“Killing is hard, even for monsters,” he continued.
I frowned at him. “That’s what you think you are? A monster?”
His stare burned into me. “Isn’t that what I am?”
I looked at his eyes, glassy, bloodshot, pupils not quite pinpricks, but close.
“You’re high,” I said instead of answering his question.
He blinked. It was a long, slow, absent blink. “Not quite.”
I gaped at him, first, he had been a stranger who looked like Liam. Then I thought I was getting to know the stranger, not liking him much, but knowing him. Thought I knew he was a version of Liam. But this was evidence that I didn’t know anything about this stranger. Or even anything about Liam.
“You said drugs were the instrument for the weak minded,” I accused. I didn’t even know where my judgment was coming from. I’d seen addicts, interviewed them, listened to their struggles with illness, and not once did I pass judgment. Everyone was trying to self-medicate to cure the disease called life.
His hands took hold of my shoulders. Tightly. “Look at me,” he whispered. “Really fuckin’ look at me. My mind seem strong to you?” His voice quivered as he spoke. His voice actually shook. His body didn’t. The strong, sculpted muscles stayed taut, he stood tall, he exuded physical strength. But the absent hopeless emptiness in his eyes, that quiver in his voice overpowered all of that physical strength.
Over my weeks here, I’d seen glimpses of weakness. Of pure, unobstructed sorrow. A pain so deep that even I couldn’t understand it.
Every glimpse was a pinprick. A thousand pinpricks into the exposed nerve that was my heart.
But he recovered from those lapses quickly. He shielded himself from showing any more than a glimpse. Which was a good thing too, because had I been presented with this, this shell of a man, this broken soul in a biker cut, I might’ve broken sooner. But he was breaking now, and I had no choice but to break too. To fracture all of my anger, my false hate I’d been harboring toward him.
My hand was shaking when I lifted it to his face to wipe away the single tear that had leaked out of his hollow eyes.
That single tear was equivalent to blood gushing out of a mortal wound.
“All my life has been about since I met you, it’s been about protecting you,” he said. Another warm tear trailed over my finger. “You are the most precious thing in the world to me. And you’re so fucking fragile.” He squeezed my shoulders harder, as if to make a point. “So fucking good. And this world is not fucking good. Even as a boy who knew shit, I knew that. And when the war turned me into a man, I knew it better. I got a chance…” he trailed off.
I knew what he was doing then. He was trying to explain how it happened. How it all came about, the lie that set us both on a course of destruction.
I waited, cupping his scarred and tear-stained face.
He sucked in a ragged breath. “The club’s in a war, Peaches,” he said finally, voice rougher than before. Whether he couldn’t find the words in his drug addled mind or he lost the courage to give me the explanation that fifteen years coming, I wasn’t sure.
I found myself relieved that he didn’t give it to me.
Because I sensed once he gave me that explanation I would be forced out of this limbo I’d placed us both in. I’d have to make a decision. There would have to be a finality to it.
To us.
I wasn’t ready for the decision yet.
“I know the club’s in a war,” I said in response.
Something moved in his face, some kind of panic so visceral I thought there was an immediate threat.
His hands moved from his sides to clutch me by the neck as if someone were trying to rip me from him.
“This war is different,” he rasped. “This is one that could take you from me. Because of your involvement with me, you could get caught up in this. And you wouldn’t just die. You’d die in one of the ugliest ways possible, they’d…” He trailed off. More tears streamed down his face. “I couldn’t survive the knowledge of what they’d do to you. I couldn’t live through knowing what happened. And you’d have to suffer it.” His voice had that same edge of panic as his expression, as if intruders were about to break through the ruined door and make truth of his predictions.
“That’s not going to happen,” I said with a surety that I didn’t feel.
He either didn’t hear me or believe me.
“You’ve barely lived your life,” he said. “You’re young still. You have only lived a wrinkle of your life. There’s so much ahead of you. Once you leave me, once you leave all of this behind you, you’ll live that life the way you’re meant to. But you can’t leave it behind you, not right now, not while you’re in the middle of it. I don’t know how to get you out, I don’t know how to get you through. I know I have to get you through. Unscathed. Because that’s my greatest fear, harm coming to you. Coming to you because of me, because of the life I chose to take me away from you.”