A Twisted Love Story by Ace Gray (7)

 

“I can’t ride a motorcycle,” Conrad shrieked just before he flicked his handprinted horse to frantically fan himself.

“I’ve seen what you can handle between those thighs first hand,” I laughed. “I know you can.”

He shot me a skeptical look from behind the lifted visor of his helmet.

“Think of how utterly Cat Woman this makes you.”

“Halle Berry or Anne Hathaway?”

“Berry’s body, Anne’s long hair.” I answered seamlessly. “Get on.”

“You have a problem with Halle Berry’s hair? And you call yourself a gay man.” He scoffed.

“No, I’m bi and I’ve always liked something to yank on.” I grabbed the chin piece of his helmet and pulled his protected forehead to mine.

“You don’t have to remind me.” His voice was low as his eyes darted away from me.

“It’s who I am, I can’t change that.” I didn’t scold him, instead I softened to match his scared tone. “I love you with all that I am because they built me before you.”

His answering smile, even where it was hidden by the helmet, wasn’t just the sun, it was the whole Marvel Universe.

“Better.” I bit my lip. “Now stop stalling. Get on.”

Conrad handed me his fan then threw his leg over the leather seat of the Triumph and grabbed the low handles that framed the circle headlight. His hands rolled on the grips, rippling the muscles of his forearms and tensing his triceps. His back had a slight arch and the lightweight cotton of his shirt fell into the dips and grooves of his body. I couldn’t even look down to watch his thick, denim-clad thighs hug the vintage bike. I was already hard.

I tried to adjust myself without making it obvious as I cleared my throat. “Feel the weight and shift of the bike before you turn it on. You won’t be able to balance it upright on it’s own but then you’ll have an idea before you turn it on.”

He focused on the ground in front of the bike and started to lift one foot and then the other. When he finally rested one easily on the foot pegs, I gave him additional instructions then with a deep breath and tight chest, had him turn the bike on.

It growled to life beneath Conrad and it was my turn to snap the fan and try and cool the heat crossing through my veins. His bold, brash laugh punctuated the grumble of the engine and made the whole moment that much fucking hotter. I had to adjust myself this time, blatant or not.

Conrad revved the engine twice then laughed loud and wild again. I couldn’t help but smile even wider.

“Meow, Tiger,” he said over the engine.

“I’m a Horse,” I answered, his playful mood infectious.

“Yeah and I’ll ride you later.”

With that, he slipped into gear and took off. He jerked forward and wobbled a little, my feet bolting after him, my heart feeling a little helpless to keep him safe. But then he righted himself and I stopped with a puff of the cracked, dry desert dirt around my feet and watched.

He was manly on the straightaways and shaky on his wide turn, barely missing a cactus, but the combination was so utterly Conrad, so damned adorable, I couldn’t wait until he came back. He rode for a few minutes and grew more comfortable but still couldn’t quite nail the dismount when he parked in front of me.

“Now that was fun.” His voice was the deep one only I got to hear but it was breathy, excited.

“It was hot.” I wiggled my eyebrows.

“I can go from riding hog to riding Horse.”

My snarl automatically rumbled in my chest, rattling my ribcage and pooling need in my stomach.

“We’re supposed to start looking for a place. That was the whole point of this little exercise.” I stepped towards him, close enough that his warmth radiated like the desert sun.

“Home is wherever I’m with you.” He reached for me and let his fingers brush down my fly. My hips naturally shoved into his hand.

“That sounds like something you’d hand paint onto a reclaimed piece of barn wood to sell on Etsy.” I rolled my eyes but let him stroke me.

“That would look really lovely.” He smirked. “But what I have in mind is a little less down home and a little more down under.” His hand folded around me.

I grunted then just as savagely pulled at the chin strap of his helmet.

“Home is whenever I’m in you,” he whispered in my ear, his voice laced with laughter as his hand slid up against my skin and then snuck beneath my waistband.

“Well then…” I breathed in deep, his sweat and dirt mixed with his usual sunshine coconut scent. “I’ll do my very best to build a tent.”

 

*****

 

For the first time in my life I had an adventure that didn’t involve death and destruction, that wasn’t steeped in blood and bone. House shopping with Conrad was its own type of carnage but at least it was couches and wall color that took the beating.              

After a few months and so many leisurely motorcycle rides, we found one set back far into the jungle near Tulum. The road to the former vacation home hadn’t been well maintained but it was manageable on the bikes. Palms and vines hung into the drive, bright flowers and fruits were polkadots amongst thick green and barely made space for sun beams to filter in. Each time I drove the dirt road it was a journey to some other land completely, a journey from town to somewhere timeless. And when Conrad finally hung a white canvas hammock underneath the thatched porch roof, it was the perfect hideaway from the rough world I’d always craved.

I laid back in the hammock and surveyed the small, humble kingdom we’d bought with blood money and smiled. So much hate and hurt had bought me peace. And peace didn’t look like the super secret, tech gadget laden lair of a superhero as I had always envisioned. Instead it looked like simple wood siding and a thatched roof, a home that seemed to be built from the leftovers of the land itself.

Inside was one large open living space, broken up only by the large glass doors that turned the place inside out when the weather was right. The kitchen was all gas and I burnt things on the open flame more often then not, and the dinning nook had a built in bench that Conrad had taken over as some haphazard writing desk. The bedroom was in constant disarray, with blankets and sheets showing exactly how much we enjoyed playing house together.

It was beautiful.

The life. The house. The sound of Conrad plinking at his keys amidst macaws and monkeys. The taste of a cold beer on such a hot day. The sweat that seemed to sheen on his skin each morning. The salt of his skin mixed with each tropical sweet. They were all the smallest of things, barely of notice to anyone else, but to me they made up magic. 

I rubbed the thin white pages loosely bound in my hand, and closed my eyes to the warm sun peaking through to the hammock. The soft sway of the canvas gave me just the slightest breeze and reprieve from the deep Mexican heat. With a contented purr, I opened them back up and returned to reading Conrad’s words.

“What do you think?” he asked, sidling into the beam of sun and stretching out, shirtless, against the pole where he watched.

“I love it. I wish I could read it faster,” I answered, the laze of paradise thick on my voice.

“Why don’t you?” He smiled and the sun pales in comparison to his brightness.

“I like savoring it. I like savoring you.”

“Oh do you?” He moved closer, a bright halo ringing his cut body and obscuring his face in shadow. I could hear the lust that twinkled in his eyes.

“Yes.” I matched his voice as I swung my feet from the canvas.

I hooked one finger into his belt loop and pulled him closer, his tattooed poetry at eye level for me to recite. To pay homage to. I kissed the first word that cut between the deep V of his hips then let my lips brush along the line of script. My tongue to trace the letters. I let my nose move up the contours of his muscles as my hands worked first to remove the fabric of his shorts and then to harden that perfect cock of his.

“The boys were full of youth and vigor as they ran into that glenn,” I started to recite his words that I’d been reading. “That glenn was house to the magic of fairytales when they were younger, but now…” I trailed off and looked up at him. “Time was still suspended somehow. They could be boys, playing at men. They could be boys playing at happily ever after. They could be men playing with each other.”

Conrad shuddered with a deep groan as my lips replaced my hand on the head of his dick.     “God, I like that.”

I slid down on his shaft a few times before I pulled off. “The words or the mouth making them?” I asked swaying ever so slightly on my hammock perch.

“Both.” He shoved his fingers into the my hair and pulled my face back toward his perfect hips.

I answered him by swallowing his length whole. He held me down, forcing my throat to adjust to his girth, his prowess. I gasped as best I could, my throat rolling on him more than anything, my nose sucking in more than his burnt coconut scent. He held me down, nudging deeper and deeper into my throat. Each mini-thrust resonated in my toes.

When I couldn’t take it anymore, I pulled back only to shove him backwards until he was up against the sliding glass behind him. Inch by inch I worked his shorts down, revealing more lines of script, of his wild poetry. The way his body spoke to me was even more feverish than the whispers on his skin.

His yelp when I pressed his naked ass fully against the glass only egged me on as I pressed my lips between his legs and started to roll his balls in my mouth. His fingers just laced harder into my hair. I made sure to let the scruff on my chin tickle at this thigh.

“Fuck,” he swore as his hands flew from my head and flattened back against the wall.

I simply growl in response. And stand. Then turn him. His hands flatten back against the windows, this time up by his face. His breath fogs in small and frantic puffs out from his lips, tinting the glass.

I was still bent down by his thighs, letting my mouth run up his hair-crossed skin when he shuddered. That shake was enough to make my body move with his, quake with his.

Forever. I would remember that feeling, forever.

My lips caressed every inch of him, leaving kisses in my wake. Exploring the curve of his ass, the groove of his spine, the dimples that framed them both. Higher and higher, feeling the shape of each vertebrae as if they were the foundation of my own skeleton until I stood at full height behind him.

When I stood behind him, our bodies weren’t the perfect match but the way I could lower down and lean into the crook of his neck seemed better than a some matching puzzle piece. It was as if that curve had been sculpted for me. And when I fiddled at my belt and notched in between his hallowed cheeks, that piece of him felt carved for me too.

He gasped when I nudged against him, but just like when he returned the favor, I knew this wasn’t from shock. Nothing I could do would surprise him these days. Nothing would even be new, we’d explored the landscape of each other too thoroughly. This was simply a gasp at the sweetness of a feast of milk and honey in the hard-fought heaven I’d finally found.

“I love that sound,” I breathed the words into the hot tropical air as I pushed into far more familiar territory.

“Goddamn,” he moaned as his fingers fled into the glass, desperate to dig into it.

“He probably would considering the things I do to you.” I pumped my hips slow against the curve of his, feeling the muscles of his ass flex and tense around me, back in to me.

“Do them,” he whispered then rolled his forehead to lean on the glass in front of him, surrendering to whatever I wanted of him.

And I wanted everything. Every inch, every day.

I never tired of this. Of him. Of the sunshine that he was, radiating something warm into my life. He was a passionate man that demanded respect but he gave it back tenfold. He expected things of me and was the first to hold me to them. To think I was good enough to be held to. And not just in bed.

This was just a bonus.

My lips trailed up the back of his neck as I started to thrust in and out. Into his salt-brined, sun-bleached hair. The ocean crashed, infinite, when I breathed him in. There was nothing but sun and sand and serenity pulling at the sand piece by piece and then placing it back. The scent of him was always my undoing.

I couldn’t help but pick up pace, my hips the crashing wave his body begged for. The sound of skin against skin brought me back to the moment. To him. To devouring him.

My hands moved around him and found his hard cock and started stroking opposite of my thrusts.

“Horse,” he groaned as his dick twitched in my hand.

I growled back at him, quickening my movements both inside him and as I rolled on his length. He uttered my name again, each letter it’s own desperate plea. The primal sounds of us, the battered sounds of him, edged me closer, pushed me higher. I slipped a hand from the twists and tugs on his erection and slid it lower.

He was mine. All of him. Over and over I took him from behind while I twisted on his front. My hands worked on his shaft, massaging his balls, extracting mewling sounds from his plump lips.

I kept going. Harder. Faster. Desperate to shatter him into oblivion so I could pick up the pieces and carry them with me wherever I go. My throat went dry and my vision a little spotty from the exertion in the late afternoon sun. The darknesses that edged in was just a compliment to the darkness that haunts my soul from time to time.

Another snarl ripped my throat and the savage inside broke free. Conrad cried out and arched beneath me. The animal in me reacted, the creature desperate to cage it’s prey. I bit into his soft locks and held his head back to mine. My hands worked even more feverishly on his pleasure. I thrust into him with a bone-shaking brutality.

“I’m going to come.” His words were barely formed, each letter riding the other, riding devastated syllables.

I didn’t waver, not even to show him how very much that pleased me. Not now. Not when we were so close to that orgasmic edge together. I wanted to shove him off amidst the fireworks and then dive off after him.

My name dripped ragged from his lips a moment before the flex and roll of him in my hands signaled his release. The way his thighs bunched mixed with the hard shot through his dick were both the lust tipped arrow that pierced the space below my belly button.

His body slumped in my hands as I used his brawny body to finish for myself. Each wild thrust shot a breath or barely-there whine from him but otherwise he was lifeless in my arms. I was a conqueror like this, a beast. With that thought and muscle upon muscle that I cherished more than gold malleable in my hands, I came.

My orgasm was a wild jump from the cliff and a slowly unfurling parachute to save my fall all at once. It was the fireworks barreling through me, singeing my veins. And when my body lost control, my fingertips went a little numb and my arms slipped from him. Without my help he disintegrated into a puddle on the porch beneath me, his head still resting heavy on the glass.

Each of my breaths was a labored drag in and wild shove out but when I noticed that he’d drug his head down through his own orgasm where it spattered on the glass, a breathy laugh tangled in between.

He was still hunched away from me, his ripped thighs folded neatly underneath of him and the letters criss-crossed on his back expanding and contracting with breaths just as beat up as mine. I may have just imagined it but he seemed to shake the slightest bit.

Using the support of the glass door, I sat down onto the floor next to him, letting my legs leisurely tangle up around him. Without a word, he slid from the glass to my chest, his ear listening to the thunder of my heart.

“You got something there, Cream Pie.” I chuckled as I drug my thumb across his forehead to clean up the cum coating his skin.

“It’s been ages since I had a proper facial,” he snarked, his words still winded, stuttered.

My smile stretched far enough across my face to make my cheeks hurt as I bent down replace my thumb with my lips, my tongue. I kissed the crown of his forehead chastely then let my lip skate across the sticky on his skin. He groaned every bit as sexual as before when I lapped him up.

When I popped my lips after licking him clean, he lifted his head from my chest, his deep ocean eyes meeting mine. The infinite feeling was back, the pull of my being piece by piece to be tumbled and returned too. What did he see when he stared into mine?

“I can't fucking think when you look at me like that,” he murmured. “Damn near gives me the vapors.” He used his southern belle drawl as he fanned himself.

To anyone else, he sounded stupid at worst, silly at best, but I needed stupid and silly in my life.

I needed him.

 

*****

 

 

The green leaves of the jungle and sunbeams from above had blurred into patches of color as I stared out of the window over top of my cup of coffee.

“You’re up early.” Sleep was still thick in Conrad’s voice as his footfalls pulled the shapes outside our window back into focus.

He kissed the back of my head before heading for the coffee pot and when I turned, for just the slightest moment, he seemed covered in a live and lapping shadow. I shook my head and once again the bright light that always emanated from him was back.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I answered his unspoken question then took another sip. “Nightmares,” I added as my eyes went back to the beautiful colors outside our window. The colors that chased away vacant black and deep crimson.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

That his body hung from The Butcher’s hooks? Or his body was flayed on Mickey’s table? That his blood gushed from gunshots in my arms in the street? Fuck no. I wouldn’t give voice to those images. Ever. Not even to Cole who may understand the haunting fear most.

“Just death and destruction,” I said with a half-cocked smile.

My mind wandered to Cole and Elle, to the darkness that almost devoured them. The fragile skeleton Elle had been the last time I saw her was terrifying. The prayers I said almost daily that they’d found some sort of peace like ours started on repeat through my mind.

Conrad’s thumb came to my forehead much like mine had to his yesterday only he smoothed the crinkles of my brow.  

“I mean I’m no expert on the superhero stuff, but you know I have a soft spot for a Hemsworth, any Hemsworth. And it’s my experience that when my hobby meets yours, it’s love and sacrifice that trumps the death and destruction.” He snaked his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in tight, resting his chin on top of my head. “We should get out today. Ride to the beach.”

The thought of Conrad on his bike always made me smile. Him wading into the waves was even better.

“Do you think you’ll go under?” I ask and then wait for the answer.

“The water?” he shrieked. “The last time a fish touched me. Swear to God, I got a rash.”

“I looked at that.” I chuckled. “Numerous times.” As I recalled, my lips had investigated the maybe-red spots not too long after.

His reflection was faint in the glass but I still caught him rolling his eyes as he turned. The slide of dresser drawers told me he was covering up all those perfect muscles, all those beautiful words, and that I should do the same.

I took my time getting dressed, still sipping my coffee, still wrestling with the shadows. Ghosts seems to edge into my vision but I chalked it up to the dancing light playing tricks through the forest canopy.

“Are you okay?” Conrad’s face pinched as he crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe.

“Yeah.” I pulled my shirt on and sat on the edge of the bed to grab socks. “Why?”

“You’ve had the nightmares before,” he smiled warmly, “but they don’t linger like this.”

“Linger?”

“You’re wearing it like sequins. At ten a.m. on a Tuesday no less.” He cocked his head and watched me as I finished pulling my boots on.

“It’ll fade in the sunshine.” I stood and walked directly to him. I rounded forward when I reached him and pressed my forehead to his chest about his muscled arms. His ever-present warmth speed into my skin. “Besides, you keep me safe.”

His deep laughter rumbled in his chest. “Something like that.” His words were still tinged with laughter as grasped on either side of my face and lifted my chin up. Ever so carefully, he pressed his lips to mine. I stood a little straighter, pressed a little closer, and just when I was about to deepen the kiss, he pulled back. And playfully licked up my lips and to the tip of my nose, pulling the first genuine smile from me all morning long. “Let’s go be wild.” 

He pulled on my forearm and dragged me to the slightly smaller building down the drive we called a garage. His bike was a sleek vintage Harley that I’d had to have shipped from the States. It was delicate despite being a Harley and Conrad had a great time pretending to be Betty Page on a pin-up shoot when he rode. The only downside was that he insisted on the vintage-styled half helmet to match.

I watched him throw his leg over the seat and started to walk his bike backwards and out. Like that, he was the epitome of everything I loved. Hard and soft, giddy and serious. Muscles and ink and surf, despite not liking needles or the ocean. He winked at me as he turned the bike around to wait for me to join him down the jungle drive.

When I kept staring at him, he revved his engine and jerked his chin toward the garage. I lingered on his brilliant smile for just a little longer then turned and collected my Triumph that he’d learned to ride on.

I maneuvered faster than he did and was out behind him in no time. We travelled the well-worn dirt road through the jungle and I found myself swerving to tag the splotches of sun that dotted the drive. There was a warm salt breeze blowing at my face, heating my cheeks rather than stinging it like the Chicago air always had. 

Conrad rode with more confidence the days and it was hot as fuck to watch. Strong and assertive sat well on his shoulders, just like the tight cotton taut across his muscles. He used more of his body to muscle the bike then was necessary but that only made my smile spread. He’d get the finesse someday and until he did, there was plenty of flexing and stretching of fabric seems.

I thought of what those back muscles has looked like just yesterday as we pulled from our long, battered driveway and onto the paved roads traveling between town and the cenote. He lifted his face toward the beating sun and the warmth pooled in my stomach. The purr of the engine echoed the similar sound of pleasure rumbling in my chest.

He twisted a little bit, shooting a sideways smirk as best he could back to me. The warmth from my belly spread throughout my body as easy as pure, metallic gold. The shadows from this morning were completely gone.

I mimicked Conrad and lifted my face to the sun. For the first time in my life, it warmed so much deeper than my skin. I smiled as my eyes came back to the road, back to Conrad, but then my face froze in some pained, contorted mess. My scream lodged in my throat.

My eyes came back to Conrad just in time to see a sleek black SUV gun it and careen and crunch into my boyfriend and send his bike sideways.  

***** 

 

Minutes. Hours. Days could have passed in between my heartbeats as I watch his bike go sideways and pin his body. Together they slid like stones on ice despite being skin on pavement. His body bounced and blood already tinged the light gray of the road. The crashing in my head was the same ocean I’d seen in his eyes yesterday but angry and violent. It was the only roar I could hear as I all but launched off my bike toward a broken and bloody Conrad.

I didn’t realize I was screaming. Not as I ran to him. Not as I tried move the bike from between his legs. Not when he gasped and gargled on my name.

Not until the all too familiar click of a pistol at my temple silenced the entire world around me and I drug in the deep breath I’d been missing.

“Hello, Horse.” The voice that accompanied the gun sent shivers down my spine.

“Horse,” Conrad gasped. “Baby.” His hand reached for me where I’d fallen to my knees beside him but fell short as if even full extension was just too hard.

“I’m going to kill you.” My voice was low, harsh. Steady, even if I was anything but.

A wicked laughter was the man beside me’s only response. Well that and to push the gun harder against my head.

My eyes flitted up from Conrad’s mangled body as much as I dared. I could count three pairs of shoes that didn’t belong to the man at my side. They were spread evenly around the wreckage, or certainly not close enough for me to take out two at one time. Specially not in the time it would take the bastard beside me to unload a shot. And the thought of hurting Conrad more, of adding to the destroyed state of his body…

“What do you want?” I chanced enough movement to inch my fingers to Conrad’s and hold tight.

“Vengeance would be nice.”

I closed my eyes and blew out a deep breath. The list of people that could be standing to my right was so long, too long. Life had been so good, too good. I should have known this was bound to happen, even here in this corner of the world. I should have been prepared. The blood I still dreamt coated my hands told me as much.

“Mickey Maloney stole from me. He took everything I love,” the man roared and my heart skipped a beat.

“I’m not with Mickey anymore. I killed him.” My voice was frantic, I knew I was begging for Conrad’s life.                

“I know. It’s the only reason I haven’t pulled the trigger.” Whether he meant to or not that answered one of my questions, the why I haven’t died yet one. He wanted something from me.

“If you help him, I’ll give you anything. I’ll give you my life.”

Another wicked laugh rang out but this time the gun fell from my temple.

“Grab him,” he commanded and the shuffle of shoes against the pavement pulled my eyes up to three men, each barely smaller than me.

“No!” I screamed as I shrugged out of their reach.

“Horse…” The man warned as he leveled the gun back at my face.

“You can’t leave him like this. I said anything but only if you save him,” I begged even as his thugs muscled me up from my knees. “Please!”

My screech was the first moment I laid eyes on the bastard that had razed Conrad and wrecked me. He was Mickey’s hispanic counterpart, with weathered skin and wickedness for eyes. He had a scruffy beard kept shaved close, a lot like mine. Wrinkled tattoos peaked up from his collar and covered the back of his hands. Despite the heat, he wore a three piece suit that reflected the sun off the sheen of the black fabric.

I held his gaze, even narrowed mine infinitesimally, knowing that I’d go down swinging for Conrad. That a man like this would expect it. He simply bit his bottom lip with his front teeth and let out a sharp whistle. It accompanied a raised hand and slight wave.

An engine turned, pulling my attention from the villain in front of me. An ambulance pulled from the side of the road and drove the hundred yards or so toward us. The EMTs piled out, tools in hand as if they’d been waiting.

“My name is Miguel Abelló and nothing happens in this town without my permission, Horse.” He stepped forward and pressed his toes to Conrad’s throat. I vaguely recognized the name but couldn’t focus on it.  “Nothing,” he repeated as I started screaming, manically wrestling with his thugs.

They wouldn’t let me go. The man wouldn’t stop his slow pressure on Conrad’s neck. The fury that rocked me let me rip and arm free and I pummeled the first face I saw. He dropped as if I’d simply shut off the lights. In the shuffle of me moving lightning fast and the two men reaching to catch him, I got free. Only to turn and start a manic beat down in any direction I could. My fist connected with bone and flesh. My knee with a groin then a kidney. All the wild movement to the tune of evil laughter from just behind.

The EMTs hesitated as I Hulked out, hovering at the edge of Conrad’s body. Conrad who hadn’t said anything in a few minutes, hadn’t even moaned in pain. I hesitated just long enough to check the rise and fall of his chest.

The words he’d had inked just for me rose and fall once. My failure to keep him safe, my insistence on being wild picked at the wounds of my soul, leaving me to bleed internally before a crack at the back of my head sent the whole world to black.

 

*****

 

There were faint murmurs and a god awful beeping just outside of my consciousness. They slowly brought me back from the darkness. A machine seemed to be inhaling and exhaling just out of reach. The smell of bleach tickled my nostrils.

I’d come to enough to know to stay still while I figured out as much as I could about the particular pile of shit I was in. The smell was sanitary and the voices were low and serious, even if they were all speaking Spanish. What I could pick up was medical in nature. The beeping confirmed it—I was in a hospital.

Conrad.

My eyes shot open before I’d really taken inventory of the situation. He was laying on a stark white hospital bed, in a greenish gown, but the angry red gashes across his face and peaking out of his sleeves stole my attention.

“Cream Pie,” I whimpered as I tried to rise to go to him and couldn’t.

My arms were bound behind me, each tied to a different leg of the chair I sat in. My feet were similarly strapped. I snarled at the ties and jostled the chair as I tried to rip against the rope. It did nothing but clang the chair a few times against the linoleum floor. I smashed the chair back into the wall, hoping to hear a splinter and all I did was shake the wall similarly to how I my skeleton chattered.

Conrad didn’t flinch. Aside from the rise and fall of his chest that was timed with the sigh of the machine. Some how I hadn’t noticed the tube taped to the side of his mouth until just now.

“No,” I wailed, blinking back the tears collecting in the corners of my eyes.

I couldn’t do this again. I couldn’t lose another piece of my soul like this. Whether I’d ever recovered completely from Callum I wasn’t sure. His name still hung on my lips in the middle of the night from time to time. My heart still ached in a long-dark place that even Conrad couldn’t reach. And now…

“Please no.” My words were nothing more than a whispered prayer.

“He’s going to be okay.” That same sick bastard voice from earlier entered the room as if it were another person, wicked, demonic, but real. “Assuming you cooperate.”

“What did I do? Why me?” I hung my head as I spoke the words, knowing the answer.

I’d never deserved Conrad. Nor our happiness. I was dark, always had been. I should have remembered that.

“Mickey Maloney took my girls.”

I gulped thinking that this was like the Italians all over again, a family taking vengeance over a lost soul. And why shouldn’t they? I’d seen Mickey chip away at girls until they were nothing. I’d been made to watch him use their bodies and devour their souls.

“I wasn’t a part of that,” I murmured.

“Maybe you never took one of my girls off my trucks and put her on on of Mickey’s but you were the protection he was able to hide behind.”

I cocked my head back. That answer wasn’t what I was expecting. My head still throbbed from the black out, and it doubled as I pieced together what he was saying.

“You traffic women too,” I growled.

“I do. Or I did, until Mickey moved south and started destroying my livelihood.”

The memories flooded in. Of chained women, moaning women. Of Elle bound the way she was on his table the night we saved her. My fists balled and every muscle in my body flexed and rippled, daring the rope to break. 

“Fuck you, and helping you. That shit is why I killed him.”

He shrugged and smoothed the lines of his face. “Suit yourself.”

His dress shows clicked on the linoleum as he walked to Conrad’s bedside. That nonchalant look hung on his face, tinged ever so slightly with a wicked smirk. He reached for the tube that connected Conrad to the machines at his side and squeezed. It only took a moment for the machine to squawk.

“Don’t,” I shouted. “Help!”

“I won’t stop until you agree. They won’t come unless I give them permission to.”

Conrad wheezed on the bed. His chest moved uneven, and shallow beats. His eyelids fluttered but his eyes had rolled back into his head. Death had him in it’s grasp, a new demonic villain presiding over the passing. True, un-ending terror replaced the blood in my veins.

“Fine. Anything.” The words barely croaked out.

“Good.” He shrugged again and smiled as he let go of Conrad’s oxygen and circled the bed. “I”ll just leave you here until you’re needed.” He patted my shoulder like I was a small child and then his footfalls echoed out of the room.

The lump in my throat made it hard to swallow, the balled up fury and fear was overwhelming. Conrad was hurt and it was my fault. I was helpless to save him. To even keep him safe. My only answer was a trudge back into the darkness, and this time alone.

I inched my chair forward until I was as close as I could get to Conrad and his hospital bed. His inked up arm was decimated with road rash and the accompanying angry redness. I leaned my head down, the whisper of his wrecked skin so close, and a single tear fell from the corner of my eye.

A single tear for a million sins, a million wrong doings and bad choices. A single tear for all the times I turned left when I should have turned right. For the darkness I’d tried to run from. The life I lead had given me a family I wouldn’t have had otherwise, it had given me Cole. And Elle. It had given me love.

There were a so many emotions in that single tear, that it seemed to burn as it travelled across my skin. But the deeper pain, the soul searing one, was realizing I’d give it all up, do it all over again, if only Conrad lived. Even if it meant he was never mine in the first place.

*****

 

I gasped and shot up from Conrad’s bed. The cold water that had been dumped on my head dripped down the back of my neck for an extra bit of shock and surprise. I tried to wipe the chill away but my hands were still tied, the ache of the rope pinching on my bones and skin.

“That’s better.” My new Mexican friend, Miguel, twisted to sit on the edge of Conrad’s bed to watch me. “I have a job for you.” He tossed a few papers in front of me.

It took me a moment to figure out what I was looking at. They were glossy photographs, not necessarily the highest quality. Some were of the beach, others of a hotel, most backgrounds were blurry but one feature always stood out. A girl.

A beautiful girl.

She had long golden hair that waved around her equally golden skin. She had dangerous curves and plump, pink lips. She had just a few thin, small tattoos that showed only in the bikini shots. Something about her said college, perhaps the innocence that colored her features suggesting she hadn't taken a beating from life. Yet.

“A girl?” I asked, letting my question mix with disgust.

“I want her. And you're going to get her for me. Simple as that.” Miguel crossed his legs and folded his hands onto his knees. My insides heaved.

Simple as that? I knew what that statement implied. I knew what he wanted with her, what would happen. Robbing her of that pretty naivety, of her life, was anything but simple. And even if he'd done it before, things were different now. Nothing was simple at all.

The conscious Conrad had fostered revolted. My insides fought similarly. I didn't want this. I'd never wanted this. But the alternative was too clear, his ultimatum still a hot poker in my side. This girl’s life for Conrad's. Her soul for mine.

“And just what do you want me to do with her?” I asked and then sucked in breath, hoping my chest would explode before he actually answered.

“Bring her to me. Diego here will show you where.” He gestured toward the doorframe where a thug in a matching suit hovered.

“And just how do you purpose I do that?”

“Drug her, club her, seduce her. I don’t really care.” He shrugged his shoulders in his seemingly signature move, oblivious to absolutely any of the disgusting behind this. “Just bring her to me, Horse.”

*****

 

I sat staring at the photos with free wrists and ankles. I rubbed one forearm then the other as the blonde smiled out of glossy photos back at me.

Prey. She was nothing more than beautiful prey. I kept telling myself, repeating the mantra to the sound of Conrad’s ventilator. The fact that she was a person with a full and potentially proud heart kept weaving into my heart. I kept trying to shove it down.

A creature. Something to be caged then tamed.

No matter how I wanted to see her, no matter Conrad had softened my heart, I couldn’t. And it was because of him. Because of the man laying in front of me, and nestled in an even more cozy spot within my heart, that I couldn’t see her as human. I could only see her as a test. A test that might win me a prize.  

That’s what Conrad was. That’s what I had to remember. Whether I’d wanted any of this—ever—was truly something I’d started to question. I’d wanted them. The men, the family, the people that I’d been rewarded with for slowly chipping at my soul. I needed them. Now was no exception.

“You ready?” Javier’s voice shattered my thoughts.

“I don’t need your help,” I sneered at Miguel’s pork chop hovering over my shoulder.

“He’s worried about your ability to follow through. To collect her.”

“I could fucking collect her with my eyes closed,” I snapped. “Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want to?”

“Yes. Yes it did.” He pulled a pistol and pressed it to my temple.

I wished I could say that I wasn’t familiar with that sensation, that steel against skin was foreign and terrifying, but I rolled my eyes and twisted my head to face him full on.

“Do it,” I dared him. “Pull the trigger because I don’t want to fucking ruin her life. I don’t want to subject her to the life of humiliation and degradation. I don’t want her to weep on the dirty floor of a cell wishing for the time she simply couldn’t picture the way her life would pan out rather than face the reality that she doesn’t have one.” My voice crescendoed to a bellow, blasting at his face. “Do it. Because for him,” I jerked my chin toward Conrad, “I’ll die and be grateful not to suffer the pain.”

He stared me down and all I did was clench my jaw and narrow my eyes. What he saw, I couldn’t tell. Was it the fury, the desperation, or just the unending honesty that I knew was radiating out from deep within me? Whatever the answer, his gun slid from my forehead.

“Let’s go,” he said softly.

“Why aren’t you procuring her? Leaving me out of it?”

“Where is the fun in that?” His heavily accented question barely preceded his jostled on my shoulder.

Every single bone in my body clung to the chair at Conrad’s side. To the easy relationship between us, to the innocence that hung around what we had. The things I did to him were anything but, but the simplicity of our relationship was something pure. Something perfect.

And I was about to splash blood all over it.

 

*****

 

Fuck tequila. Fuck the burn in my throat and the salt on my lips. My sweat was stagnant on my skin but the essence mingled with the overwhelming lime coating my mouth. It made my stomach churn and my brain hazy. And she was right beside me…

“You look like you’re drinking to drown your sorrows.” The voice next to me—her voice—was light as it tripped and fell down each note.

I took a deep breath. She’d used my looks and so much fucking tequila to talk to me. To talk to me. I didn’t even have to try. I just had to destroy.

“Not enough Patron in the world to wash it all away,” I answered truthfully. Whether she liked it or not, I let her see into the depths of my soul.

The way she went a little cross eyed and leaned into my shoulder told me she didn’t see. That she really didn’t care.

“A brooding bad boy,” she purred and followed it with an animalistic hum.

“To the T.” Javier was watching me from his perch against the far wall, flashing his gun from time to time in the flash of thee strobe, almost as if on beat with the bass.

“I’ve always loved a bad boy.” Her lips were so close to my skin when she spoke that they almost grazed against the curve of my shoulder. “Let me soothe your tormented soul. Let me show you something good.”

Her hand roamed down my thigh just a moment before she slid her knee across mine. I sat back from my barely-there margarita and watched her. The gold glimmer of her hair was beautiful, the sugar cookie smell of her, good enough to feast on. The arc of her neck was graceful, a faint halo seemed to rest on her crown.

And all I could do was compare her to Elle.

I’d hid her away in a compartment of my heart that let her and Cole stay twined together but not with me. Thinking about either of them too long was enough to make me crazy, though reminiscing about how soft her skin was, the sweet taste of her, the way she felt… inside, was enough to coax my hands to dig into the new girl’s hips where they rocked against mine.

“I’ve known good, baby.” I didn’t mean to taunt her but Elle’s memory was thick in my brain. “I’ve known better than good.” Because, fuck, was Elle great.

“You like competition?” She bit her lip. “Because I wouldn’t mind winning a round or two with you.” She leaned in and kissed my neck, pulling back to breathe in the scent of my skin.

Fucking demons below. She was relentless when she should have made this difficult. Club her or drug her should have seemed easy, seduce her shouldn’t have been at the tips of my fingers. Fucking tequila. The way she pulled on me still spoke to something primal. Something I wished only Conrad could consume. Something I wished only h could devour.

But there were her hips. The curve of her breasts. Even a slight dusting of freckles from her time in the Mexican sun. And the blonde hair. The ethereal brightness of every person I’d ever come to love falling from her temples and dancing on the rise and fall of my pecs.

The glint of steel across the room caught my eye. The warning inherent too. I almost vomited up the acid churning in my throat. Take her. Torment her. Trade her.

My conscious reeled. I may not have always known right from wrong but I’d known recoverable from disintegration. This was a line I’d never crossed. 

“We’ll see who goes how many rounds,” I purred, each work like acid in my throat.

Deep down, I knew that Conrad was the line I never would.

 

*****

 

“No!” she screamed along with too many unintelligible sentences. Sharp screeches, tattered cries and wicked, deranged pleas. “Please,” she cried, tears lacing her words.

Getting her out of the bar had been easy enough. And to my very soul’s detriment, so had letting them take her.

Javier had her naked and tied to a bed beside me. I had only watched for a split second, until they’d started splicing her robes to ribbons, then I’d buried my head in my hands. Her sounds were too close to what Elle’s probably were, what they were about to take from her was so much like Mickey…

I puked on the floor in front of me. Tequila and a few chips, nothing else except maybe shame.              

“For one of the most notorious rabble of the underworld, you sure don’t have the stomach for this.” Javier ran his hand down her naked body, her breast trembling as a silhouette in the backlit room.

“I don’t deal in purity. I never did,” I spat out the words. “Mikey was Satan incarnate but he dealt with the demons he new deserved the same.”

I stood and turned from where he kept caressing the co-ed’s body. My hands cupped over my ears as I heard her terror mixed with pleasure. Pleasure. From this.

That is what Mickey never learned, what I hadn’t known the difference from for so long. Body’s operate on something so primal, so devoid of emotion, while souls… Her soul would never be the same. Whatever happened, whatever her body agreed to, her soul could not patch. I’d seen that first hand and I knew the destitution that would come after.

I squinched my eyes closed and walked toward the open door. The ever present scale that weighed Conrad’s being against all the shit started swaying inside me again. I didn’t measure up. I never had. Did she?

Her shrieks and wails were the summons of something awful and wrong. Something not of this earth. But whatever came to that call—or denied it for that matter—was a demon I wanted no part of. Was I life I wanted no part of.

“Please,” she begged, her words leaden with tears. “Please!”

My blood ran cold as her words mingled with blood-curdling screams, as those screams pierced my ears. Maybe even my heart.

One step. Then another. That was all I could talk my body into. Away from her. Away from this filth. I’d run so far, stayed so strong, and for what?

In the hallway, my body failed me. This was some stark office building, devoid of any soul, and minute by minute, breath by breath it was stealing mine. I fell against a wall and let my body slid down it as if it was the ice I felt in my veins.

I pooled down around my knees, my hands wrapping around my body, trying to keep it in a single piece. My insides? The pieces Conrad had so skillfully tried to craft back together… I splintered. Further than even I had before. Everything before had been different shades of dark but this… This was light or dark, sunshine or shadow. How I’d ever thought I deserved to feel the heat on my face, to see the sunbeams filter into my vision…

The only heat I could really feel was the rising one on my cheeks, the one that pricked at the corner of my eyes. The water that started to fall freely down my cheeks tried to cool my skin, calm my rage, but it couldn’t. Maybe nothing could anymore. I didn’t deserve tranquility anyways.

I’d accepted that. Days, weeks, months, maybe even lifetimes ago. But there had always been someone there to help pull me through the wicked mud that threatened to suffocate me. He’d always been there to pull me out. And she… well she was something else entirely. Proof that mud couldn’t suck you under unless you let it.

My cell phone felt heavy in my hand. That number called to me but my fingers hesitated. This was more than just a phone call. It was a battering ram to their carefully crafted peace—praying to God that they’d found that. It was selfish. And weak. But it was they only thing that could turn the heated fury inside me into something softer. Something cool and manageable.

I pressed the speed dial button I’d prayed never to press.

It rang, and rang, and rang. Each vibration echoing in my bones, a sound that I felt in my teeth. When no one answered, I almost left a message but hope stole my words from my lips and I hung up. Praying to anything that might listen, I dialed just one more time.

“Hello?” Cole’s gruff voice was even more menacing than I remembered, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end, but he sounded stronger, sturdy even. So much like me of a few days ago…

“Cupcake?” I breathed the word as if it might fill my lungs up itself. “Is that you?”

He sucked in a wild breath.

“Are you okay?” There was the wild animal I had known in Cole lashing at his voice.

“Um, about that.” I couldn’t help but laugh but it was a mirthless, maybe even soulless laugh. The words I was about to speak were unforgivable, the situation I was in was… There weren’t words, so I only laughed instead. There was nothing else I could manage. “I need you guys.” I pictured him lying in his hospital bed. “Conrad needs you guys. Please.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Two people were breathing on the other end of the line. Their inhales and exhales as familiar as my own. Maybe more so because those two breaths were at least half the heartbeat in my chest. They filled me up and fell me flat.

“What do we need to do, Horse?” Elle’s voice was the one that shattered the silence. She was such a contrast to the ghostly shell she’d been in the hotel room. There was a strength that had been rebuilt in a way that was haphazard, as Cole would have it, but fortified as Elle always made things.

The ache to see them again, the yearn, burned so deeply in my stomach, I swore I saw ash as I answered, “Pack the Charger, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”

 

*****

 

“Hulk,” Elle breathed just before her face bloomed into a blistering sunrise as she stepped out of the passenger seat.

I couldn’t manage a thought, let alone a heartbeat before her arms were around me. Her sugar cookie sweetness wrapped around me, warmth and loveliness radiating from each tiny inch of her. I enveloped her as if I could pull her into my soul and feel that same homey hug there as she flung around my shoulders. I folded into her tiny body and let her hold what she could of me.

When I pulled my eyes from the sensual column of her neck and looked behind her, Cole rested against the driver’s side door of his familiar Charger, watching us. A new and utterly easy light shone out of him. Highlighted by the dust of my dirt driveway and radiant colors of our jungle made him seem more alive then ever before.

He was home.

That home just so happened to have her arms woven around my neck.

The smart ass comment hung on his lips. I could see him rolling it around the same way he always had with those cigarettes when we were younger, but unlike then, he swallowed his snark and waited for Elle. She never unwound from me, just changed her grip from that mending hug to friendly support. She notched in under my shoulder as if she was always meant to fit there and we started walking toward my home. Well, our home, but Conrad was still…

I choked on the sob balled up in my throat.

“When we have an ice cold beer,” she reassured me and gently patted my stomach.

I pulled open the sliding door and let her step inside. I waited for Cole to follow her in but he stopped in front of me.

“I don’t care why we’re here…” He smiled his crooked, shy smile I’d always loved best. “I’m just so fucking glad to see you.” His arms were around me almost faster than Elle’s.

I breathed him in, his scent speaking to some world-weary part of me that wanted to burrow into his comfort and live there. The familiarity alone was something that spoke to the beast that shared my skin. All too quickly, I wanted him. I needed him. He held me tight without that bullshit back slapping, and for a moment, I was sure he felt the same.

I was grounded, the weight of him around me anchored me to earth but I was floating too. The way only someone that had seen every dark deed, every single shadow could lift me up.

“I love you, Horse,” he murmured darkly in my ear and my soul rumbled in response.

There had always been enough room for him—for both of them—in my heart. Along with Conrad. Even Callum. I’d forgotten that until now. Thought I needed to let them go at least somewhat, someway, to free up space to love Conrad right. Holding Cole now, I knew that I’d been wrong. My heart couldn’t fizzle like Iron Man when I asked more of it, it just fed and brightened because of the few pure things I locked inside it.

“I missed you.” My words were simple but even I heard the layer upon layer of heartfelt emotion that cracked through those three small words.

He pulled back and my body missed him the second he was away but his deep green eyes soothed me. And danced as he turned away. My heart feasted on him, on them, together, in my home. Elle was looking around, a faint smile on her face. She aimlessly smoothed my sheets and folded my comforter neatly below my pillow as she started to read the thumbtacked poetry that Conrad had made into a headboard. Her fingertips traced Conrad’s cramped cursive letters and her smile twisted, more beautiful in its wistful sadness.

Cole watched her. Her every move and breath absorbed his attention. His smile seemed tied to the shape of her. The bond that knotted them together might as well have been a solid gold band tied between them. The color looked damn good on them.

“I think you have a story to tell, Horse.” Elle smiled as she rubbed the spot beside her on our bed.

A new tattoo caught my eye. “I think you do, too.” My heart sank the smallest bit as I looked to Cole. He was coated in artwork but sensed what I was looking for. He held his left ring finger up for me to see, his black origami swan the opposite to her delicately lined one. There were few things that I would have wanted to witness more.

“We didn’t go to a church for a ceremony, find a priest, or file a wedding license.” Cole’s hand came up between my shoulders and started rubbing in soothing circles, knowing the little chip not being there took at my heart. “I said the vows to her as I marked her as mine,” he snarled as he claimed her all over again. “I made damned sure that the gods above and each demon below heard them. If the heavens know, that’s good enough for me.”

He crossed the room and threaded his hand into hers, bending to brush his lips across her knuckles before she sagged into his sculpted hip.

“I folded a thousand cranes for him.” She smiled and the whole room warmed. “I confessed my wishes with each one. They became my vows before I even realized, and I repeated them to the stars and the sunrise.”

The sob clawed at my throat. Any selfish disappointment had disappeared, the universe feeling all the more right for their place in it. But the self-loathing with it’s lapping shadow tendrils, was back, lashing at my skin and searing me with despair.

I’d drug them here to ruin it.

“Tell us, Horse,” Cole said softly, reading the darkness cocooning me. “We need to know what we’re walking into.”

“I hate that I called you. You shouldn’t be here.” I cupped my head in my hands and started pressing on my temples. I dug my fingers into my short hair and wanted to rip at it.

“Horse, my love,” Elle said even softer, her sweet sort of love weaving in her words, “we’re exactly where we want to be.”

 

*****

 

I told them. Everything. Until the sun went down and the bleak dark of night took over. And when I got to the part about that poor girl, that poor, unfortunate soul I’d left to the darkest fate, it was Elle that pulled me to the bed beside her, pressed me back and gently traced the shape of my heart. Over and over and over again. 

Elle who had almost lost herself to the darkness. Elle who had been to the underworld and back. Elle who had survived it all.

“You are a good man, Horse,” she murmured then kissed the cap of my shoulder then threaded her hand into mine.

Cole folded in behind her, spooning her body then blanketing both our hands with his. I couldn’t answer her, I couldn’t agree. Not after everything. Hell, not after anything. But I wouldn’t fight her either, not with that will of steel she hid beneath her sun kissed pure skin. Instead, I just relished the echo of her words and her unyielding touch. They’re unyielding touch. 

They both curled into my side and we sat in a comfortable silence as the moon shadow crossed the ceiling. Elle’s breathing turned to deep, even breaths where she was notched at my shoulder and the sound commanded my lungs, my heartbeats. I twisted to kiss her forehead.

Boundless green eyes were watching me, illuminated, over top of her shoulders. The corner of Cole’s lips pulled up and he gripped me even tighter. Elle purred as he pushed her toward me. We both looked down at her and smiled.

“She’s right ,you know?” Cole murmured.

“About what?”

“You’re the best man I know.”
I blew out a deep breath and twisted back to stare at the ceiling. “If I’m anything decent, anything redeeming, how did I end up back here?” I couldn’t meet his eyes, the depth behind them.

“Because life’s shit sometimes.” His hand slid from mine and came up to cup my neck. “It won’t give you a hand up.”

“So you take for yourself, right?” I smirked as I remembered the night I met him, the first feeling of friendship that had ever filtered into my life.

“I sure as shit used to think so.” He let his thumb stroke on my neck. “But I think the real answer is that you focus on what it does give you. The things like her.” He bent and kissed the back of Elle’s head. She smiled and even sleeping pressed back into him. “You live for those things. You try to be worthy of those things.”

“How will I ever be worthy of Conrad? After everything…” The too-familiar ball of emotion was choking.

“You always have been,” Cole answered fiercely, his voice was the rumble of lightning just before a refreshing summer storm.

Silence fell again, only Elle’s sweet sleep song breaking in.

“Do you ever think we made the wrong decision? All those years ago?” I whispered into the darkness.

“Yes,” he answered unequivocally. “But I can’t bring myself to regret it. That would mean taking back parts of you. Parts of us.” His sad smile colored his face. “It would mean losing her, and by extension, Conrad, and even the worst things I’ve done make her worthwhile. And you…”

“So no regrets but…?” I let my hand come up and clasp around his.

He nodded then slid his thumb to my bottom lip to traced it.

“We can’t be that again,” I finally said the words low and dark into the night covered room.

“I sometimes wonder if we ever really were.”

This low confessional between us was probably ten years too late, maybe twenty, but saying the words out loud was restorative. He was right, I couldn’t take back what had brought me any of the goodness there was in my life, but the bad, the utter wickedness, seemed tamed just by talking about it.

“I think that’s why I really called,” I breathed the words. “Not because of Conrad. Not because it was wrong or because it hurt, but because I’m too tired to be the villain anymore.”

“That’s another thing, I never think you were Horse.” Cole spoke softly and once again Elle burrowed into my body there on top of the mattress. “To me, you always have been and always will be, the hero.”

*****

 

“Pancakes.” A warm whisper woke me and my attention split between the gorgeous woman wafting homemade food in front of my face and the big, brawny hand still cupping my neck.

“Tart,” I purred.

“I love you, Horse.” She kissed my forehead then bent down and kissed Cole’s left hand where it wrapped around me; probably on his ring finger.

“I wished for you, Ladyface,” Cole said sleepily.

“On the stars, the moon, all my dreams and all my waking breaths,” she answered seamlessly.

My heart thudded in my chest. There was a sorrow framing the wild beat but a want too. A need. For that closeness, that intimacy. Conrad’s words dizzied me and drained me the same way Elle and Cole’s did. I wanted them. I needed them.

I sat up and reached for Elle’s perfect plate. I took a bite and shredded coconut filled the fluffy pastry. I almost spat it back out.

“To the hospital it is.” She smiled warmly and kissed the crown of my forehead.

She shoveled pancakes onto Cole’s plate and then hers. She popped Poptarts into the toaster a moment later. I smiled as she pulled the cherry pastries out with a wink and slid them onto my plate. They way she shoveled all of her pancakes and half of my Poptart was a small blessing to smile about. Tart with chipmunk cheeks was nothing short of adorable.

I wasn’t the least bit surprised when she heaved them up.

And the way she munched on pineapple, cheeks still full, drizzles on her chin, as we drove to the hospital was a merciful reprieve to the weight that sat on my chest.

She was healthy. She was happy. Darkness had not swallowed her. Our choices had not smothered her. Maybe Cole was right about the way regret, gratitude and acceptance had to mingle.

“I’m not sure about this,” I repeated as we sat in the shadow of the hospital.

“So what if the dirty fuck wants my help?” Cole had used that argument before too. “I’ll play his game if any of you are on the line. Without thinking twice.”

Only I knew that there was something more behind that statement. The hatchling of a plan, of a freedom, made over top of Elle’s peacefully sleeping head last night.

We walked in, Elle’s hand loosely in mine while her entire being was somehow two paces behind me, still attached to Cole’s wicked body. I loved the feel of her soft hand, of her rough scar wrapped around my forearm, but I my insides sprinted through the halls. When we caught up, the three of us circling into that sterile room I’d woken locked in, I finally breathed in deep.

“Well if it isn’t the best looking threesome since the third incarnation of Destiny’s Child.”

“I wouldn’t sing survivor for anyone but you,” Elle answered with a smirk as she dropped my hand and burrowed into Conrad’s side.

When he winced, I had half a mind to yank her off him and smooth the worried lines of his face myself, but then his smile pulled on both cheeks. Together Elle and Conrad were almost blinding. Their friendship making such elemental sense in the sunshine it radiated, the warmth.

“Belles,” he nuzzled into her hair, “I have never been so excited to see a vagina in my entire life.” She laughed once and it shook her whole body and closed off the tars in the corner of her eyes. He wiped her upturned cheek before he continued, “But you know how I feel about a big, beautiful cock.”

Ever so gently, he pressed against her and she slid back across the sheets and into Cole’s arms. Conrad’s sea-bright eyes found mine and they begged in their own special way for me. I stepped passed them, my eyes fixed on his, and I all but melted into his side.

He gathered me up as best as he could with tubes and wire stuck to him, holding the bits of me together since I’d been unable to, reinforcing me and all my feelings with one simple hug. My whole world existed in his arms, my heartbeat tuned to his, and everything else fell away.

“God is it good to see you,” he breathed into my hair. “For a minute there I didn’t think I would.”

“That makes two of us.” I took in his homey scent, coconut and sunshine overwhelmed me as he held me as tight as his aching muscles would allow.

“It’s even better to see you with them.” He nodded and even though I didn’t look up, I knew he smiled and Cole and Elle where they’d parked at the foot of the bed. His subtle laugh as it danced with Cole’s, of all people, confirmed it. “There’s no one else I’d rather seek vengeance with.”   

 

*****

 

Blood-lust looked good on Conrad. And while the way he got the scabs and scars replayed over and over, the moment, the image it’s own type of wound on my heart, I had to admit they made him a little more rugged. And the way he thirsted for Miguel’s blood in return was mouthwatering.

Elle found it worth a cheeky smile despite her stomach bug the doctors checked on.

Cole began to plan.

For approximately twenty-four hours life was good. Conrad scribbled dark poetry, cramped lines that I thought would be excellent additions to the fluttering headboard at home. Beauty could be something dark and brutal, too. Elle snuggled into Cole’s shoulder on the couch and listened to his words. Somehow the sculptures she would build, the paintings his brush would stroke, inspired by Conrad’s words, flashed behind their eyes. Me? I listened to the words that captured my heart. I watched the people that held my soul so carefully in their hands.

And I painted his toenails a bright, brash pink.

For approximately twenty-four hours we were us. The us we should have been if there was no Mickey, no Siobhan. No death and destruction, no utter deviancy, coloring our life. It was too hard not to wish for this, to wish things had never gone haywire. It was too easy to forget all the madness and mayhem and want to live in this moment.

“Tell him I stopped by. That I’d be happy to offer my services while I’m around,” Cole interrupted my thoughts with his low, sinister voice. The voice I knew too well.

“I’m not letting him get his hands on you.”

My eyes automatically flitted toward Conrad where he had dozed off in his hospital bed. Cole read my mind perfectly.

“I’m not letting him anywhere near Elle, my heart can’t take that again.” He nodded toward my battered man. “And I’d rather be in this together.”

“Perfect,” an oily purr came from the doorway. Miguel had appeared as if we’d summoned him ourselves. “If Horse was a demon for me to leash, you may be the devil incarnate.” He slid in front of Cole, and to Cole’s credit his only move was a flex of fingertips into Elle’s skin. “Buenos dias, Cole.” He drug out and massaged Cole’s name with that despicable mouth.

“Go fuck yourself,” Cole responded by way of a greeting, complete with a mischievous smirk.

Miguel’s weasel laugh barely preceded his, “Come with me if you want to live.”

“We’ve landed in a bad version of the Terminator,” Cole remarked, still smiling his wicked smile. “A bootleg Mexican version.”

My answering smile pricked at my lips but it didn’t warm my insides. Miguel so close to Cole, let alone Elle, was making me jittery.

“I’ll be back,” Cole mocked once more as he grabbed Elle by the crook of her arm, and pulled her from the room. Their quick sharp words were barely muffled on the other side of the wall. She didn’t want him out of her sight, he wouldn’t dare bring her back in. Ladyface please! He was a desperate man, and her hand fluttered to her stomach in the frame of the door just before she bent to his will. A moment later Cole was back, no beautiful blonde in sight.

“Always the obedient soldier,” Miguel remarked and the evil light that lived behind Cole’s eyes flickered.

“Something like that.” He shrugged despite the creases he was battling to smooth on his forehead.

Cole’s easy irreverence was even stronger than before and it acted as support for my weary limbs. He’d always been the one who knew how to navigate these situations, how to plan eight steps ahead.

“You two, come with me,” Miguel said nonchalantly.

Cole shrugged as he spun. I knew his ease was forced, something to follow even if it was rigid and rough at it’s core. We followed Miguel. First to the SUV and then to the compound. It was too familiar and too foreign all at the same time. Cole’s jaw feathered beneath his fury as he walked.

Tension filled the backseat of Miguel’s backseat, but it wasn’t the familiar iron and steel Cole and I had always been. There was something shaky, something fragile lying underneath. For the first time, we had something to lose. The full weight of another person, of a soul twined with mine, pressed on my chest. The shallow breaths that shook Cole’s shoulders and the depth behind his eyes were the perfect mirror to mine.

Going into battle was so different when armor had weak spots.

Cole elbowed me and I shot him a look just in time to see the long fences spread out from the narrow drive we bumbled along. The first one was chain-link and at least three feet taller than me. Razor wire curled on top and voltage signs hung in the center of certain panels. The second was stone or concrete, thick and unyielding. It was even taller than the first and smoothed to keep hand holds or foot holds nonexistent.  

But it was the pit of darkness in between, dug down to what faintly seemed like sharp points was what made my stomach bottom out.

Every one of Cole’s plans were shot to hell in those twenty feet or so. Escape routes vanished. A fight to freedom smothered. I shifted just enough to catch his eyes narrow. Fewer filtered out and the savage monster I didn’t know he could still summon settled in.

He nodded once to me. Singular in movement and meaning. We were in this together. We were going to sell our souls to save theirs. That was simply the way it was going to be. I let the anxiety smooth out of my face and the roar of brutality echo through my heart as I fixed my knuckles. We were going to play this wicked game. And together, we were going to win.

 

*****

 

“Five girls? Each?” Cole’s voice was ice crushed up and spit out when he asked.

We sat in woven wicker chairs on a veranda of wrought iron, overlooking palm trees and a private cenote. Miguel smoked a cigar with his ankle loosely settled on his knee, barely acknowledging the way he bartered in human life, in lifeblood.

“Yes.”

“One week?” Cole hissed.

“Yes.”

“Other requirements?” Ever the good solider when he wanted to be.

“Beautiful.” Miguel waved he cigar nonchalantly.

Cole simply deadpanned him while I held my tongue. And my breath.

“Don’t choose broken ones. I prefer to do the breaking.”

The images from the tour he’d given of what lurked beneath the palatial estate ghosted behind my eyes. No matter how hard Cole tried to hide it, thy made him shudder in the blinding sunlight.

Girls, so many girls. In little more than stalls. Some chained in place, some bound. Most bloody. All of them bruised.

Mickey had been a monster, wicked in his core but something about this seemed worse. Perhaps because Mickey had been something different at first. I’d known him when he was trouble for the sake of trouble and money, before something twisted up into pure evil inside him.

Miguel seemed like Satan had chewed him up and spat him out, unimpressed by the taste.  He toyed with life as if it was his right, as if the young and beautiful owed them their souls.

“Done.” Cole’s cold flat voice sent chills up my spine.

“I find it interesting you’re so willing to play my game,” Miguel added as he inspected his fingernails, arm extended. His eyes didn’t even bother to meet ours.

“You’re not the first monster I’ve sold my soul to, and at this point it’s so black, I can only trade where the currency is still worth something.” The black that had consumed Cole’s being before Elle did in fact seep out of his stone cold killer eyes.

“I’ll kill her if you fail.” He leveled his gaze first at Cole then at me. “Conrad too.”

Cole stood with a shrug, both accepting and simmering Miguel’s warning. “As if that’s the worst thing you can do.” He turned and slunk back into the shadows of the house, I wordlessly made to follow.

“Horse, a word,” Miguel called me back even after Cole had disappeared.

“What do you want?”

“It was just convenient that your boy toy didn’t die.” He held his glass up and studied the swirl of cold water mixing into his amber drink. A snarl resonated in my chest. “I didn’t care if he lived or died that day on the road as long as I got what I wanted.”

“And you did.” I almost spat the words out.

“Yes, I did.” He leveled his gaze at me. “And I’m about to again.”

“I’m well aware.”

“I don’t care if she dies. I don’t care if the baby dies.” Flame burned behind his eyes and it threatened to incinerate me.

“The baby?” I could barely swallow.

“That’s why daddy dearest-to-be is so eager to let ice flow through his veins, to let blood coat his hands.” The corner of his lip curled up, an amused smile contorting his Satanic face. “The nurses tell me anything I can use. They tell me how Conrad is deathly allergic to peanuts. How Cole appears to have a plate in his cheek. How Elle is puking all over the place because of morning sickness not a stomach bug.”

The world was slipping through my grasp and Cole wasn’t here to help me hold.

“It would be convenient if he found out when I needed him most, don’t you think?” He watched me turn to ash. “Or convenient if only one of them lived when I needed him most.”

Miguel waved me off, dismissing me as if he hadn't just delivered and destroyed me in on single conversation. I stared him down for just a moment, debating the merits of murdering him with the glass in his hand. I’d go down swinging but after what I’d just heard…

“Horse.” Cole had come to collect me, shaking my shoulder to wake me from my horrific daze. “Come on.” Miguel smiled like a Cheshire Cat as this time I followed and let the dark shadows of the house consume me just as thoroughly as his words had.

 

*****

 

“Cole.” Elle shot up from the chair beside Conrad’s hospital bed and reached for him.

I almost reached for her, knowing what her tiny body actually hid. The sallow of her face mixed with a cherub-like glow made all the more sense. My brain screamed, hold her, protect her, fight for her, and I had to turn away to keep my internal monologue from becoming overbearing. 

Instead I found Cole, and instantly I didn’t blame her for her selfless worry. Doom still lashed like living whorls around him.

“Ladylove,” he croaked the first word since coming back for me on that porch. That fucking porch where Miguel had lit the world on fire and left it to burn.  Every note and shaking timbre of his voice had changed.

Elle’s small fingers clutched his and she tried to pull him closer. He pushed back from her for the first time since that fateful day she’d returned to Chicago. Her face pinched for a moment, just long enough for him to reach the sink and heave.

Every inch of his muscled back violently rose and fell as he wretched. Elle reeled herself to him and her birdlike fingers traced the contours of him, soothing as he tried to purge his insides.

“If one more person pukes in this room today.” Conrad’s snark fell flat as both Elle and I shot him a look. Two different shut your mouths. Even Conrad swallowed audibly at the demand roiled off her her. 

“What happened?” Elle asked, schooling her features into calm and collected.

I wanted to coax the full truth out of her but Cole answered even as his shouldered heaved and voice echoed where he was still bent over the sink.

“He has girls like Mickey. Worse then…” Cole trailed off but it was Elle that blanched. “He wants us to get more.”

“Kill him. End it,” she answered instantly, letting the vengeance leak from her pores.

“For you I wouldn’t hesitate,” Cole’s equal fury roared back at her until he arced wildly and puked again.

“It’s not that simple,” I took over and tried not to glance toward her stomach when I answered. “Miguel’s soul didn't twist and contort like Mickey’s,” she flinched when I said his name and my heart split. “He has a shell of darkness where it should have been. That compound… Getting out…”

Her big doe eyes widened and fear hollowed out her face.

“He’d have you both killed out of spite.” Cole’s voice was a small and terrified thing. “That’s not something I’m willing to risk.”

Eye’s big eyes swam with unshed tears as she looked from Cole’s still heaving back to me. There was a new fear there, and it pulled me to her. Her death meant something new now. It meant not one but two.

“I just need some air.” She read my face, my movements, and ducked out of my hesitant reach for her and darted for the door.

“Elle,” Cole called after her, standing only to go a little queazy and have to grip back against the wall. “This,” he murmured. “This will be what kills her. Slow and steady, this sort of shit is what will destroy her soul and leave her withered.”

“Take a breath,” I said as softly as I could. “This will not end you or her. I won’t let it.” And in that moment I knew it was true. “Were going to get a new plan, a better one than fight your way out, simple as that.” I clapped my hand around the back of his neck and pulled his forehead to mine. “I’ll go get her. I’ll make sure she can breathe.”

My eyes darted to Conrad as I turned and there was nothing but soft understanding there. “Go get our girl.”

I ran through scenarios in my mind with each step. Things to tell Elle, solutions, possibilities. Reassurances too. No matter how dark we’d ever gotten, Cole and I hadn’t resigned to evil. With her and Conrad on the line we sure as shit weren’t going to start. And with a baby…

She was bent over small bushes outside the hospital door, heaving almost exactly the way Cole had been.

“Shit,” I swore as I jogged over to her, swiftly gathering her hair out of her hands.and rubbing big, full circles across her delicate back.

“I’m okay, I’m okay.” She waved me off then wipe her mouth and turned to collapse onto a bench just in front.

“Tart, we’re going to fix it. We’re not going to be those men again.” I slowly fold onto the seat next to her. “We will be the men you and…Conrad deserve.”

She wordlessly leaned against my shoulder and blew out a deep breath. Her tiny little body was near weightless where it stayed burrowed into my side.

“We’ve made our way out of worse. Please have faith.” I twisted just enough to kiss the crown of her golden head.

She would always be the first pure love in my life. The one that wanted nothing in return except for whatever parts of me I could give. I could give her peace of minding repayment at the very least.

“Have faith in me,” I repeated, a whisper, a plea.

“Horse,” she sucked in a deep breath and I tensed the slightest bit, preparing for her damning words. “I’m pregnant.”

 

*****

 

Agony and ecstasy shook m to my core even as I sat silent and still next to her the bench. She slid down from my shoulder to rest in my lap, silver droplet tears sparkling at the corners of her eyes again. Miguel had told me but it was different coming from her lips. 

When she told me, I could picture the little Tart in my lap as the best mom, on the planet with love and laughter lighting up her home. There would always be finger paintings on the fridge and haphazard clay sculptures on the window ledges.

And Cole… Cole would beam. Those green eyes would finally fully soften, the worry lines disappear.

Unless Miguel ruined everything. Ruined them.

Tears pricked the corners of my eyes too.

Bird-like fingers reach up and wiped them away, on by one as they started to fall.

“Come here.” I patted my chest just before I pulled her into it. Her deceivingly strong arms pulled me in and squeezed me. “Oh, Tart, I’m so happy for you.”

“And so tragically sad at the same time, too,” she finished my thought for me. “I don’t know how to tell him, I don’t even know if I should.”

I’d been struggling with the same exact thought. My hands went back to their swirling circles across her skin.

“All this…” She gestured halfheartedly around the small entryway. “Is a baby a distraction from what has to be done? Is it another thing to be used against us?” Her body tensed protectively at the thought. I couldn’t bring myself to say yes. “What if…” she started whispering so low, I could barely make out the words. “What if he loses two of us?”

Very few things in my war-torn life hurt as badly as that small question. Would knowing he was leaving two behind change his unfaltering loyalty, his damn near demonic protection? Would he hold back? Would he stay away? Could Miguel wound him that much deeper?

“He’s never loved anything like he loves you, Tart, but a baby.…” I breathed in her sugared cherry scent and pressed my lips into her hair again, grateful that she clung to me if only to keep me from falling into pieces.

“That’s not an answer, Horse.” Her fingers flexed against my back.

I shrugged down into her and ran my nose along the curve of her neck. I knew what it would do to him. He would shatter if they asked him to pick—Miguel, or the gods above. He may disintegrate from the sheer force of making the decision.

“I think this will break him.” I blew out a deep breath. “I can only pray that when it does, it splits his heart into all these beautiful pieces he lays at your feet.”

Wet warmth spread the slightest bit where she was tucked in at my chest, a signal of her tears. “But you’re worried it’s going to carve him up into something vile and depraved. Something that won’t survive the fight.”

I gulped beneath her ear and the heavy sob that shook her shoulders still tight in my grasp told me she heard. It was all the affirmative she needed.

“Does Conrad know?”

She finally slid back out of my embrace, settling into the seat beside me. Elle seemed smaller, more fragile than she had before.

“Yes,” she whispered. “They checked up on my stomach bug yesterday. I wouldn’t have gone had the nurse not insisted. It was so easy to chalk it all up to nerves. Nightmares then worry over you and Conrad.”

“You’re going to be the best mom, Tart. Your love is… indescribable.” I leaned over to nudge her shoulder and let a smirk break across my face. “I can’t fold paper cranes but if I could, I wish for this for you two.”

“Does Conrad know?” The hint of sass was back in her voice as she turned my question around to ask something totally new.

“There’s my girl.” I threw my arm around her. “Let’s get back inside before Cole loses his mind or Conrad spills the beans.”

“He really is a big mouth.” She chuckled lightly as she let me lift her up and guide her back inside.

“It’s part of why I like him.” I wiggled my eyebrows and she burst out laughing, painting the world in the beautiful hues it always should be, lighting up the dark if only for a minute. And just the way my little Fucktart so often did, Elle reminded me that minutes, moments, were the only thing worth living for.

 

*****

 

“Are they still Beauty and the Beast or we looking at every single one of Taylor Swift’s relationships?” Conrad arched his eyebrow as I reached in help him stand out of the backseat.

“Definitely Belle and… Wait, what was his name?” 

“No one cares. He was big and snarly with all this delicious body hair. He was perfect as the Beast. Beauty didn’t know what sh had until it was too late.” He winced when I looped my arm under him and pulled.

“Pretty sure Belle prefers dick to red rockets.” I laughed as I twisted to make sure my hold was as delicate as possible.

“You have no idea what kind of kink she was into.” He managed to get his arm up and over my shoulder. “I mean she was down to talk to ottomans. That screams acid trip.”

“I’ve done acid and I can tell you first hand, I want nothing to do with a dog’s dong.” I couldn’t hold back my laughter anymore, despite how hard it shook him.

He stopped walking forward, just out of reach of our hammock where it ghosted on the breeze. My face snapped serious, my heart lodged in my throat.

“Cram Pie, are you okay?”

“I’m really glad to be home.” The traces of pain creased his face but he wove around me, pulling me in. “For a second I thought—”

“Don’t,” I cut him off as softly as I could.

“I need to say this okay? The words have been bursting inside of me. All of them for you.”

My heart crashed against my chest and I was sure he heard it. Or felt the rattle inside me. I swallowed the emotion balled in my throat and nodded.

“There is no bright white. There is no God. There is you. At the end of things, it is you.” He sucked in a deep breath while I tried to shut off the tears I knew were shimmering in the moonlight. “It is you filling up the ether, the in-between. There is no pain except my chest as it yearns for you, my fingers will to touch. But there you are. Again and again and again.

“I do not know whether my soul is destined for hell or heaven. But I do not fear the pursuit of evil or the acknowledgment of good. You will be there. Wild and safe. You will be there and there will be peace.”

I let the tears cascade down my cheeks, not giving a damn that my insides were pouring out. That I bled for him in those tears.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

“I love you,” his voice was the deep one I loved best. “I love the life you’ve given me. Did you know I’m going to be an uncle?”

“Yeah, Cream Pie, I did.” I chanced a glance into the house, Cole had draped himself around Elle, cradling her as he walked with the glimmer of his dimple smile back on his face.

“I can’t believe it. It’s been so much death destruction, and now…”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him how much more laid ahead of us. Cole had been too sick and Elle too panicked for us to really describe the level of shit we were in with Miguel. Honestly, I didn’t want to. I wanted this moment. I wanted to relish the beauty of it all, even if the true awesomeness was because it would fade.

“I’m gonna play Martha in the kitchen tonight. Make her whatever she wants.”

And despite all the things I could have said, all the shit I could have told him, the only thing I wanted to say was, “That sounds fucking great Pie. I’ll help.”

*****

 

Cole didn’t suspect a thing when Martha whipped up waffles and enchiladas. He figured Conrad was channeling the Snoop and Martha version and played it off with a shrug. Elle looked pleased as punch and some of the color returned to her cheeks. She managed to steer away from the flowing beer claiming that for the first time in days she felt better and wasn’t going to wreck it.

We laughed as Cole dealt hands of poker. Elle and Conrad were raking in the chips, each one garnered a giggle because we were the ones that had been sharks among men at the tables. Conrad didn’t flinch when Cole shoved at my shoulder or ruffled my hair. Elle gently massaged any inch of Conrad that didn’t ache.

The world froze for that evening and everything rough and rotten that had followed us, for years actually, was gone.

It was equal parts wondrous and awful. Each moment that there was good in this world was a moment that bad might steal away. The tasted bittersweet as the summer sweet wind will it’s way through the house.

Conrad and Elle had begun reminiscing, telling stories of spring breaks and pub crawls, of feuds over Project Runway and make ups over entire cheesecakes. Beer had gone to my head and made their words swim. The stories, their smiles, all the ones that had ever been, all the ones that ever could be.

I slipped outside and tried to pull in a deep breath. Whether it was the heat that was stifling or that my chest just wouldn’t expand correctly anymore, I wasn’t sure. I turned back around and watched the crisp silver of moonlight fall across the thatched roof, waving with that same whispering breeze.

How many nights had the moonlight been my only companion, my comfort? Without thinking too much I walked up to the gutters and pulled, catching a glimpse of my three golden rays laughing, loud and hardy over their most recent story.

My best friends, my lovers. My family.

I easily rolled onto the roof after years of practice and let the moonlight splash across my face. There was still so much brightness in the moonbeam but it was so very different than a splash of gold. Maybe that’s what I’d always been—the moon to their sun.

Listening to them something inside me snapped. It wasn’t the blood red fury we were all so used to. It wasn’t battered or destroyed, either. It was an understanding, a truth that simply snapped into place.

I’d been searching for a way out for damn near ever. Redemption and forgiveness were my private prayer with every breath. I thought I deserved to linger in the sorrow and filth when in reality, I’d only needed to let go.

For a few hours there was no talk of kidnapped broken girls, no desperation, no waging war. And it had turned into many many moments worth living for. Maybe even worth dying for.

There is no bright white. There is no God. There is you. At the end of things, it is you.

A new rosary for me to repeat, holy words given to me by the man I loved. And with those words on my lips, I closed my eyes to bask in the moon. I closed my eyes to formulate a plan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part Ten

 

The Sacrifice of a Hero

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paper and ink and blood were the things all three of us understood best. I prayed that when they read the letters I left them, they would understand this too. I kept the envelops hidden as I wordlessly pulled Conrad from our bed, out to the jungle, while Cole and Elle stayed wrapped around each other in the hammock. I chanced only on place at them before surrendering to Conrad completely. They looked at ease, peaceful even, as if they knew their fate had been sealed by the silver shimmer of the moon. As if they knew thy’d get to stay wrapped up like that.

My chest shuddered with the weight of my sigh.

“What’s wrong?” Conrad asked in his sleep coated, sensual voice as he wrapped his front to my back, only wincing slightly.

“Nothing,” I answered automatically as my hands found his where they wrapped around my torso.

“Secrets don’t make friends and friends don’t make secrets,” he taunted lowly just before h bit into the flesh above my shoulder blade.

I couldn’t help but groan.

“Answer me,” he coaxed in a near whisper before he pressed his lips to my skin.

Another heavy sigh rattled my rib cage. I may have made up my mind, but here, with him…

“I guess I just worry that this whole thing with Miguel isn’t going to go well. That someone is going to…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Not knowing how I planned to end it for us all.

“Say it,” Conrad commanded, his hands a lips both caressing words out of me.

“Die.” It was a iron-laden boulder in my stomach. “What if one of us dies?”

“We’ve been playing Russian Roulette for a long time now. We’ll get through this round too.” He turned me, deftly pushing me against the palm behind my back. His bright beautiful eyes a beacon in the dark.

I didn’t kknow how to tell him that the longer you played, the more likely the gun goes off. That this time, I felt the luck run out of my bones.

“If it’s me…” There were so many things I wanted to say to him, I couldn’t fit them in a letter, I couldn’t even try.

“It won’t be,” he answered fiercely. “ Cinderella gets Prince Charming, and they all live happily ever after. End of story.”

“Just who’s Cinderella in this relationship?” He managed to pull my warm, husky chuckle from me.

“I have a far better shoe collection.” He arched his eyebrow just  before he leaned in and pressed his lips to mine.

His kiss was the breath of life, filing me up one last time.

For a split second, I considered telling him that we don’t actually know how the story ended. Cinderella could have gotten tired of the palace and fallen for a servant. She could have have twelve children that she and the Prince bickered over, children that made their bed go cold. She could have died.

It was only words that make their love pure and immortal.