Desolation Road (Torpedo Ink 4)

Absinthe immediately slid off of her and she rolled, was off the bed, on her feet and made her way to the bathroom to scrub herself clean. She left the door open so she could hear every word they said to each other and/or so she could see an attack coming.

“What happened?” Absinthe asked calmly.

“What the fuck do you think happened? The same as last time and the time before,” Savage snarled. “You have to get a fuckin’ lock on this, brother. It can’t keep happening.”

He stalked across the room and snagged his shirt, dragging it over his head and chest. “I scared the shit out of your wife in order to bring your ass out of it. Do you know what that cost her? Do you have any idea what that cost me? I was already in the downward spiral. I could have resolved the issue with the fuckin’ job we’re pullin’ tomorrow but now I’ve got this craving and I’ve got nowhere to put that shit. Not to mention, she knows what a fuckin’ psycho I am.”

“Savage,” Absinthe cautioned. “What do you mean, you scared the shit out of her?”

“You’re not listening to me because you don’t want to face this. You’re still trying to blame yourself for every damn thing that happened to all of us. It happened. We can’t change it. They fucked us up and we’re the way we are. We can do our best to live with it, not hurt anyone who is innocent and keep to the code. You do that, brother. You’re the best of us. You can’t keep traveling down this path of guilt. It’s got to stop.”

“What do you mean, you scared the shit out of her?” Absinthe repeated, his voice dropping another octave. He stood, coming off the bed, sudden aggression in his body.

Savage shook his head. “You don’t want to go there with me right now, bro. I’m pissed as hell with what I had to do here tonight to bring your ass back to her. She’s worth it. You’re so fuckin’ lucky and you don’t have the brains to know it. Some of us don’t have a chance to have a good woman who would do what she did for you. She could take the kitten role or leave it. She does it for you, of her own free will. The woman is like, what? One in a million. You’ve got her and yet you’re risking her going down that same path of guilt. All for what, Absinthe? Tell me for fuckin’ what? Sorbacov and his fucked-up friends? You’re going to let them ruin your life forever? You’re going to let them take a woman like that away from you? If you do, you sure as hell don’t deserve her and not because of what happened to us, but because somewhere along the line you stopped fighting back.”

“What the fuck did you do to Scarlet?”

“What do you think I did to her, Absinthe?” Savage countered. “What’s the strongest trait you possess when it comes to women? You fuckin’ ran into a burning building naked, barefoot, to save them.”

Absinthe winced visibly. Scarlet gripped the sink until her knuckles turned white, studying his face. He rarely showed emotion, but with her out of the room, he was showing it to Savage. His expression was a mixture of anger, guilt and, shockingly, fear. Not fear of Savage; fear of discussing a topic he didn’t want to talk about.

“I’m not talking about that.”

“No, you never want to talk about that. You’d much rather take the chance of going somewhere we can’t reach you. You were damn lucky Scarlet was here with you. What happens someday when you get triggered and no one’s around to pull you back? What happens then, Absinthe?”

“What did you do to scare her?”

Despair hit and, inside, that last bit of hope she’d clung to faded. Savage was right. If Absinthe wouldn’t talk about his past and the things that were triggering his flashbacks, they would continue to repeat, and he would be caught in a deadly cycle. This was her wedding night and she’d given him a gift she thought he would love, and he’d still fallen into that trap of the past. He refused to work through it, even for her, even when Savage was pointing out how problematic the episodes were.

“What the fuck do you think I did? I let her see who I am inside. Just let the monster slip a little bit, just enough that she couldn’t tell if he was in the room with her or not. And, bro, you better believe that fuckin’ monster was in the room with her. He’s slipped the leash and he’s had a taste and he wants more. But in the end, it was worth it because the hero came charging up like the white knight he is. You came back to save her, just the way you always do.”