The Beast

“Are you now?”

As she smiled at him nice and slow, that rekindle got stoked even more. “Mmmm . . .”

“If you were anyone else,” she murmured, “I would wonder how in the world you were going to get aroused again—like, in the next month.”

“Oh, I’ll be ready for you. Always.”

Except then something changed in her. He knew the instant it happened, although he would have been hard-pressed to describe exactly what tipped him off.

“What is it?” he whispered. “Are you thinking about Bitty?”

Before she could answer, he paused the movie with the remote, ironically right at the point Kevin put his father’s aftershave on and screamed at the top of his lungs.

With Macaulay Culkin’s ten-year-old self hollering at them from the flat-screen over on the far wall, Rhage brushed his Mary’s hair away from her face.

“Talk to me,” he said.

She flopped over onto her back. “I don’t want to ruin this with more of my heavy stuff.”

“Why would you ruin anything?”

“Come on, Rhage . . . I feel like we’ve finally got things fixed between us, but here I am . . . screwing it up again.”

He frowned and turned on his side, resting his head on his palm. “Why would talking about Bitty mess anything up between us?” When she didn’t answer him, he drew a circle on her bare arm. “Mary?”

As she finally looked at him again, her eyes were watery. “I need to tell you something.”

“Anything.” Hell, after the last—what time was it? noonish?—eight hours with her, he felt invincible where she was concerned. “I’m not worried.”

“That gunshot wound of yours . . .” She sniffed, and seemed determined to buck up. “When you came back from the beast having been out, and you were lying there on the ground . . .”

She put her hands up to her face and stared at the ceiling as if she were right back there in the middle of that field. And his first instinct was to tell her to stop, put the memory away, never return to that moment.

But she wasn’t a coward with her emotions. She never had been.

“I fought to keep you here.” She stared over at him. “I . . . I begged Jane and Manny to do something, anything to help you.”

“Of course you did. I was suffering—I mean, deal or no deal for the other side, that was no fun for me, I assure you.”

“Yes.” She looked away. “I didn’t want you to suffer.”

As his Mary fell silent, he took one of her hands and brought it to his mouth. “Why in a million years do you think your trying to save my life could be a bad thing? I mean, I’m not one of you therapist types, but I’m getting the clear vibe over here that that’s what you’re trying to apologize for. Which is nuts. Both on a clinical and a practical level—”

“IdidntwanttoleaveBitty.”

“I’m sorry, what did you say? I didn’t catch it.”

Mary sat up, tucking the sheet around her naked breasts. “I could have just met you on the other side . . . but when it came down to it, yes, I freaked out, because you couldn’t breathe and you were . . . the dying thing was happening . . . but I also didn’t want to leave Bitty. I wanted you to stay so that I could keep helping her. And I’m so sorry, oh, God, Rhage, I’m so sorry.”

Rhage blinked a couple of times. “Let me get this straight. You’re apologizing to me because you didn’t want to leave an orphaned girl who had just watched her mother die to deal with all that alone? Really?”

“I feel like I . . . betrayed you in some way. I mean, the pact about me meeting you on the other side is about your destiny and mine. Together. Just the two of us. But when push came to shove, I fought, but not for us. Not really. Because I knew I could see you again. I fought . . . for someone else. And that just feels really wrong.”

Rhage sat up, too, stuffing the comforter around his lap. Put like that, he could kind of see her point.

And yet . . . “Mary, if it helps you in any way, I didn’t want to leave my brothers behind. I was mostly concerned about you and me, and what was going to happen to us, but that wasn’t the only thing on my mind. There were other people in on it for me, too.” He smiled and rubbed his jaw. “Even if one of them happened to coldcock me—twice—right after I got out of bed. Anywho, I can understand what you’re getting at, but the way I see it? I don’t expect your whole life to revolve around me. I respect your profession, and I love you for everything you do at Safe Place. You felt, in that moment, that you had unfinished business you needed to handle. That is something I can totally respect.” He frowned. “Well, as long as you intended to actually meet me over there if I didn’t come back—”

“Oh, God, yes!” She reached out and pulled him to her mouth. “I swear on my soul. Even if it had meant leaving Bitty alone . . . I would have come to find you. I have no doubt about that.”

Rhage smiled and cradled her face in his palms again. “Then we’re all good. You gotta know, my Mary, your commitment to your job is as much a part of what I love about you as the rest of . . . you know, everything. Don’t waste another thought on the whys of what you did. Focus on how incredibly amazing it is that we’re right here, together, and it all worked out exactly as it should have.”

She teared up a little. “Really?”