised that the first time I’d ever uttered the words cementing his death into the air, my voice was so foreign.

  So cold.

  Maybe because it was me realizing that not saying he was dead out loud didn’t keep him alive somehow. I’d known it all along, but it was the final nail in the coffin.

  I hadn’t expected Gage to react.

  He was Gage.

  But he flinched.

  Visibly flinched at my words.

  Maybe it was the tone.

  Maybe it was the one thing I’d been waiting for. That he knew the pure absence of emotion in my voi
ce showed him just how much hurt was shattering my bones at that moment. And that he cared. That my pain hurt him.

  “I’ve never said that out loud before,” I whispered, somehow aching to give him more of me, even though it was one of the most painful things I had ever done.

  Wasn’t that what love was? Giving someone everything, no matter how much it killed you, shredded your insides to do so?

  “I don’t know why. Maybe because I didn’t have the energy to, because I’ve been screaming it in my head for ten years,” I said, eyes faraway. “Because saying it out loud, I’d have to admit that ten years haven’t passed. At least not for me. Because if I told people, they’d expect me to be healed, by time and all that.” I shrugged, hating the phrase ‘time heals everything’ with a passion.

  “They’d expect me not to still be bleeding from a wound that was sustained a decade ago,” I continued. “But it’s not a wound. It’s a complete fricking leveling of me. An entire chunk of myself just… gone. An important chunk. One that doesn’t grow back. Because it doesn’t come from me, you see? I wouldn’t know how to grow it back if I even wanted to. It was him.”

  I screwed my face into a frown because that was the only way to stop myself from crying.

  “We weren’t two different people. We were the same person.” I held onto Gage’s gaze like an anchor. “Each of us holding vital parts of the other. And that’s what makes it worse. Because I didn’t even notice the vital parts of me being slowly poisoned. David slowly poisoning himself. I didn’t notice him freaking killing himself.”

  A tear rolled down my cheek and I was surprised at it.

  I’d screamed that day.

  Wailed.

  Rivaled the ocean for sheer volume.

  I’d had to be sedated.

  The one and only time narcotics had entered my system.

  After we buried him, there was not one tear.

  Because he was gone. Buried.

  And life went on.

  Without him. Even the six months of my life that I didn’t think on, that my family didn’t speak of, that were etched into the concrete of my soul.

  It was so freaking tragic, so painful, it was beyond the point of tears.

  “I had to be sedated,” I continued, my voice still cold. Robotic. “I was the one who found him.” I forced myself not to look at the image the words shoved to the front of my mind.

  The image of my beautiful brother’s dead body.

  I hadn’t let myself think of it in ten years.

  Not awake, at least.

  My nightmares showed it to me often enough.

  But I couldn’t handle it now. So I didn’t. Such things usually weren’t conscious choices. You couldn’t just choose not to be confronted with your worst horrors. In fact, your brain consciously chose to put them in front of you. Because life without pain didn’t exist. The very environment we lived in nurtured pain, multiplied it.

  “I found him, called 911, even though it was obvious he was already dead. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t. How can you believe that half of you is lying dead in his own vomit with a needle sticking out of his arm?”

  The image assaulted me now. Tore pieces of my flesh from my very bones. I bit my lip, hard, so bitter metallic blood flowed into my mouth.

  “I’m not quite sure how long it took for paramedics to come,” I continued. “It could’ve been five minutes. Five hours. Five years. Time doesn’t mean much at the end of your world. I wouldn’t let anyone touch him,” I said, my voice cold and foreign again. “Apparently I became violent.” I screwed up my nose, trying to grasp onto those foggy memories, isolate them from the horror. “I still don’t remember that. I just remember thinking that those people were going to take him away from me, and I knew I’d never see him again, you know?”

  I paused, though Gage didn’t answer my question because it wasn’t really a question. He didn’t do anything, in fact, just stood there, staring, yanking at those threads in my soul even harder.

  I sucked in a ragged breath. “They were going to tear away half of me.” My voice broke ever so slightly, and I straightened my spine so I wouldn’t break along with it. “So I had to fight for him. For me.” My voice was firmer now. Nothing else was. “Because if they took him away, how was I supposed to survive? How did half a person go on?”

  He didn’t answer, but he flinched, not as violently as before but still visibly.

  “So yeah,” I whispered. “I was fighting for David’s life. For mine. And I fought hard. Hence the sedation.” I thought back to the sharp prick of the needle, which was all surprise and nothing to do with pain. There was no physical reproduction of the pain of a soul being torn apart. The prick in my skin meant nothing.

  Less than nothing.

  Then, quickly with the force of the chemicals being introduced into my bloodstream, everything was okay.

  No, everything was nothing.

  My brother’s wide-open eyes, staring at me with no soul.

  Nothing.

  His cold body, covered in grime and vomit.

  Nothing.

  The paramedics zipping him into a body bag and shoving him in the back of a truck like he was no longer a human being, just a sack of meat to be buried in the ground.

  Nothing.

  And then they wore off.

  And then there was everything. A pain so harrowing that each breath I took was a shock because I didn’t realize a human being could continue breathing, continue surviving while in that much pain.

  “I swore I would never let a substance take me away from myself the second I became lucid,” I whispered. I didn’t add that the six months after that contributed to my determination. It wasn’t a lie, but I just wasn’t ready to bare that piece of myself too.

  “The second the pain came back, I told myself that I’d never let myself do anything to take it away again,” I continued. “Because there’s only one thing in the world that’s worse than your soul being ripped apart, and that’s not caring that it’s happening. That’s what those sedatives did.” I shuddered at the thought of that numbness, moreover at how tempting it was. I continued to hold onto Gage’s image, my hands fists at my sides.

  “And I have to care,” I whispered. “David deserves for me to care. Every day. Because somewhere along the way, something happened to him to make him not want to care anymore. And not only do I have no idea what that was, but I didn’t even see him fade away to nothing until he was nothing.”

  My thoughts wandered to that horrible image of my precious and beautiful brother’s body being hurled into a bag like trash.

  “So no way am I going to ever introduce something that could take me away from that. From my sober and lucid everything. Because I don’t deserve that. Not now, not ever,” I vowed.

  Gage

  The second she had spoken in that cold, fucking bone-shattering tone, he had frozen.

  Every fucking part of him.

  Because no way should this warm, complex, and cute-as-shit woman ever sound like that. But she did. And it was worse, because his warm, complex, and cute-as-shit woman felt that every fuckin’ day.

  Someone didn’t speak of trauma with such cold emptiness unless it was a trauma that had scraped their souls from their bones.

  And he’d known there was something underneath all her soft. Her glasses, her statistics, her reserved smiles, her fire, her quiet. He knew there was something loud underneath that. Something screaming.

  Gage knew demons. Excelled at recognizing other people’s. Or he thought he had. But fuck, hearing her talk, every word ripping at his skin, flaying him, he realized he didn’t know shit. Because no fucking way had he expected Lauren’s demons to be that dark.

  Only because someone with demons that dark didn’t rebuild their life. They didn’t smile, didn’t live in a fucking apartment radiating light. Didn’t do kind shit for other people daily, like Lauren did.

  The people with those demons, they withered. Escaped into the bottom of a bot
tle. Fucked their way through half a state. Gambled. Hurt other people so they didn’t hurt themselves. Caused other people pain because they wanted someone else to experience the utter agony they carried around with them every day. Because they wanted to spread that pain so the whole fucking world could pay.

  Gage had done all of that.

  And more.

  Yet Lauren didn’t touch anything that might offer her even a moment of respite. Not even a fucking soda.

  He’d encountered some fucked-up people in his life—not including the most fucked up of them all, the man in the mirror. Had also seen some of the strongest human beings to walk the face of the earth.

  People who gathered the ashes of their lives, carried them with them, but also used them to fertilize, grow something new.

  Bull.

  Bex.

  Lucky.

  Mia.

  Gwen.

  Rosie.

  Not many people knew, but Ranger.

  People usually showed him their fucked-up shit because he wore his depravity on his sleeves. Literally. When you showed the world you were crazy, most people shied away from it, crossed the street to avoid it. But not because they were afraid of him. No, because of what he would make them see about themselves.

  Only the bravest of people wanted to open up with their crazy, and they did it with him because it didn’t seem as bad to expose those demons to someone who had bigger and worse ones.

  So he had a list.

  The list went on. In fact, it included almost everyone in his club.

  The men, not so surprising, since they had to be strong in order to keep drawing breath, keep from eating bullets.

  The women were a little less obvious, but not by much. Their struggles were laid out for the world to see, because they’d had to fight a war to get them to where they were. Gage had seen a lot of it.

  A lot of it—like Bex, chained to a bed, strung out and being raped—was burned into his brain.

  The rest he’d heard about, seen the aftereffects of.

  But with Lauren, it blindsided him.

  “Because there’s only one thing in the world that’s worse than your soul being ripped apart, and that’s not caring that it’s happening.”

  The words were rebounding inside his head. One of the strongest and bravest sentences he’d ever heard someone say in his fucking life.