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  “I picked up the knife and swung it back and around and I caught him up under the ribs Babe. He was hurt and he was hurt bad and if I called for help he probably would have lived but… but I didn’t. He’s on his knees in the kitchen; his hand pressed to his side and the fear is just coming off of him in waves and I liked it.” He smoothed down his hair with the hand I wasn’t holding and scrubbed over his face with it.

  “I got up behind him and pulled his head back and looked down into the fear shining out of his eyes and didn’t feel a god damned thing but satisfaction when I ran the blade across his throat. His skin parted like water, I remember that, so smooth and perfect. I remember thinking it was beautiful. There was blood but not a whole lot. I cut to sever his windpipe and vocal cords. I wanted him to die slowly and he did.”

  I was staring up at him wide eyed and fearful. He was serious. I knew it when I saw it, and he was completely serious. I knew this about him. I knew he killed, I had even aided and abetted him in the murder of Ashton’s husband, who everyone thought had committed suicide by hiding Ashton in my home while they went out and did it. By reinforcing the boys’ alibis with text messages from Ashton’s phone.

  Ashton’s husband had been a monster. I’d seen what he was capable of twice and felt no remorse that he was gone but I and Ashton had been spared the gory details. I looked up at Reaver now, mouth slightly open and realized that he was a monster too, but a very different kind. Still… I don’t know… I felt all mixed up inside at this revelation. I didn’t want to hear more but at the same time I needed to. I chewed my lip and made up my mind.

  “Go on,” I said and he looked half way defeated.

  “He died slow. I disposed of the body and cleaned up before my mom got home, told her he’d gone out for a pack of smokes. He was gone, his truck was gone and he just never came back. My mom crawled into a bottle harder than ever. I crawled into a bag of weed, and a bottle myself,” he palmed the back of his neck and looked over at me.

  “I don’t feel guilty about killing him. I liked killing him. I’ve enjoyed every kill I’ve done. No, what I feel guilty about is the fact that I don’t feel anything, one way or another about what I did to Rick, to Chadwick… To any of them.”

  “What… what happened with Aimee?” I asked.

  “Oh God I loved her,” he sighed. “Loving her became almost a way of atoning for what I’d done… She had a boy, but still, the things I’d done, they haunted me. I wasn’t sleeping, then when I did sleep I’d have these dreams. Not about Rick but about Aimee, about my baby boy about carving them up and I’d wake up and…” he took his hand away from me and used both to scrub his face.

  “I got into speed to keep me up, keep me working so I could support them. Then I got into H to sleep… and let me tell you, that shit was the sweetest oblivion.” The look on his face for a fraction of a second spoke of a longing for a lost love. I pursed my lips.

  “That’s how I met Trigger. We scored from the same dealer. We’d get high together and he told me about over there. You know?” I nodded.

  “Anyways, one night it all came spilling out and I told him everything I just told you and he told me some secrets of his. Things I won’t tell you, because they aren’t my secrets to tell.” I nodded in agreement.

  “What happened?” I asked. He turned us around to start the surprisingly long walk back to the bed and breakfast.

  “It made me feel better, knowing that we had something in common. We joined the MC not long after that and shit… well, shit had fallen apart with Aimee because of the drugs and so I stopped giving a shit. She moved out and took my kid and I went all in with the club. I was nineteen… It was back when the shit was heavy, and I decided if I couldn’t beat the monster I might as well embrace him.” I looked at him a little wide eyed.

  “That’s how I started killing for the club. I’d gotten heavy into blades after Rick, spent countless hours with all manner of ‘em. Got obsessed… got really good. I fed the monster and sold off bits of my soul to the devil every time.” He looked tranquil, sad, but tranquil. He’d somehow made peace with what he’d done and by the looks of it, some time ago. I didn’t know how I felt about all of what he’d told me.

  Part of me wanted to run but it was the tiny primal prey part of my brain. If there was one thing I knew about Reaver, one very important thing that I had learned in the last year, hell, in the last couple of days! It was that the man he had been describing, the cold, drug using depraved killer… that sure it may be a part of him, but it was just that… a part.

  Still it was a part that gave me serious pause. I had to make one observation and see where it led…

  “You don’t seem to be that man anymore…” I said and he looked down at me, a flash of something… hope maybe? Crossed his face.

  “Part of what tripped my trigger into falling headlong into the abyss was losing Aimee. Loving her, being with her and my boy, it’s what held me together but she couldn’t hold on. Not with a three year old and man forever getting into trouble, coming home fucked up,” he said.

  “I mean I know it doesn’t help, but three of the patches are men responsible for Tilly. We loved her. She was like a mother to us all. Not just Dray. When that shit went down it sobered us up but quick. Me and Trig detoxed the hard way with Dragon’s help. We reformed the club. Went on the straight and narrow, and part of that was I learned how to feed the monster in other ways.” He said.

  “How?” I asked.

  “Figured out what it was. It wasn’t the killing that did it for me Doll, it was the fear. It was having that power, that control that was doing it for me, so I found other more consensual ways to feed the beast… so to speak,” he said.

  I mulled that over.

  “Like what happened earlier today?” I hazarded a guess.

  “Yeah,” he said and had the grace to look embarrassed.

  “Hey don’t,” I said and swung myself out and around to stand in front of him, I gave him a hard look.

  “Don’t be embarrassed. Please?” I begged and his eyebrows went up in surprise. He put his hands on my shoulders and smoothed his thumbs in a light caress in the hollows below my collar bones.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because if you’re embarrassed what does that say about me liking what you did?” I asked troubled.

  He chuckled and gave a one sided smile, “Says you’re my kind of woman.”

  I chewed my lower lip and gazed out over the water. Finally I sighed and wrapped my arms loosely around his waist. I laid my head against the center of his chest and closed my eyes, listening to the steady thrum of his heart. His arms slid loosely around my shoulders and he held me like that for a long time. Not saying anything.

  I had so much to think about, so many feelings and so many paths in front of me. So much new stuff had come up in the last two days I didn’t know what to do and I felt so small and so vulnerable in the face of it all.

  So for right now I cleaned off my metaphorical desk. Swept an arm across it and dumped everything to the floor in one violent swipe. Reaver sighed, I rode the rise and swell of his chest and pulled away when it ebbed, taking a step back.

  “Thank you. I needed that,” I said and he smiled.

  “Anything for you Doll,” he said and I smiled because deep down I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he meant it.

  Chapter 5

  Reaver…

  I didn’t dare hope but I couldn’t help myself. Hayden pulled back from me and thanked me for holding her. Thanked me. Which put me into a pretty intense thought pattern of my own.

  The afternoon was growing late and I could tell that with the heaps of things piled on her narrow shoulders that Hayden was about at her limit. She looked tired. Truth be told I was tired myself. Emotional exhaustion tended to take its toll like any other type of exhaustion out there.

  We walked leisurely back to the B&B in silence. She held my hand and I let her. Truth was I never wanted her to let it go. It was one of
the life lines giving me hope that trusting her with my fucked up past was the right decision.

  I’d decided a long time ago that the thing that really ripped me and Aimee apart was the lies more than any one thing. It was what she’d always bitched about, more than anything. Hell, the only thing she complained about more was the drugs.

  The ocean breeze ruffled Hayden’s short cropped hair, the longer side parted bangs skating across her forehead in such a way I had to actively resist the urge to brush it back into place.

  When we returned to the bed and breakfasts back gate she let go of my hand and I felt the loss keenly. I opened the gate and she slipped through ahead of me and I felt this fractured ache of panic in my chest that I’d lost her. She was so quiet and so somber. Lost inside her own head. We went up to our room.

  “I’m going to grab a shower,” I said.

  “Okay, I’ll go after you,” she murmured.

  “Sure, okay.” I grabbed a fresh pair of comfortable basketball shorts to sleep in out of my saddlebag and plucked out my shower and shave kit with it.

  “May I call Ashton back?” Hayden asked before I went into the bathroom. I smiled.

  “Don’t even need to ask Babe.” I tossed my phone into the center of the made but turned down bed.

  “Thank you,” she murmured and I took my time with a hot shower and shaving off my five o’clock shadow. I hated being scruffy.

  When I came out Hayden was sitting on the bed looking thoughtful, turning my phone over in her fingers.

  “You doing all right?” I asked and she startled. She didn’t say anything but she nodded. I smiled and fished in the bag for her new purple nighty and held it out to her. She took it, her lower lip clasped between her teeth and murmured her thanks. I accepted my phone as a sort of trade.

  She slipped into the bathroom the weight of the world on her mind and showered. I heard the hair dryer from under the sink start up but it was short lived. She came back out, looking fresh, her hair dry, but her expression was weary. Fuck though, I’d nailed it with the purple. The color made the green of her eyes fiercer and the satiny material clung to her body in all the right ways, like a preview of coming attractions. I wanted so badly to take one of my blades to it. Reveal her creamy smooth skin one slice, one knick, one cut at a time.

  I wanted to watch the fear blossom in those pretty green eyes. I wanted that intense connection her trust brought and I wanted to do everything in my power to rock her world for giving me her fear and her trust in equal measure. I denied myself those things for now. She wasn’t in a place to give them without running the risk of breeding anger and resentment in their wake and those were two things I never wanted aimed in my direction. Not from her.

  I lay on my side of the bed on my back, my hands clasped behind my head while she climbed up onto hers. She settled onto her side facing me and I rolled onto mine to face her. I tucked one arm up under the pillow, propping my head onto it. She folded both hers under her cheek. So damned angelic.

  “Feel a little better?” I asked.

  “Yes and no,” she answered somberly.

  “What can I do?” I asked her.

  “Honestly I don’t know… you’ve already done so much, I can’t…”

  “You can ask me anything,” I said, knowing right where she was headed.

  “It would be selfish, especially given that I don’t know where I stand within myself,” she said gently.

  “Hayden, Baby, what do you need?” I asked gently.

  “I don’t know,” she said, but I could see the lie. She knew what she needed but she was afraid to ask for it. I tried a different tact.

  “Tell me what you’re feeling? Huh?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that either.” Truth this time. “Just so many things, all at once I don’t… I don’t know where to begin.” Her eyes misted with tears and I thumbed one away before it could drip down her cute little nose. She gave a shaky laugh. “I’m embarrassed, I’m afraid, I feel so horribly guilty…”

  “Guilty. Why?” I asked picking up on that one.

  “I don’t know what I did wrong. I don’t know why Andy did what he did. I don’t know what I did to push him away. I feel guilty because I embarrassed my dad, my mom invited all of these business people of his to the wedding and…” I placed a finger against her petal soft lips and stopped her right there.

  “Hold up right there Baby,” I said gently and her green eyes became inquisitive.

  “Replay what you just said in your brain and tell me something,” I said, I watched her do it, her brow wrinkling in confusion.

  “Now tell me, why do you get to own any guilt for the feelings of the people your mother invited to your wedding? I hear you didn’t even want those people at your wedding. You wanted something small yeah?” she nodded and when I was sure she wasn’t going to speak I took my finger away.

  “So why do you give two fucks about those people? Let you mom work herself into a tizzy over it. Fuck them and fuck her for what she said to you!” I said. Her eyes got wide. “Yeah. I heard her, carrying on like some harpy at you. Not cool Baby Doll. She’s gonna spend at least five minutes in Hell for the way she treated you after Andy pulled the bullshit he did.” She blinked incredulous.

  “Oh and while we’re on that subject. What makes you think it was anything you did? Because of that toxic spew coming out of your mother’s mouth? Andy was the one to do it. Him. No one else. This is his shit and you don’t get to own his BS either,” I said and she finally opened her mouth.

  “Why?” she asked. She was forever asking why and it was something I loved about her, her inquisitiveness.

  “Why don’t you get to own it?” I asked.

  “No, why did he do it?” she asked and I knew it bothered her, more than anything in the world I knew it was eating at her like some kind of cancer but this one I didn’t have an answer for. Well, not true. I had my suspicions, but no way to confirm them.

  “I don’t know why he did it,” I said truthfully, I couldn’t resist stroking her upturned cheek with my thumb, a gentle caress. I knew I was out of bounds but the way her eyes slipped shut, the way she subtly turned into my hand…

  “Did that man ever show you any affection?” I found myself blurting. Her eyes flashed open, wide and wider still, I’d taken her aback with the question pretty hard.

  “Andy wasn’t really… Um he wasn’t really like that. He was all business,” she said flushing a gentle pink.

  “You can tell me to shut it any time from here on out, you don’t have to answer a thing, but I can’t keep myself from asking… Did he ever hold you?” I watched her face and hoped like hell she would answer me.

  “Um, sometimes in the beginning of our relationship,” she said. Fuck me. That was four years ago.

  “When was the last time you had sex together?” I asked and half hoped she would tell me to shut up and half hoped she would trust in me enough to tell me.

  “Uh about six months ago…” she said and was really blushing hard. Fuck I appreciated that she trusted me enough to answer these questions, she really didn’t have to.

  “What the hell was wrong with him? Couldn’t get it up?” She blinked and laughed and her expression darkened. I wasn’t going to like this I could feel it.

  “He worked a lot… Was tired a lot, and out on business a lot…” I closed my eyes and counted to ten. A man loves his woman and is pulled away from her on business the first thing he did was come home and fuck her brains out… unless he was one of two things. Gay or getting a piece on the side. My suspicions were looking to be right on the money.

  “He was cheating on me for some of it,” she said miserably and my eyes snapped open. Suspicion fucking confirmed but wait? She knew!?

  “What the fuck!? And you were going to marry him anyways!?” I asked, outraged partially at her and partially on her behalf.

  “I kicked his ass out but then my mom found out. She took me aside and explained it was a common thing among coup
les to go through, that I should give him a second chance that if it ever got out it would look really bad and that, you know…” she shrugged and seemed to fold in on herself.

  What was the deal with her mother!? Was the woman seriously all about how good she looked at the country club over the emotional wellbeing of her daughter? I kept my mouth shut, I didn’t want Hayden to hurt any more than she was hurting and I wished like hell I’d been a better man and seen what the hell was really going on. Hind sight was always fucking 20/20 and I’d been blind as a motherfucking bat going in.

  “So I did, and things were, you know, really good after that. He was attentive and it was like the beginning all over again and he asked me to marry him and I said yes and then business pulled him away and it was all about planning the wedding for me and now here we are.” I looked her over.

  “Jesus Doll. This is not you. None of this is you. You’re this bright, shining, confident woman. I don’t fucking understand these people, your own mother included!” I searched her face for an answer I didn’t think I was ever going to get. I was pretty sure she didn’t even have one but I was going to get one. Somehow, some way.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” she said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “You’re going to say you don’t know how I could let them do this to me… Am I right?” she asked.

  “That is my next question.” I replied honestly.

  “Truth?” she asked.

  “Always between us,” I answered.

  “I don’t know either… I guess I just got tired. My mother, Andy, they just have this way of turning what I say I’m feeling back on me. Like it’s no one’s fault but my own. Andy would tell me I was being unreasonable and he always had these arguments that made me wonder, and I’d spend days picking it apart in my head and…” I placed a fingertip on her lips.

  “Andy was covering his own ass Babe. Your mother, I don’t know what her fucking excuse is but I’m starting to hate her about as much as I hate my own. I don’t know why your dad is even with her.” I took my hand away and let it rest on my stomach.