Pain radiates through me, and sadness hits me hard. “I miss her.”
Marcus doesn’t speak, just puts me in his bedroom and heads for the shower. When I manage to move, I head in too. His shower is large and open, and it has no glass doors.
“I’m going to go,” I tell him.
Marcus nods, there’s no fight in him. No asking me to stay.
Just a damn nod.
“Marcus…”
He turns that beautiful ass of his, leaving my view, and now stands before me, a man with scars and a face so hauntingly beautiful I have to remember to breathe.
“Do you love me?”
He picks up the soap, blinks a few times, and turns back again. Giving me no answer. I nod my head in acknowledgment and leave. He doesn’t try to stop me. He doesn’t even walk me out.
As I get in my car, I see Blaze standing in the dark near his motorcycle. He stubs out his cigarette and walks toward me, then leans down so he’s at my window and looks me over.
“I hated you on the merit that you’re too good. I can see it. You are too good for someone like my brother. Not that he isn’t a great man,” Blaze says. I don’t speak. “You haven’t experienced half the things in this life he has. He’s walked through hell and never once looked back. He does that for people he loves. It’s why I admire him so much.” Blaze winks. “Don’t tell him that, though.”
I won’t, because I think this is it.
I think I’m done.
I can’t do this anymore.
Marcus had become a security blanket, one I no longer need. Well, one I have to stop needing.
“What I’m saying is, Marcus doesn’t know good. You are the first good thing in his life that doesn’t expect anything. Do you get what I’m saying?”
I do expect something from Marcus, and right now, I want something. I want him to tell me he loves me. And he didn’t. So my heart, which is shattered, will slowly grow back to love again. Maybe I will love myself differently, but I need to grow it back and become whole once more.
Too much death, and not enough life.
Marcus is all about death.
I am not.
“I don’t hate you, but I don’t like you,” he says, pushing back so his face is no longer near mine. “I couldn’t protect her, but I can protect him. If you stay with him any longer, he will change, and he doesn’t need to. Marcus is perfect just the way he is.” I shake my head, confused by his words. “He will never love you. He vowed to never love another woman after our mother. You will be lonely with him, no matter how good you are. He is always in the dark. Always.” Then he turns and walks off back to his bike, kick-starting it, and leaving me sitting in the driveway with no sign of Marcus and a hole the size of New York in my heart. He must know by now I’m no longer inside the house, and he hasn’t come to stop me, or see if I am okay.
Maybe Blaze is right.
No, I know he is.
Marcus will never love me the way I love him.
And no matter how much I try telling myself it will be enough, it isn’t.
Marcus told me he would only be with me.
Now that’s a lie too.
Does he like her more than he likes me?
I shake my head as the jealousy of the blonde comes roaring into my head.
I’m not a jealous woman, and Marcus has turned me into a crazy person.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Marcus
“You lied to her,” Blaze says later that night as he steps into the back house, his eyes falling to the source of the lie. Dave, who is not dead.
“It was necessary.”
“Was it, though?” he asks. “You have a woman who, despite all of this…” he waves his hands around, “… still hangs around.”
“You don’t even like her.”
“True. This is true. But I can see the way she looks at you.”
“And how is that?” I ask, walking over to a passed out Dave, who is close to death.
“She looks at you as if you’re her lifeline.”
“I don’t want to be anyone’s lifeline,” I mutter while shaking my head.
“I think you do,” Blaze says.
Dave starts to stir. He’s strapped to the chair, unable to move. He starts to make muffled sounds, then screams when the pain begins to take hold.
Blaze looks down on him and shakes his head. “Everyone thinks it’s me who is the dangerous one and you’re just the freak. But they don’t really know it’s you who’s the dangerous one. And I feel even if she knew that as well, she’d still accept you.”
“She’s good,” I tell Blaze, reaching for my favorite item—the saw.
Dave starts squirming.
“And you’re evil. She will balance you out.”