But he was glad for the distraction, focusing on fighting his need for a fix instead of fighting his need to turn his bike around and bowl through Lauren’s door, take back every word he’d said, tell her he’d give her fucking everything. But he couldn’t. Because he was a fucking coward. Because he was afraid she’d give him everything and then the ugly world would take it away.
And he couldn’t fucking take that.
He wasn’t as strong as Lauren was to forge through her fear, her ugliness, and create something beautiful. And that meant he didn’t deserve her.
So he pulled his bike into his house, was inside the empty living room before he really knew how he got there. No fuckin’ way he’d go to the club. Not like that. He was actually scared of what he’d do to one of his brothers if they looked at him the wrong way. He didn’t trust himself not to kill a member of his family if that meant his need for blood might chase away some of his need for her.
So that’s why he was at his empty house. Because there was no one to hurt there but himself. And he’d stopped himself from yanking his knife from his belt and dragging it down his arm.
Instead, he’d yanked something more dangerous from his pocket and laid it on the table in front of him.
He stared at the phone.
And it stared back.
With more force, more strength than anything else he’d gazed at. It was a fucking phone. He’d stared at some of the worst people to walk this earth—before he’d stained the soil with their lifeblood, that was.
He’d stared down the barrel of a gun many times. And once, it’d been his finger on the trigger of the gun he’d stared at.
And all those times, he’d felt nothing.
Maybe a tiny bit more than nothing, which was why he did the things he did. Why he chased death, to make sure he didn’t spend too much time thinking about how it chased him. So he couldn’t dwell on what it had already taken from him.
How it had already taken everything.
Those times, staring at things that could kill him, it was death that kept him alive. And it was the feeling that was a smidge more than the abyss of nothing that kept him chasing it.
Blood.
Violence.
Danger.
Pain.
But when he was staring into her hazel eyes, he saw a fuck of a lot more than nothing. Felt a fuck of a lot more than nothing.
It made him feel everything.
And that was worse than staring down the barrel of any gun.
Fuck, that was the barrel of a gun.
And it was those hazel eyes, her warm and soft touch amidst the hardness and coldness of his world that had him staring at that phone in the first place.
The phone that was a lot more dangerous than any murderer he’d sat across from, anyone he’d killed. More dangerous than the murderer he saw in the mirror.
But he found himself dialing.
Listening to the ring that felt like dirt on his fucking grave.
Hearing the faint and tired voice on the other end of the phone tore through him like a bullet. Paralyzed him like knife shredding through his spine.
His grip tightened on the phone as demons clutched at his throat, choked silence out of him.
Heavy breath covered his silence. A hitch in those breaths that sounded something like hope. But Gage wouldn’t know what hope sounded like. What it fuckin’ felt like. Hope abandoned the damned.
“Christian?” the soft voice asked.
Another bullet.
A muffled sob broke through his heavy silence. “Christian? Is that you?” That time it wasn’t a question but a plea.
His insides shredded. He was sure she would’ve forgotten. That he would’ve been the black mark they’d painted over by now. That he was nothing more than a scar.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to talk,” the voice hiccupped, full of fresh pain, not something that had even scabbed over, let alone scarred. There was a pause, a slight muffling of the phone. “Gary!” the broken voice called to the background.
And then he didn’t hear any more because the phone smashed against the wall seconds after Gage had thrown it.
He barely noticed the carnage against the ringing in his ears.
The need for a fix.
For blood.
For her.
He stood, going to satisfy one of those needs.
Lauren
One Week Later
I didn’t get out of bed for an entire day. That might’ve been nothing to people who partied till the sun came up, binged on Netflix, or were just plain lazy.
I was none of those people.
I was strict with my wake-up time, though being up and ready for the day wasn’t the intention. People were supposed to be up, being productive; it was what the normal structure of the world demanded. So I did it, because it was what was expected. Even on the days that my mattress seemed to grow arms and my mind grew roots, urging me to clutch to the nothingness of sleep.