“She does want me,” Lincoln says. “She told me she still loves me. Soon she will be back here with me where she is supposed to be.”
“You are delusional,” Chrissy yells at him and he strikes her across the face, harder than he meant to, and she falls to the floor with her hand to her cheek.
He crouches beside her and says quietly to her, “I warned you not to talk back to me.”
He stands up, leaving her in shock on the floor. He goes to the bathroom and closes the door quietly. He strips and turns on the shower, but then he stops. He doesn’t want to wash away Liv’s scent from his skin. He wants it on him to remind him that she came to him and that she will come back. He turns off the shower and looks at himself in the mirror. The dark circles under his eyes look more pronounced and his shoulders are tense again. If Chrissy would just fuck off, he could relax again. He was in a good mood before and she had to ruin it.
He was quite prepared to live this life and to keep pretending, but it was taking its toll on him. He feels like he has been given a second chance to make it right with Liv and he will do that, or he will die trying, and anyone who gets in his way had better beware.
A soft knock at the door interrupts his thoughts. He pulls the door open and glares at Chrissy who is standing there wringing her hands. “I’m sorry that I angered you,” she says. “I didn’t mean to. I was hurt.”
“You have no right to be hurt,” he says to her. “I am not yours. I belong to another.” He walks past her, and she stiffens.
“Aren’t you going to take a shower?” she asks.
“No,” he says. “I like the feel of her cum on me.” He pulls on a t-shirt as she gasps at his words. He is deliberately bating her, but she doesn’t back down.
“Clean up, Lincoln. The Pack will smell that whore all over you the second you go downstairs,” she says.
He sighs. “You will never learn when to keep your mouth shut will you?” he asks. “And who I fuck is no one’s business but my own.”
“You are making it my business as well,” she says. “They will lose all respect for me if they think I am not strong enough to keep you.”
“Not my problem,” he says and walks out of the room.
She follows him quickly. “Where has this attitude come from?” she asks. “This is your problem and you need to deal with it.”
“I am sick of living a lie,” he says. “I am sick of rolling over and just taking it. Today, I have been given hope and I plan to use it. Things are going to change around here, Chrissy, so just get used to it.”
He reaches the top step and she grabs his arm. “Lincoln, you can’t do this. You must see that she isn’t going to come back. It was a goodbye fuck, that’s all it was.”
He growls at her and pulls his arm free as he steps down. She loses her balance as she was leaning forward, and she blindly reaches for him to steady her. He hesitates for only a second, but it was second too long. She screams as she falls down the flight of stairs, his hand just brushing hers. He didn’t have enough speed to catch hold of her.
“Chrissy!” he yells at her and races down the stairs. She has landed at an awkward angle and is motionless on the carpet before him. Her head is bashed in at the side where she hit the corner of the railings and her neck is twisted as if it is broken.
“Shit!” he shouts, and a few members of his Pack come running to see what all the noise was about.
“Shit!” Zoey says as she sees Chrissy lying bleeding out on the floor. “What the fuck? Linc?”
“She fell,” he says in a monotone. “I couldn’t catch her.”
“Get her upstairs quickly,” Zoey says, taking over as Lincoln is just standing there looking down at her. She is a Wolf. She will be fine. Won’t she?
“Call the healer, now,” she orders Mike and he runs off to make the call.
“The baby,” Lincoln says to Zoey.
“I know,” she says calmly, and follows the others up the stairs as Lincoln continues to stare at the spot where Chrissy landed.
The Underworld, July 2014 – Aefre
Devon and I land back in the kitchen to a pacing CK. “Where have you been this time?” he asks with exasperation instead of anger. I catch his eyes flick quickly to my right hand, clasped around Devon’s arm. When he looks up again, he is relieved, and I gulp. He knows. He knows what Devon and I want. I am going to have to face this head on or it is going to fester into a great big ball of unpleasant.
“To Lincoln’s,” I reply and get a sigh in return.
Devon sets about making a sandwich, dismissing his, now cold, pasta, as CK takes my hands. “Aefre, I know you have suffered a terrible loss, and your way of dealing with that is unique. You have always replaced loss and tragedy with sex, in some misguided attempt to feel loved and comforted, but that isn’t the way to do it. You need to talk to me. I will help you through this.”
I gape at him. “You are lecturing me on how to deal with my emotions?” I ask incredulously as Devon snickers into his ginormous sandwich. Famished, indeed. “How dare you, of all people, tell me how to deal with my feelings?”