7
BIANCA
That night, I had nightmares of Tiernan I didn’t want to wake up from because I knew I wouldn’t see him when I opened my eyes and how fucked up was that?
He was this contradiction only my heart could decipher.
A lovely monster.
A beautiful nightmare.
I was fascinated by his cruelty and savagery as much as I was by his hard-won loyalty and infrequent but brilliant flares of tenderness and humility. Even in the depths of slumber when the mind untangled itself in long ribbons of vibrant dreams, my consciousness couldn’t make sense of my feelings for the man.
And then, as if in answer, that morning when I woke up, there was a gift on the vanity.
The French doors to the balcony were closed, the curtains barely parted, but I knew without question that Tiernan had broken into the Constantine Compound again to leave me the immaculately wrapped present tied with a crimson red bow. A red rose was slotted beneath the satin fabric and, like the one he’d had on the day he showed up on my doorstep in Texas, this too was resplendent with sharp thorns.
I smiled despite myself as I carefully brought the bloom to my nose and inhaled the rich floral perfume. The small white envelope wasn’t addressed, but the cramped hand-written words written within the blank card were undoubtedly for me.
I’ve made you bleed since the moment I met you, but now I’m bleeding out without you.
It wasn’t signed with a name. Instead, a neatly pressed bloody thumbprint marred the bottom of the cardstock.
Maybe to another girl, or a Bianca from an earlier time, the words would have been too dark or too cliché, but in that moment, I was certain I’d never read, seen, or conceived of anything more romantic than that proclamation. That beautiful whorl of a blood-stamped finger print.
This was how a violent man proclaimed his affection.
With blood.
This was how a man without the proper vocabulary to express his love made his intentions clear.
I’d doubted his sincerity when he’d spoken about buying me back on the floor of my borrowed room. How could he be believed after everything he’d done? When I knew he’d sought out Aida then taken Brando and I solely to suit his own needs for revenge against our Lane.
I still didn’t know why he felt the need for revenge or when he had decided not to go through with his original plan. Why he hadn’t gone through with it.
But staring at that thumbprint, feeling the shifting of my something fundamental in my soul like shifting tectonic plates, I knew something with absolute and terrifying certainty.
My fingers were numb as I pulled out my cell phone and swiped through my contacts to Tiernan’s number.
It only rang once.
“Little thing,” he practically purred. “Did you have sweet dreams about the monster under your bed?”
Normally, I might have laughed and rolled my eyes, but my entire focus was on the card pinched in my trembling hands.
“I hate you,” I declared with surprising conviction even though my heart was turning over in my chest like a key in the lock of a heavy door that pushed open suddenly at the pressure and sent me falling.
Falling for him.
The enormity of the revelation threatened to consume and the only thing keeping me anchored was that card, that print, the hushed murmur of Tiernan’s breath through the phone line.
“I think you understand me too well too hate me,” he countered calmly.
In the background, I could hear the low murmur of one or more of The Gentleman and the high octave of Brando’s trilling laugh.
“Is that Brando?” I whispered through the cataclysm rocking through my chest cavity.
“He bullied me into making getting two trees,” Tiernan admitted ruefully. “Ezra’s just set one up in the entry hall and the other in the living room. We’re making…” he paused and I could picture the look of self-mockery on his face, “popcorn to string from the boughs.”
A startled laugh burst from me like machine gunfire. “You aren’t.”
“This is not something I’d brag about,” he drawled.
In the wake of my laughter, I felt hollow and alone, a tumble weed blowing across a barren landscape. “I wish I was there.”
“Come home,” he said and I could hear the effort it took him to play casual, to form the words without ordering me. “Stop the bleeding, Bianca, and come the fuck home.”
“No.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“A single rose and a thumb print aren’t going to erase all the lies you’ve told,” I countered, relieved to feel a surge of anger. Anger I could understand more than this bone deep ache for a man it wasn’t permissible for me to love. “I don’t even know why you did it. Why you took us in to get revenge on a man who has been dead for five years.”
There was a long pause punctuation with Brando screaming in delight in the background.