“Damn it!” I hear Hayden exclaim through the door. I instantly move to open it.

“You okay?” I ask, peering into the dark room. She’s sitting up in bed, reaching behind her to touch her lower back.

“It’s really getting creepy the way you’re listening for sounds in my bedroom every night Michael,” she sighs out. “My back is just cramping again.”

“Pregnant women shouldn’t mention cramping, because that sounds like contractions. Maybe we should take you to the doctor.”

“It’s not that. My back just hurts. I injured it once and it’s always given me trouble.”

“How did you injure it?”

“Dancing on tables at wild parties,” she says, looking up at me with an ‘I dare-you’ look.

“Funny, Hayden,” I mumble, shaking my head. This woman never cuts me a bit of slack. “Here, let me see if I can help.” I walk around the bed and sit down on the side opposite of where she’s laying. Her eyes go wide, as the bed dips with my weight. She tenses and and grips the sheet as if her life depended on holding it.

“What are you doing?” she squeaks when I all but pick her up and position her horizontally on the bed.

“Stretch out on your side if you can, honey,” I instruct, more than expecting her to argue. It surprises me when she doesn’t. She does it without protest. A small whimper escapes when I touch her lower back. I’m no professional, but it doesn’t take one to feel the knots in her muscles. “You need to relax more,” I chastise, letting my hands slide under her t-shirt to begin kneading my fingers against her back. She seems to tense up even more at my touch. I do my best to ignore that and continue the massage. Eventually she stops holding her body so stiff and straight and relax into me. “Better?” I ask, enjoying the freedom to touch her. I’ve missed her, more than I’ve allowed myself to admit.

“You have magic fingers,” she almost moans out. My fucking dick hardens and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I wish I was wearing my sweats, because suddenly these jeans are damn painful.

“Glad you think so,” I tell her with a laugh, wishing my fingers were elsewhere…wishing they were inside of her.

“I…uh…I didn’t mean it like that,” she mumbles.

“Trust me, I know,” I answer, and damn if that doesn’t almost make me sound like a child pouting. Still, she’s been keeping me at arm’s-length for so long, it’s driving me crazy.

“I can’t believe you’re still awake. You’re a freak of nature. You’re going to pass out someday when everything catches up to you. Human beings cannot go without rest, Michael. It’s just not natural.”

“I’m not resting until—”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard the song and dance. It’s crazy. You’re just in the next room.”

“The next room can be too far away, if I need to be by your side quickly,” I murmur, concentrating on the feel of her skin and how fucking good it feels to move my fingers over it.

“Clive stayed there just fine and nothing happened. What did Victor do to him anyways?”

“He had another job he needed him to work on,” I tell her. Leaving out the fact that the job was in Germany—and that it still wasn’t far enough away from her.

“And I can’t rest without being able to see for myself if you’re okay. When I have to crash, we have Devil—annoying as he is.”

“He’s something alright. He’s got both D.D. and Jenn wrapped around his finger. God, that feels good. Thank you, Michael.”

“My pleasure,” I nearly groan. Thank God her back is turned to me, because I have to reach down and adjust my dick before my jeans cut the fucker in half. I need to steer this conversation—and my thoughts away from sex. Quickly. “Don’t you have anything you want to ask me, Hayden? Anything at all?” I ask her. When I thought of this little game at the restaurant that day I thought it would be simple. I should have known that nothing is ever simple where Hayden Graham is involved. She didn’t take the bait over lunch. She hasn’t taken the bait in over two days. The damn woman is stubborn as hell. More so than I ever gave her credit for.

“All kinds of things,” she shrugs, slyly looking over her shoulder at me. Her gray eyes are almost twinkling and this is as close to a smile as I’ve seen from her since that day at the diner. She’s playing games with me now. She’s taken this game as a challenge. She doesn’t realize that two people can play that game.

“Then ask away, Beauty,” I tell her, putting an emphasis on the name I’ve given her.

“Will you stop calling me that?” she growls, her voice taking on this grouchy quality that makes her sound like a mama bear protecting her cubs.

“Is that the fee you want for answering one of my questions?”

“You’re unbelievable,” she says shaking her head. “I’m going to take a shower and ignore you.”

“If that’s what you want to do, Beauty,” I tell her flopping over on the bed, grinning when I hear her growl under her breath. I put my hands behind my head and try to think of some imaginary number. If I use the name Beauty often enough, she’s going to take the bait. I just need to be patient.

“Okay fine,” she huffs, and I jerk my eyes to her face. Or not. The thrill of victory runs through me. She gave in much easier than I thought she would.

“Fine?” I ask, wanting it spelled out.

“I’ll play your stupid game. Do your worst, but when you’re done you can’t call me Beauty again,” she all but demands. She’s standing across from me now, at the foot of the bed where I’m lying. She’s got both her hands crossed at her chest and those gray eyes of hers are glowing with anger. Her hair is down and ruffled from tossing and turning without sleep. Her soft pajama shirt is tight around her stomach and her breasts are even larger now than they were in North Carolina. She’s never looked better. She calls to everything inside of me.

There’s so many things I want to say to her, but even if she’s giving in right now, I know she’s not really ready to hear everything I want to tell her. I decide then, I have to go the easy route. Hopefully it will get her to where she feels comfortable doing this more often.

“Fine. You want me to stop calling you Beauty?”

“More than you could ever imagine,” she says passionately, which if I’m honest annoys the fuck out of me.

I fight down that emotion though. I turn my body to face her, then reach behind me and grab some of her pillows. I grab two of the four pillows within easy reach and stuff them under my head for support. I lay there looking up at the most complicated, beautiful woman I’ve ever met. She’s so different from anyone I’ve encountered. She has her own scars, her own demons and yet she’s risen above them and came out of it all stronger. She’s stronger now than she had been in North Carolina. Every day I’m with her I see new signs of that strength. “Got it. I’ll stop calling you Beauty,” I tell her, vowing somehow I will find a way to do it.

“What question do I have to answer,” she sighs, looking like I’m about to kick her damn dog or something.

“None. I just want to tell you why I started calling you Beauty.”

“I don’t really—”

“Remember the rules, Hayden.”

“Fine. Get it over with,” she says and she doesn’t realize how hard this is going to be for me. My palms are actually fucking sweating. My heart rate has kicked up in speed, but I stick to my guns. I want Hayden back. When Hayden is in my life, life is bearable. I can breathe without feeling like I’m drowning. I want to hold on to that. I need to. I’m desperate to. I just need to let Hayden in a little more and somehow suffocate this rage inside of me—at least enough so that it doesn’t hurt her again.

“After Annabelle died, my world went black, Hayden.”

“Michael…”

“And I don’t mean that figuratively. It literally went black. You’ve seen the scars on my face, the ones my hair and beard don’t conceal. I had to wear bandages, a fucking lot of them. The pain was so intense, that I was sedated and when the pain wasn’t the reason…they would sedate me, because the grief and the anger would pour out of me in waves of rage that couldn’t be controlled. So much of that time is a painful, dull haze.” I’ve been looking at her, while I talk, but as the memories come back to me, my head goes down. I let myself think back and get lost in them. “Slowly I began to heal, but everything changed. My brothers would come in the room and they’d do their damnedest to act normal…but I saw. There was pity in their eyes. The conversations were stilted, where they never were before. I couldn’t talk much, not then. It hurt too fucking much. The worst was when Briar and his old-lady would come in. They cared about me, I knew it, but here they were with their daughter, when I just lost mine. They would walk in, so deeply in love it clung to their skin, like a smell, a stink that slid inside of me and nearly destroyed me. They had everything. They were happy. They had love, they had their children… and I just lost my entire world. My Annabelle was gone. I hated them. I hated their daughter. Here was this innocent child, who was happy and loved by everyone—completely innocent…and I hated her. I hated her because she could breathe and laugh and grow. She could do all of those things and my daughter couldn’t. Does that make me a monster, Hayden?” I ask, looking up at her, finally. “I hated an innocent child. It didn’t even stop there. Months and months later, I would see a child and the hurt and anger would claw inside of me—like a living thing. It got worse when Skull’s wife came back. It had been years, so you think I would have changed—I hadn’t. I kept it hidden, but the rage and pain were still all there. Hell, I couldn’t even stand to look at their daughter. I hated her, because her very existence was the reason my daughter died,” I confess.

Hayden sits down on the bed and reaches out her hand so that it lays over mine. One by one her fingers slide into mine, and her thumb brushes against the largest scar there. Familiar. Calming. One of the biggest things I missed when she left was this… her hand in mine. My chest is tight from the memories, but I grasp her hand tightly—needing it like a lifeline.

“Give it to me, Michael,” she whispers, confusing me. My eyes seek hers out, those gray depths are shining with unshed tears and staring straight at me. “Give it to me, all of it and then it’s gone. Finish the story and we can start putting it behind you,” she whispers, and a few of the tears overflow and fall from her eyes. My heart stalls. It’s all there. The memories of what her and I shared. She has them. She’s held onto them. She just gave me the very words I gave her all those months ago. She remembers. That gives me the courage to keep going.

“Once, at the club. We were fixing some concrete pads for a celebration the club was having. Skull came in with Gabby… It had been a bad day, Hayden. I try not to show it, but there are times, especially earlier on, when the muscles in my legs and arms are weak. Moments when the tightness of the skin…and the nerve endings close to the damaged muscles ache. I can’t handle being around people when I’m like that. I don’t know how else to explain it. I had worked all day and then went to a physical therapy appointment for issues I was having. I hated therapy. The therapists tried, but the more they touched me…the more work they made me do, the more I had to endure…I don’t know how to explain it, other than it felt like every nerve ending in my body was being tortured. I wanted to scream, I wanted to lash out…I wanted to hurt someone…So I did.”

“What did you do? Finish it.”

“I just got back to the club, and had crashed in the main room with a beer. Gabby came running in. She saw my burns and the scars, because I had taken my shirt off. The air conditioner was broken….”

“Finish it, Michael.”

“Gabby got scared when she saw me. She started crying and it was just…too much. It became the edge of the cliff and I jumped without looking back. I screamed at Skull and Beth to leave. I screamed while staring at Gabby. I knew I was terrifying her, I knew I was making her cry, I knew it all and somewhere down deep…I enjoyed it,” I confess, waiting for her to pull away and leave. To condemn me for being a monster. She doesn’t. Instead, her hand tightens on mine. I stare down at it, watching as her thumb continuously brushes back and forth along a scar that once seemed so ugly, but now, with her touch feels…normal…fuck…it even feels good. Calming. “From that moment on, I embraced the blackness inside of me, Hayden. I let it swallow me fucking whole. I didn’t care. I became a monster.

“Michael, honey—”

“There would be times I wanted to try and be like I used to be—move back into my old life. I mean all around me my club, my brothers were doing it. All around me they were laughing, having babies, living their lives, and they were happy. I wanted to be like that.”

“But it wasn’t possible,” she whispers. I’m busy staring at our joined hands. I can’t pull my eyes from them. If I do, I might stop, and I need to make her understand—if nothing else. I don’t know if I’ll get another chance, and I need her to understand…

“I tried, but something always happened. A memory of my daughter, doing the same things their kids would do. Watching as they kissed their wives, just something small like that. It would bring back the reality that I lived in.”

“Because your family was gone,” she injects quietly and she’s mostly right, but it goes deeper than that, so I give her that too.

“My family was gone, but why would a woman want to be around a monster, Hayden? Why would a woman invite an animal, who was riddled in scars, who had a soul as black as midnight, and was slowly dying from the inside out…What woman would want a man like that to touch her?” Her hand constricts so forcefully on mine, it might hamper blood flow, but I like it. It feels solid. It feels reassuring. “There was a girl. I mentioned her before. She had this huge crush on me for as long as I could remember. She was sweet, innocent and all the things I had never had in my life. I never let myself act on it. There was Jan, and she might have been a cold hearted bitch, but I needed to put Annabelle first, but still I knew this girl cared and…I liked it. I had been making progress, trying to come out of my head in small moments and interact with my brothers. There was a family picnic. All the brothers and their families were there and I was really trying. I was. It was all fake, but I was surviving being around everyone. That was an improvement…and then I heard her and the other girls talking—about me. She didn’t say anything I didn’t already know. Still…”

“You told me,” Hayden murmurs. “She was a—”

“A cow and other colorful things. I remember, Beauty,” I smile, bringing my free hand over our joined ones and just holding it there. Letting the feelings inside of me settle. “She wasn’t wrong though. I was repulsive.”

“You were—are not. Michael, you can’t let close-minded—”

“I was,” I interrupt her. “I absolutely was, inside where they couldn’t see. I was repulsive. One of my brother’s was celebrating the birthday of his son, and Skull was too…and through the whole party I was trying to act normal—be normal. It was all fake. I wanted to scream at them and demand to know why their sons got to live and my daughter couldn’t? I wanted to know what made them so special that they got to have time with their families, they got everything that had been taken from me. You see, Beauty? I wasn’t normal. I was never going to be normal. Lucy was right that day. I’m repulsive.”