by Anne Malcom
Hence me finding it hard to read because my boyfriend—such a lackluster word for what we were—was running his hands through my hair, the same hands that killed people, that provoked violence, that built fricking bombs, and was at peace.
Because of me.
“We don’t go to my place because we’re at my place,” he finally answered.
I blinked. Did we move in together without me noticing? It had only been weeks. Less than that since Gage and I finally had sex. Granted, he’d stayed over every single night since then, showered here. But he went home to change.
To the home I’d never seen and was infinitely curious about, hence the question. I was pretty sure we hadn’t moved in together—though the thought filled me with warmth and comfort—and I was about to query his response when he kept talking.
“You are my place, Lauren,” he said.
He obviously didn’t notice my heart fricking stopping, because he kept talking.
“And this place, it’s saturated in you. I know you’ve worked fuckin’ hard to make it your sanctuary from the ugliness of the world. Somehow you’ve made it mine, not because of your fuckin’ ridiculous pillows or kickass sofas, though I do approve, but because of you.”
“But I want to see you,” I whispered.
His face changed, turning unreadable, as it had now and again throughout the past week. Something flickered, something I itched to tease out of him. A pain that ran along his arms, that ran inside his soul. But it was gone too quickly to hold onto. And I couldn’t force it. I knew that. If I wanted to know Gage’s pain, I had to wait until he was brave enough to show it to me.
He was the bravest man I knew, but standing up to the horrors of the world took a different kind of bravery than standing up to the horrors of one’s soul.
“You see me, babe,” he murmured, yanking me to his body. “You see me better than anyone else does.”
Again, as if he sensed my broken heart could take no more, that he’d found the limit of my pleasure and pain in his words, he gently pushed me up so he could stand.
My book went tumbling to the floor.
Not because of the motion of him pressing me upward, but because he was standing in front of me.
Naked.
And it was the most beautiful sight, like ever.
He grinned, eyes running over me. “Now, I’ve explored every inch of you,” he said wickedly. “But not this apartment. Because you’re distracting and much more pleasurable to explore.” His eyes moved. “But there is one door that I’ve been wondering about.”
“No, wait, you can’t go in there!” I cried, jumping up and rushing forward. But it was too late. He’d opened the door, and his body was barring me from doing anything about it.
He hadn’t turned to face the room; instead his eyes twinkled at me. “What? Is this where you hide the bodies?” he deadpanned. “Because you know that’s no reason to be alarmed. It’d turn me on that you’d be so brazen as to not even bury the bodies of those who’ve wronged you. Even I’m not that badass.” He winked. “Oh, and for the record, I’m already turned the fuck on without even knowing what’s inside this room.”
I could’ve fought him on it, if I’d really wanted. I would’ve lost, of course. Because when Gage wanted to be somewhere, he was there. But it was an instinct to hide another part of myself that no one had ever seen. And Gage wanted in there, to those parts. And he was there.
That wasn’t why I stopped fighting. It was that twinkle. That wink. It was something that he had done often in the time I’d known him. But it was the first time he’d really done it. Done it without that inky blackness that came from inside him tainting it. A small sliver of a moment that he wasn’t fighting his demons. He was just… Gage.
So I didn’t fight it, wanting to keep that sliver alive as long as I could. Not forever, because I knew that was impossible; no one could hide from their demons forever. But you could find someone who scared them off long enough for you to be happy in moments without them. Then, after a time, you’d be happy in moments even with those demons.
I hoped I’d be able to be that for Gage.
Because he was already that for me.
He gave me one more moment of naked twinkle before he turned, stepping fully through the door.
Then he froze.
Every part of him.
I just stayed rooted in my spot, staring at his back. More accurately, staring at the reaper covering the large expanse of his back. Tracing my eyes around the lines of the patch, the piece of fabric that held him together.
“Baby,” Gage rasped, turning to circle the room, his eyes touching every canvas, every piece of paper, everything cluttering the room.
The one area in the house that didn’t surrender to order, that didn’t have to know order. The one area in the house I didn’t make myself control.
His eyes met mine. “These are fucking amazing, Will.”
People had told me things like that before. In art school before… everything. Before I dropped out. My grandmother. My brother.
I wasn’t blind I knew the way a paintbrush, a stick of charcoal, a pencil—anything in my hand—was an extension of me meant something. The way art, creating it, made my heart beat and my blood flow.
But the simple and visceral way Gage said those words hit me somewhere, told me what he was seeing. He wasn’t just saying it because my paintings were good. He was saying it because he saw what my paintings were—pieces of my broken soul wrenched from inside of me and thrown onto square scraps of fabric.
He saw that, beneath the beauty of the paint and pencil, there was ugliness.
“You need to be doing this full-time,” he continued. “This is you.”
I blinked. Opened my mouth. Closed it again.
“Will, why the fuck aren’t you?” he demanded, gesturing around the room. “This needs to be out there. You need to be doing this for a living. You’re good with words, babe. I know it. But this isn’t good. This is something more than that. You need to be doing more.”
“I can’t,” I whispered.
He was on me in two strides. “Why the fuck not?”
I stared up at him. “Because my job, with the words, it’s logic. I know how it needs to be. It has order. It’s… safe.”
His hands tightened around my neck. “We talked about safety the first night we met, Will,” he murmured. “And the only compromise I’ll make on that score is having a helmet on your beautiful head when you’re on the back of my bike.” He stroked my cheeks with a gentleness I didn’t even know he was capable of. “But that’s it. The second your life mixed with mine, you stopped livin’ safe. More accurately, you started living. Because I know this isn’t me forcin’ you into something. This is me showing you who you are. Like the day you showed me those handcuffs.” His eyes darkened. “The day you showed me just how wild and fucking dirty you are. And I’ll need a reminder of that in a couple of minutes. But for now, I’m tellin’ you that safe? That’s out the window. I’m not lettin’ you live safe anymore, baby. I’ll keep you safe in respect to makin’ sure you’ll never get hurt, but respect to keepin’ you wild? That’s just as important as your safety.”
His words blew me away. But he wouldn’t get it, wouldn’t see until I showed him one more thing.
The darkest thing.
No matter that he hasn’t told you a thing about himself, a voice snarled in my ear.
I ignored it. It hurt, thinking Gage didn’t trust me enough to show me his darkness. But he’d shown me what he could. And it wasn’t because he didn’t trust me—it was because he didn’t trust himself.
I got it, because I was having trouble trusting myself right then.
“I was in a mental institution,” I blurted.
All expression left Gage’s face.
“Well, that’s not what they’re called, obviously,” I continued. “Not the politically correct term for them. Rehabilitation facility. For people with minds not poisoned by drugs but somet
hing much more dangerous. Life.” I forced myself to keep Gage’s gaze, even though it hurt. “It was after David’s funeral. I didn’t take his death well.” I laughed coldly. “Or a lot worse than well, considering I was checked into a facility for six months. I had to be fed intravenously. A few doctors reasoned it was because I was suicidal. Obviously they could only speculate since I stopped speaking for six months too. I think that might’ve been a contributing factor in my parents committing me.”
“Baby,” Gage murmured, his voice breaking as he grasped my hips.
“It was easier to be around strangers than my own family,” I whispered, needing to say it all before my throat closed up. “I couldn’t be around them, which is why I let them commit me. Because I knew I couldn’t be fixed. There’s only one thing worse than being broken—people you love thinking they can fix you.”
My eyes roved over him with meaning I didn’t have to convey in words.
“Anyway, I wasn’t suicidal. I knew that much. Sure, I wanted to die sometimes, but not with a permanence. I just wanted… respite from life, I guess. And the only respite from life people get is death. But the no-eating thing wasn’t from wanting to die. I just couldn’t. I didn’t have an appetite for life. It was hard enough sucking in oxygen—how the heck was I meant to swallow food?” I shook my head. “I began eating soon enough because getting force-fed was not a fun experience.”
Gage’s jaw clenched but he was silent.
“Still didn’t talk, though,” I continued. “Not for six months. A lot of people tried to make me. The doctors, my parents. Not my grandmother though. She’d come to visit, sit there talking to me, acting as if I responded to all of her questions and stories. Then she’d yell at the doctors for trying to ‘push me.’ She always told them ‘She’ll talk when she’s ready, and not with ducks quacking at her.’”
I smiled.
“Truthfully, I didn’t talk when I was ready, because I’d never speak if that was the case. There was no great epiphany—I just realized I couldn’t stay in a silent tomb forever. Something almost clicked inside me, and I just said, ‘I would like to go home now,’ one day. Obviously it wasn’t that easy, but I did get out and my parents didn’t speak of it again. It was something we swept under the rug. Not because it embarrassed them, but maybe because it was more evidence of the gaping hole in our life.”
I let out a large sigh, the kind a furniture mover might exhale after carrying a large sofa up many flights of seemingly endless stairs.
I’d never told anyone that. Maybe that in itself was why I’d never gotten close to people. Because in order to get close to people, you had to share your secrets. The one about David was bad enough. Not because of how it made other people think of me—I knew any decent person wouldn’t judge me for my twin brother dying of a drug overdose—but more about my utter inability to utter it. My refusal.
But then there was also the prospect of having to tell these people about being committed for six months. People were a lot less sympathetic about crazy than they were about death. Death was uncontrollable, could happen to anyone, but it was a tragedy that needed kindness.
Insanity was also uncontrollable, and under the right—or wrong—circumstances, it could still happen to anyone. But people didn’t like being confronted with that fact; therefore, they didn’t like being confronted with insanity. They preferred to believe it was a choice of people who weren’t right, people to be kept away from, avoided on the street.
So yeah, I didn’t tell anyone.
But Gage didn’t just know the truth about insanity. He lived it. He wore it.
“Anyway,” I said, “there’s a reason I’m telling you this, apart from the fact that if you intend on staying in my life, this is something you need to know.”
“I fucking intend on staying,” he growled.
Forever was the unuttered word.
I smiled. “That was a reason, and that’s also a reason for this.” I gestured around the room at the paintings. “There isn’t much to do when people think you’re crazy. I read a lot, but books are always full of other people’s sorrow. I couldn’t live in theirs and my own, not unless I really wanted to cross that threshold of insanity, one I couldn’t come back from. So I ripped my pain out of myself and put it on paper. Then canvas. And it’s just a… habit I’ve continued.”
“This isn’t a fucking habit, Will,” Gage declared fiercely. “This is more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen. And that’s sayin’ a lot, since I’ve seen you writhing underneath me. Seen you wake up in the sunlight.” He cupped my face. “But these are the broken and ugly pieces of the soul you’ve been brave enough to yank into the light and turn into something.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine.
“This is all my pain. How am I going to show it to the world?” I whispered when his lips left mine.
“Take it from someone who knows. The only thing worse than showing your pain to the world is hiding it.”
The truth lingered underneath his words.
He was still hiding his too.
Thirteen
The roaring of the bike chased me up the street as I dawdled past the gallery, spending longer than my allotted three seconds entertaining a fantasy.
But even now I couldn’t just break out of a lifestyle I’d clung to for nigh on a decade. It didn’t work that way. Gage was making me wild, and I loved it, but that didn’t mean I wanted the logical and sensible part of me to die. I wanted to be able to live in harmony with the two sides of myself. Or at least that’s what I was telling myself.
Luckily such thoughts were interrupted with that faraway rumble of the motorcycle that I knew belonged to Gage.
Our connection wasn’t that intense that I could hear a motorcycle and know it was him. No, I knew it was him for other reasons. Primarily because my story had gone to print today.
And I hadn’t even told Gage I’d written it.
Because I was a coward.
And also because I knew he’d not only try to stop me from writing the article, but he’d also try to ‘take care of’ the problem for me. As was his way.
He’d done that with the car. My car. The one he’d fixed and refused to let me pay for. It was somewhat of a fight. Not our first one—our whole fricking relationship was a battle—but our first semi-normal fight. Because regular couples fought about things like money. Not exactly about the man fixing the car the woman crashed and then refusing to let her pay for the repairs, but something similar, surely.
Gage scowled at the check I was trying to hand to him, then folded his arms across his chest, obviously trying to distract me with the flex of his muscles.
It kind of worked.
“Gage,” I huffed, tearing my eyes from his arms and chest. “You’re being ridiculous. This is my car. I pay for the repairs.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re my woman. I fix shit that gets broken. The stuff I don’t break myself, that is.” His voice dripped with delicious darkness.
“Don’t use sex to try and distract me!”
He smirked. “You do it to me all the fuckin’ time. Turnabout’s fair play.”
I glared. “I do not. Name one time I’ve used sex to distract you.”
“Any time you fuckin’ breathe. Any time I inhale and taste your sweet cunt calling to me.”
I clenched my thighs together at his words.
What was I talking about again?
“Gage, just take the money,” I demanded, hating that my voice was now husky.
“No.”
I stared at him.
He stared back. “You know I’m not gonna be the one who blinks first here.”
Crap. He was right.
“Okay, you might blink first, but I’m also dedicated to my decisions. And I will stuff this money in your jacket. Into the saddlebags of your bike. I’ll make sure it gets to you. You know it.”
He glared at me. “You’re fuckin’ frustrating, Will.”
I smiled.
Hand still outstretched, he snatched the envelope off me.
But then he yanked me onto his knee while he sat on the sofa. My core pulsated with exact and intimate knowledge of what he was about to do. My bare skin kissed the air as he yanked my skirt up, exposing my ass.
There wasn’t even a pause, a warning.
Gage didn’t do warnings.
A sharp sting erupted on my left cheek moments after a resounding slap echoed in my ears and inside my pussy. I moaned in both pain and pleasure, clenching my thighs together, fighting the orgasm that was already building.
“You may be able to get what you want this time, but I always get what I want,” he growled as his hand came down again.
It just so happened that what Gage wanted was to give me multiple orgasms.
And I was totally okay with that.
The next day, I figured out why he’d taken the money so easily.
Well, easily for Gage, at least.
There was a strange man inside my apartment when I got home from work last night. And he wasn’t there to try to kill or kidnap me like Amy was convinced someone would “eventually, because you two have been together for weeks without it happening. It’s an enigma that it’s been this long.”
I’d always thought someone trying to kill or kidnap me was an enigma, not an eventuality. But I hadn’t missed how Gage was always looking around, always checking in. He was waiting for something. Bracing.
I understood it. Because of the club’s past.
They expected the drama.
But for me, Gage was the drama. Living through him. Surviving him.
But obviously he was expecting more. Hence the strange man in my apartment installing the alarm system.
I hadn’t screamed because it was rather obvious what he was doing and who’d directed him to do so. The man sitting casually in my living room reading leisurely.
I dropped my purse to the floor with a thump to get his attention. Though I knew I’d had his attention the second I entered the room.
“Seriously?” I snapped at him as he dog-eared the book and put it down.