Battles of the Broken (Sons of Templar MC 6)

Gage had overdosed in the midst of the worst time in his life.

Been legally dead for two minutes.

But he’d survived.

And for what?

So he could send more fuckers to the grave? Cause more pain?

He’d held himself back from taking her. From snatching away those bleeding words with his mouth. With his cock.

He itched to fuck the demons out of her.

But he was frozen.

So she kept speaking them, and they kept eating at her soul, right in front of him. And there was nothing he could do about it.

Talk to an addict. Any recovering addict. They’d tell you that at any moment of any given day, they were thinking about a fix. Their skin was itching, crawling with the need for something to get under it, something to take it away.

The ones who said they had days—fucking moments—when they weren’t thinking about junk were fucking liars.

Because every fucking second of Gage’s existence had been resisting the urge to shoot up. Never had he enjoyed a fucking moment of not wanting it. Not when he was killing a man, fucking a woman, or blowing shit up.

Not a second.

But the moment his woman began talking about finding her overdosed and dead twin brother, her voice so saturated with pain that it was a wonder the air she breathed wasn’t drenched in crimson, he found himself not wanting a fix.

Never in his life since he’d started junk had he been disgusted at the thought of shooting up.

Sure, he’d been disgusted at himself for wanting to. Disgusted at the fucking world for being so depraved that drugs had to even exist.

But never at the junk.

That was the only shit that didn’t make him want to hurl.

The high.

But right then it did.

Because it was the reason the magnificent creature in front of him was shredded, torn, scarred beyond belief. Beyond what Gage could realize. Fuck, she had scars just like his, despite her milky smooth skin.

And then she stopped speaking.

And thank fuck for that, because Gage didn’t know how much longer he could’ve handled that cold and detached voice.

He’d handled torture. Both giving and receiving. He’d seen the aftereffects of what happened to human bodies after being blown up. He’d been the motherfucker to blow them up. Heard the ones who weren’t lucky enough to die immediately. The sound of a human being burning to death while missing some vital limbs was an exquisite kind of horror. One no one in the world should ever hear if they expect to keep vital parts of their souls. The sounds Gage had heard. More than once.

So he could handle shit.

What he could not handle was another fucking second of his woman’s voice like that.

This was his time to get up. Leave her.

He knew it would hurt her, and he fuckin’ hated that shit. But hurting her now was better than destroying her later.

But then he spoke, the words out of his mouth in the same breath as he’d been preparing to walk out of her life forever.

Lauren

“I’m not going to be able to give you what you need,” Gage said, his voice flat but not empty.

It was after silence had descended, apart from my heavy breathing. Because spewing all that out felt like running a freaking marathon.

Gage had been unreadable during the entire thing. And I think that was the key to him. When he didn’t look like he was feeling anything at all, he was feeling everything. So I found the strength not to let the words level me, and I answered them. Challenged them.

“And what, pray tell, do you think you know I need?” I asked.

His gaze was hard, unyielding, bordering on cruel. The gaze of a man going to his execution. And he was gripping me, holding my arms tightly like he was going to take me with him.

“A normal fucking life, Lauren. A normal anything.” He was yanking the words out, throwing them at me in some kind of desperation. His eyes melted my bones. “I’m broken. And not in those ways that everyone is a little bit broken. My past, it shattered me, then forced to me construct a fucking Frankenstein outta the pieces. I’m a monster, babe. There’s no denying that. I’m not stable. Not gonna be able to provide a life that’s certain. Life that’s good. And you might be broken, but not in a way that deserves a fuckin’ life like mine.” He gripped me harder, even though the words were trying to make him let go. Make me let go.

I placed my hand atop his. “You may have pain and darkness in your heart, but you’ve got sunlight in your bones,” I whispered. “And even if you didn’t, I wouldn’t let you walk away.”

His face hardened. “You don’t know the things I’ve done, Lauren,” he said harshly.

I didn’t waver. I had a newfound strength now, after spilling something that I thought would kill me and remaining breathing afterward. “I don’t need to know the things you’ve done to know the man you are.”