It’d been ninety-nine thousand seconds since he’d left her standing on her doorstep in that fuckin’ outfit that hid nothing and showed him exactly what he needed to stain with his soul.
Ninety-nine thousand seconds of the visceral need for a needle. For nothing.
So the meeting Bex needed was probably something Gage needed just as much.
“You seem different,” Bex said as they’d pulled up to the clubhouse.
It was the first time they’d spoken since he picked her up. Neither of them were conversationalists. With him, it wasn’t surprising.
Her, it was.
Because every other old lady—save maybe Lily—never fucking shut up. The bitches were always talking, always arguing, always seeing something they shouldn’t see.
And it didn’t annoy Gage like it should. Because they were all decent women. Good women. Women who could handle this life, even if it didn’t look like it at first glance.
He was happy for his brothers.
But he needed respite from that shit. From their sweet and soft voices. The happiness that melted into the air from them. From them finding whatever fucked-up happily-ever-after landed them there.
He had landed there because he was fucked up. And because there were no happily-ever-afters for him. He’d been fine with that. Because there was nothing left of him to want that shit. The only thing he wanted was blood and pain.
It didn’t stop those bitches from teasing him with something he would never have. Had never wanted.
Lauren’s eyes surged into his mind.
“I’m not different,” he barked.
He felt Bex’s gaze on him, knew she was giving him an eyebrow raise. His hand clenched on the steering wheel, the other still encircling Bex’s tattooed one.
“So it has nothing to do with the woman Lucky said was screaming, ‘all up in your business’ and threatening to have you arrested before you dragged her off?” she asked sweetly.
Gage glared at her. The bitch didn’t do sweet. Not when every inch of her was hardened by the world. Her arms were covered in tattoos that she’d started getting since they’d yanked her out of her Hell.
She’d used them like Gage had, to try to cover up the crumbling and decaying skin underneath. With her, it actually kind of worked. Because she had other shit to heal that crumbling and decaying skin—though not completely, as she’d always have it. The black diamond on her ring finger. The name ‘Gabriel’ on angel wings in the crook of her right elbow.
The light in her eyes that shone a little brighter than the stare of her demons.
But sweet wasn’t something she gave often. She couldn’t. There was only so much sweet left in a girl who had the bitterness of the world shoved down her throat.
“Your dipshit husband doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talkin’ about,” Gage snapped, forgetting how he’d told himself to handle Bex with care, today of all days.
She grinned. “Oh, that reaction tells me something else entirely.” She didn’t blanch at his harsh tone; it took a lot more than that to bruise this woman, even on her worst day.
Her grin disappeared as some true light, true sweetness flickered on her face. She squeezed Gage’s hand. “You know I’m never going to ask you what gave you those scars.” She looked down to the fabric of his henley, covering the ruined skin.
It burned with just her gaze.
Every single time a pair of eyes fastened on his arms, the pain intensified. Because there was always pain. He lived with it. Just like he lived with the ugly and ruined skin that the world gaped at when they got a look. And people stared. Because even though everyone was ugly on the inside, they tried to trick themselves into horror at seeing someone who wore their ugliness on the outside. Tried to use his pain to pretend they were somehow better than him. He didn’t give a fuck about whatever lay behind the stares—it was the attention to them that made them burn. Because the more you fed a demon, the more it grew. The uglier it got. And eyes on his skin fed his demons. Hands on it was a feast for them.
Which was one of the reasons no bitch touched him there.
That was a hard fucking limit.
His only hard limit.
Bex had never mentioned his scars before. She was one of the few people who understood. Who knew you needed to starve the demons lest they take over.
Her eyes met his. “I know those gave you other scars that only certain people can see,” she said, eyes on his arms. “I know that shit is locked up tight for a reason. I know it ’cause I’m using the same locksmith for my own shit. I also know there’s only one person in the world with the key.” Her eyes moved toward the windows of the clubhouse as they pulled up, softening at the edges. “The only one that doesn’t create more scars when he opens that shit. And he was also the man I was sure I was going to damn. That I didn’t deserve to have because I was too ruined for him.” She gave him one last glimpse of that sweetness she reserved for her husband and her best friend. “Just remember that no one’s too ruined for the right person.” She paused, grinning slightly. “Or the wrong one. Because sometimes the wrong one is exactly who you need. We fucked-up people need the wrong ones to keep us on the right side of mental depravity.”