Lazarus (The Henchmen MC 7)

His feet shuffled forward, making me go back across my floor as he closed the door behind me and rested the side of his face to the top of my head, taking a deep breath.

"You have any fucking idea how worried I have been about you since you didn't answer my calls?"

God, that hurt.

It was a knife right through my chest that I recognized immediately as guilt.

"I didn't want..."

I couldn't. I just couldn't go there.

If I went there, I knew what would happen. He would say my problems were his problems too. Or he might just be under the notion that because we were sleeping together that that meant he had to... defend my honor.

Either way... no.

"Listen," he started, voice calm, patient. "There's two ways this is going to go. You're going to open up to me right now, make this easy. Or you are going to make me pry it out of you over the next hour or two. Either way, I am not backing down until you tell me who put their hands on you, why, and where the fuck I can find them." There was a pause as I tried to suck in a deep breath, knowing he was right. He could get it out of me if he tried hard enough. And Lazarus being Lazarus, an all-around amazing guy, would never stop trying. "Just so we're clear here too- the why doesn't fucking matter. There's no excuse good enough for what they did, but I'm assuming the why has a lot more to do with why you ran than anything else."

He wasn't wrong.

"I don't want to do this." The words came out weak, spineless, pathetic.

"Look," he said, pushing me back and reaching up to frame my face in his hands. But right about then, something caught his attention behind me that had him stiffening, that had his hands dropping from my face and onto my shoulders for a second.

His face was suddenly unreadable, shut down.

It was so unnatural on him that my stomach dropped violently as he suddenly moved away from me, stalking across my apartment and moving into my living room.

It wasn't much of an apartment, though bigger than his in all ways. I had a full kitchen cut off from the living space by an old, somewhat ugly, island. I had stools pressed up against it, seeing no need for a dining table seeing as I didn't ever have company. My living space was painted a stark white when I moved in and I was generally too high to even think about changing it, but I had a nice, gently used sectional I saved from the garbage at my parents' house when my father decided that everything that my mother had ever touched needed to be trashed. It was long and deep brown and the softest kind of old leather.

He was standing by the end of that couch, wide back to me, blocking my view of whatever it was that caught his attention.

But not for long.

Because then he turned and I felt my heart constrict in my chest, a strange but strong enough sensation to have me raising my hand to press there like I could relieve the pressure.

In his wide, damaged palm was the orange pill bottle I had found inside my couch cushions when I dropped down onto them.

He shook the bottle and there was nothing.

His eyes went to mine and I didn't find what I expected there- accusation or disappointment. I found, instead, understanding.

But I hadn't taken them.

It had been empty when I found it.

"No." My head was shaking almost violently side to side as he moved back toward me, touching the side of my face and angling it up, looking, I was sure, for signs that I was lying. "I didn't, Lazarus," I said, voice firm.

It mattered, I realized.

It mattered that he knew that while I had been hurt and was obviously going through some shit, that I didn't slip up. I didn't use it for an excuse. His work with me wasn't in vain.

He nodded at that, tossing the pill bottle onto the little table inside my door. "I see that," he agreed. "I'm proud of you, Bethany. If ever there is an excuse for an addict to slip up, it's getting her face knocked up by some assholes."

I swallowed hard, not realizing how much his words could mean to me. "I didn't want to disapp..."

"Stop." His voice cut me off, kind but firm, brooking no argument. "Even if you did use, sweetheart, you wouldn't fucking disappoint me. Do I want you to slip up? No, of course not. Would I understand if you did? Of course. Do you have any other pills around here you want me to get rid of?"

My eyes closed as I took another deep breath. Of course he would be the kind of guy to think of that, even though I was standing there busted up and he had to be at least somewhat mad at me for making him worry.