“I actually fell in love with you!” she railed at him, the pain in her chest like a band being tightened. “Until ten minutes ago, I thought maybe we could make something work, that there really was something here! Something real!”
“Don’t,” Graham said, sounding angry at last. “Don’t love me!”
Alice was out of words, out of breath, out of the fury that had carried her this far; it was leaking out of her with the tears on her face.
Graham seemed to have absorbed all of it. “You want my secrets? You want to know the whole truth, who I really am?” he threatened.
Alice stared at him, not sure what to do with the emptiness in her chest or the silence in her throat.
“I’m a fighter, I’m a killer. I told you the truth about school, and I got recruited soon after to fight in an underground cage fighting ring. It was all shifters, and it was a fight in human form until one of the fighters shifted in sheer survival instinct. You know how you get shifters to take animal form? You hurt them. You hurt them so bad, they have to shift, they can’t help themselves. Ask Tony, or Neal. Beehag had it down to an art.”
Graham was speaking between gritted teeth, his sides heaving like he’d just run the length of the resort.
“I was good at hurting people. Really good at it.”
Alice didn’t doubt it.
Then Graham stepped forward, a sharp, aggressive move designed to frighten her.
“And I liked it,” Graham hissed, close to her face. “I liked to hurt them.”
Chapter 22
It was out there. It couldn’t be taken back. She knew who he really was now, and that was it.
Graham couldn’t hold his angry facade for long, not in the face of Alice’s foolish bravery as she gazed back at him wordlessly. She was too beautiful to bear, too courageous to endure.
“You should go,” he said, stepping back and turning away. “I won’t bother you again.”
But she didn’t go. “Why did you go to prison?” Her voice was quiet and firm.
Graham was done with lies and secrets. He would answer any question she asked.
“I killed a man.”
He could have stopped there. He could have let her assume it was just an accident, could have stuck to half-truths like he always did. He could have forced her to ask the questions. Instead, he went on, continuing to stand looking away.
“He was a good fighter, strong and fast, light on his feet and well-trained. Not the best I’d ever been up against, but... good. I... thought he might have been a big cat shifter.”
Had he really? Had he really had no doubts at the beginning of the fight?
“He fought hard, snapped my wrist before I got his collar bone broken and turned the tide of the fight. But he never gave up, never... never begged for mercy... never asked...”
Grant had begged.
Shift, he’d hissed, hearing the man’s rib break at his hit. Shift and concede the fight.
Give up, he’d pleaded, when he dislocated his opponent’s shoulder. How much abuse could he take?
Shift, he’d shouted, over the crowd’s cheers and jeers.
Shift! he’d beseeched, holding the man’s broken body in his arms, not sure how he hadn’t surrendered to his animal instinct long before.
Then Graham finally realized why he hadn’t, as the light in the man’s blazing eyes slowly flickered out.
“He wasn’t a shifter,” Graham said. He was not sure when he had dropped to his knees, hands making fists in the gravel. “He was just a human that they’d put in a cage with me.”
Behind him, Alice gave a hiss of dismay.