Battles of the Broken (Sons of Templar MC 6)

“What?” I asked, tensing, bracing.

“When our kid grows up,” he repeated the words I hadn’t even been fully aware that I’d said. That had tumbled right out of my fantasies and into the air because I’d been so comfortable. So happy.

That was a grave mistake.

I saw that now.

But it was too late.

With everything Gage and I had shared, all the wounds we’d exposed to each other, I’d settled comfortably into the fact that we were tattooed on each other’s souls. Our demons were all but married, and I’d imagined that same permanence with a certainty that was obviously a mistake. Gage hadn’t spoken about marriage or anything like that, but he’d made promises about life and death. About forevers. So I’d logically taken ‘forever’ as marriage and kids.

But there was no logic here.

Only pain.

“Well, I mean… I’m not talking now or anything,” I said quickly, my voice shaking for reasons I didn’t quite understand. But I also knew that I meant maybe not now, but soon. Because I was in my early thirties, though I wasn’t worried about my biological clock. More about creating a family, something beautiful from the ugliness that brought us together. “I just mean—”

“I don’t want kids, Lauren. Or marriage.” The words were spoken flatly. Cruelly. But that was the point. Gage was using them as shields—no, as weapons to push me away, prod at me so I would retreat.

Sweat beaded on my temples as my heartbeat increased and panic started to set in. “Well I know obviously now isn’t the most ideal time. We haven’t even been together for—”

“No. Not now, not ever.”

I flinched.

He had no reaction to it. Not even a Gage reaction to show what my pain was doing to him. There was nothing. It was like my offhand words had scooped out his soul and there was nothing of him left.

“What?” I asked, my voice bland and empty. I hated it.

“I don’t know why you’re acting so fucking surprised. You’ve heard about my past, know what I went through.”

I stood, intending on going to him, on taking his hands, but his entire body repelled me, created a barrier that I didn’t even dare cross. So I just froze in front of him, an awkward distance that didn’t feel right between us.

But it somehow felt permanent.

“Gage,” I whispered, pain etched into the single word.

“With all the ugliness you’ve seen of the world, why the fuck would you want to bring another person into it?” he clipped.

I flinched again, but I was determined to not back down, to try and fight. “With all the ugliness I’ve seen, why wouldn’t I want to add some remarkable kind of beauty to it?”

He looked at me a long time with that brutal and empty gaze. The pain that gaze roused rivaled that of him telling me about his daughter. It was different though. Then, he was opening up to me, showing me everything bloody and broken inside him.

Now he was slamming everything closed, taking away everything with that gaze.

My hands shook at my sides.

He stepped forward, quickly, purposefully.

“You’ve known true sorrow and it’s made you so fucking kind. So fucking remarkable.” He brushed my cheek and I flinched. Not because his grip was so hard. No, because it was so soft that it was barely even there. “I’ve known true pain and it’s made me cruel. Cold. I’m barely able to give you what you need, Lauren. What I can give you, it’s not what you deserve, but I was makin’ peace with that, ’cause I’m not the good guy. But no fuckin’ way can I give you that.” He shuddered. Actually shuddered. “No fucking way can I watch you grow with my child, see you glow with life and see that happiness again. Because it’ll drive me over the edge. I fuckin’ know that. I won’t be able to handle feelin’ all that happiness. I’ll go in search of nothing.”

His hand left and he stepped back, his boots an echo in the halls of Hell.

“I may deserve nothing, Will, but you sure as shit don’t.”

I waited for more.

Because an ending to what we had needed to be more than that. It needed to be a battle. It needed blood, suffering, pain. Me clutching on so tightly that my nails ripped off.

It couldn’t be that simple and agonizing.

That anticlimactic.

But it was.

Gage turned around and left. I was still in a state of shock until the door slammed, and a short time after that, his bike roared away.

He hadn’t even paused at the curb.

He just left.

I stood dry-eyed in the living room for a long time, gazing blankly at the shards of me that had been crushed under Gage’s motorcycle boot as he walked away.

Then I sank to the ground.

And those broken pieces cut me to shreds.

Gage

He didn’t know where to go after leaving Lauren’s apartment. Hell would’ve been a nice respite from the utter emptiness he’d felt since walking out that door. And then he’d gotten his wish, since the itch, the need to fill that emptiness with junk thrust him into the pit again.