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“Now what?” he murmurs, almost softly. My heart is pounding. The lack of oxygen is turning me insane. “I’d fight,” I whisper back. “Then fight me,” he says, his breath crackling on my earlobe. “What?” “I’ve cornered you in here, there’s no light. Nobody can see you. Nobody is coming to rescue you. Fight. Me.” My nerve endings spark. “I-I can’t.” “Why?”
A tingle of unease and something darker hums through me as the blood trickles along the length of my palm. There’s that spark again. He punched a man, for me.
His angry glare bores into my back. “So you can’t fight, can’t protect yourself. You wear those ridiculous shoes that you definitely can’t run in, and yet, you still insist on walking these streets alone after dark.” He mutters a curse under his breath. “You know what happens to girls like you?” “They make it home safe and sound because bad things don’t happen on the coast.” “They end up as a statistic on a Wikipedia page,” he spits back.
Hate that he just won’t go away. Fueled by frustration, I tilt my chin and return his glare. “I’m not a damsel in distress, and while I appreciate the concern, I don’t need your help. Besides,” I add, fumbling around in my collar for the cord hanging from my neck, “I have a whistle for emergencies.” When met with his blank stare, I start to feel all itchy, so I give the whistle a pathetic toot. “See? More than capable of getting out of sticky situations.” A dense beat passes. Then another.
He’s rough when he folds me in half. Even rougher when he drops me into the open car trunk. And when the ink, scar, and green disappear behind the falling door, his voice is the roughest thing of all. “Get out of this sticky situation, then.”
The first time my brothers and I squeezed into the crawlspace behind the confessional after Sunday service and listened to Mr. Foster admit to blowing his late wife’s life insurance on hookers and cocaine was the first time my brain stopped hurting. Because suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad about drowning Angelo’s best friend in the pool that summer or setting the outhouse on fire to see how quickly the flames would spread. I’d realized listening to the sins of others had a way of silencing my own.
Now, all the sins I could ever ask for are in my ear. A constant stream of bad thoughts to distract me from my own. Granted, most are dog shit. Few are potent. And none are Hers.
I’m not surprised she snitched—she looks like the snitching type—I’m just surprised it’s taken her so long. She kept her mouth shut after she crossed my path three years ago. Said fuck-all when I shoved her house key down her throat in her own hallway.
did it because she couldn’t tell me what she’d do if someone tried to hurt her. Because the sound of that fucking whistle snapped my one and only nerve. Because I didn’t force her into my trunk after the explosion, and I needed to prove to myself that I could. “I let her out, didn’t I?” “Yeah, well—” Rory huffs, reaching for a hammer. “You made her cry, so now I’m gonna make you cry.” She swings it into the wall with so much energy, yet so little strength, that the impact doesn’t even crack the bricks.
The silence was too loud. Her voice even louder. No sins coming through the hotline were bad enough to drown out the feeling of her weight in my arms or the sight of her dress sliding up her thigh. So I did what I’ve resisted doing every damn day for the last three years: I googled her.
“I’m not sure—she won’t tell us. She just walks everywhere instead.” “I’m aware,” I grit out. “She’s asking to get kidnapped.” “Gabe. It’s Wren.
When she came back, she was … different. Not in a bad way,” she hastens to add. “She was just nicer.” I run my tongue over my teeth. “Meaning?” “She started volunteering in Cove, then at the hospital. At first, I thought it was just so she had something to put on her college application, but she’d already secured her place. And then I thought, maybe she’s found God or something.” She lets out a little laugh. “But that doesn’t explain why she suddenly started wearing so much pink.” My skin is fucking fizzing. The driving, the volunteering, the sudden niceness. There’s a linear story there, a
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“And if all else fails, you kick them in the balls.” Instinctively, I look down at his crotch. Though, I realize my error in less than a heartbeat and quickly glance away, sensing Gabriel stiffen. “Not my balls,” he warns. Heat floods my face. It touches more-private places too, because now I’m thinking about his private places and wondering what they look like under all that leather. I bet his penis is huge. Like the ones in porn. I wonder if it’s tattooed like the rest of him, or even pierced, because he seems like the type.
I study the hard set of his lips and search his eyes for clues too, but of course, his gaze in impenetrable, galvanized by the wall of disdain that, I swear, is built brick by brick with his hatred for me. The girl who saved his life.
“Good girl.” What? I thrive off being called good, but the words are unexpected coming from Gabriel Visconti; my body’s reaction even more so. My breath shallows, and the lightest lick of heat sizzles in my core. I’ve always been a people-pleaser, though his praise feels more pleasing than it should.
Raking my fingers through my ponytail, I force myself to look up at him. “They call you the Boogeyman, you know?” “Good.” “But you don’t scare me.”
“You never told anyone about that night.” His eyes are still fixated on the sky, but I’m close enough to see a muscle flex beneath his beard. He flicks the butt on the grass, then runs a hand over his mouth. “Neither did you.”
“You’re behind the power outage.” “Tell me why.” I pause. Then the realization sprouts and sparks, lighting up my core. It’s the same reason he never told anyone about that night. “If it happens in the dark, it didn’t happen,” I whisper, a tremble in my tone.
Then one day, I’ll look back and laugh at the time I thought I had a crush on Gabriel Visconti. Jeez. It’s a reach to even call it a crush. He’s just a man, and I’m just a girl who has never been touched by one. Hell, even Matt could have gripped my jaw like that or called me a good girl, and my body would have gotten all confused.
“Hey, Rafe. I heard Penny is working for you, right?” His shoulders form a tight line. After a beat, he slowly turns his head. “Who?” “Penelope Price. You know, around my age, pretty short, red hair—” “I’ve no idea who you’re talking about.” I blink at the sharpness of his tone. “Um, I guess you hire hundreds of girls, so …” I shift my weight from one foot to the other. “Well, anyway. If you happen to see her, please tell her—” My mouth falls slack when he takes the steps two at a time and disappears around a corner, then a door slams shut. “To stop by The Rusty Anchor for our girls night,”
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Finally, I find one at the back of a laundry room and burst through it. The rain is louder out here, but it doesn’t fall. The air is colder, but there’s no bite to it. Disorientated, I blink, trying to clear the tears blurring my vision. There’re stacks of boxes, and tools hanging from a pegboard. The smell of gasoline and burned plastic rise from the damp concrete floor, then I realize I’m in the garage. And so is Gabriel.
The sight of him wipes my brain clean of thought. Muscle upon muscle carved into a never-ending mass and shrink-wrapped in ink. Had I known he was behind the unlocked door, I’d have hesitated before crashing through it. Had I known he was also shirtless, I’d have run in the opposite direction.
“You touch everything that doesn’t belong to you?” My breathing shallows. “I like touching things,” I mutter. The last syllable tastes like regret and heats my cheeks. That somehow sounded … sexual, and I swear, I feel the air grow thicker behind me. The sound of metal scrapes down my back, and an answer laced with bitterness chases it. “I’ve noticed.”
“Did you kill him?” “Would you snitch if I did?” The rough timbre of his voice grazes my throat and slides south, vibrating every cell on the way down. I hadn’t realized he was so close. “Yes,” I breathe out, dizzy on gasoline and gunpowder. The dark shields me like armor, making me brave and reckless. “It didn’t happen in the dark.” His steady breaths grow ragged; I feel each like a shot of hot adrenaline in my veins. “And if it did?” I swallow thickly. “It didn’t happen.” A deep hum of approval touches my ear. “Good girl.”
It feels like a too-close candle. Its flame dances up my rib cage, raising every hair and goosebump in its wake. It must be Gabriel’s finger or knuckle, and My God, the mere proximity, the mere thought of him touching me, is all-consuming. As the heat drifts along the band of my bikini top, a cramp of desperation seizes me. I need more than his near-touch or his praise. I need his grip, his friction. I need to feel the scratch of his beard between my inner thighs, the sharp points of his teeth sinking into my flesh. I need to know what it’d feel like to be pinned between his body and a
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Oh, God. This is bad. I’m shackled, half-clothed, and at the mercy of a monster I have no business being alone with in a dark garage. I can’t see anything—not even his outline, let alone his expression or the weapon he fired just moments ago. I can’t study the intent in his eyes or predict his next move. Curse my stupid habit of romanticizing everything. Darkness isn’t freeing. It just makes you vulnerable. Panic chews away at my edges, and when I can no longer stand its bite, I choke out a desperate breath. “Y-you’re scaring me.”
Three years. I lasted three fucking years.
need something darker. Something that breaks the loop of her breathy voice fizzing in the black. You’re scaring me. Of course I scared her. Scared my-fucking-self too when she burst into my garage mid-panic attack and my gut twisted into a shape it’s never made before.
“Why the friendly fire?” I walk over to the drinks fridge and grab a beer. “It was a warning shot.” “Warning him about what?” About taking another fucking step into the garage. I’d fired the first shot because the thought of another man seeing what I was seeing made me feel violent. The second shot was at the light because I wasn’t worthy of seeing it myself.
Plunging us into darkness was the worst thing I could have done. Because then the temptation to touch her like she’d touched me was too great. It eliminated the ability to see the fear in her eyes and her seeing the Devil take over mine. You’re scaring me.
I scare every woman, and I’m perfectly fucking fine with that, but there’s something about scaring her that makes me do stupid shit. Like rocking up to her house again to teach her how to get out of the trunk I folded her into. Like cutting her out of her restraints before I could even show her how to free herself.
“It’d take me five minutes to find—” “No.” No. Three years. I’ve lasted three fucking years. She’s perfect, in her little box. My little angel with wings from Amazon. With a touch too warm for my skin; with a name too sweet to ever pass my lips. I want to keep her there forever. A reminder of all the good in the world, of everything I’ve never had or deserved.
I swore I wouldn’t dig, though now I’ve seen her fucking body, it’s getting harder to resist finding out what she’s hiding beneath it. And maybe if I found out she isn’t so perfect after all, I could set her free. But that’s the problem. The Devil himself couldn’t claw Her from me.
I nod, smile, and mutter something about it being a nice name. That’s just what you do when someone tells you what they’re called. And it is, I suppose. It’s just not the name of The One. Doesn’t have the same ring as Wren and Gabe, either. A shock zaps through me, and I silently scold myself for daring to even think it.
As I step onto the patio, the door opens and Kind Eyes appears. He doesn’t fill the doorframe like Gabriel does. Doesn’t fill me with the same heat either. He feels safe. He makes me feel nothing at all.
“I thought he wasn’t as scary as he looks?” Angelo pauses, then turns his head just enough to reveal the hard set of his jaw. “He’s worse.” The door swings shut just as another raindrop plops into the bucket.
She grins up at me, then her face falls when her eyes touch the welt on my cheek. She cocks her head and studies me like she’s seeing me for the first time. I fucking hate when she does that; it always brings a lump to my throat. At least she never asks questions. Guess that’s why I can tolerate her more than I do most people.
The last time I saw her was days ago, strung up and indecent in my garage. My shot at the light was like a camera flash, burning my last glimpse of her into my retinas. She was all bikini body and Bambi eyes, and I couldn’t get the image out of my fucking head even if I blew my brains out. I see it in the dark. Behind every blink.
The first time I heard it was when I graduated from Hell and limped into the dining room just in time for dinner. I’d been gone for three years, and the world I returned to was different to how I left it. It was darker. And so was I. I had a new scar running from my eyebrow down to my chin and a look in my eye that reflected all the fucked-up things I’d done to get it.
I move to leave, but Angelo’s question stops me. “Gabe. Why have you got Gio stalking my wife?” I run my tongue over my teeth and consider letting a lie filter through the gaps. The truth’s complicated, and is less about my sister-in-law’s protection, and more about who she’s always hanging out with. I settle on no answer at all.
Head back, eyes closed, her hand resting on her chest. My next breath catches when I suddenly realize why the sun is shining on a cold mid-December day. It’s shining for her. Like a personal spotlight, it pours through the window and surfs down her golden waves, catching the sparkle of her lip gloss and the shimmer of her eye shadow. The light loves her. And clearly, so does the cunt standing in front of her.
She has her other hand on his chest, touching him, while he stares at her like she put the fucking sun in the sky herself. I know how her hand feels. I know the exact number of seconds it takes for her heat to bleed through my shirt and warm my skin. I could pick out her fingerprint on its texture alone because it’s etched onto my bicep, the hollows of my cheeks, the scar on my face.
There’s that violent feeling again. It bubbles at the base of my throat and foams in the form of a bitter question. I turn my eyes back to the sea. “You touch every man like that?” She doesn’t miss a beat. “Only when they ask me out.” My lungs squeeze. “What?” “Only when they ask me out,” she repeats slowly, as if I’m hard of hearing.
“My mother used to always say that your soulmate’s heart will beat exactly in time with your own. That’s how you know they’re The One,” she continues, straightening. I make the mistake of looking at her again. She returns my glare through her long lashes, doe-eyed and innocent. “Ours were way out of sync. So, no date for him.”
She’s so quick to invade my space, I don’t expect it. There’s no time to sidestep or bark at her either, so I just stand there, frozen, as she closes her eyes and places her hand on my chest. Now I’m not breathing at all. Every muscle in my stomach tenses. It’ll take only one, two, three seconds until the heat of her palm soaks through my T-Shirt. I knew it’d get under my skin too; she already lives there. It poisons my nervous system and works its way south, stirring up shit it shouldn’t.
And yet, I still don’t fucking move—can’t. She’s too still, too perfect. Her touch doesn’t belong to a man like me. I’ll be damned if it belongs to another man either. “Huh.” She frowns, opens her eyes, and steps back. “That’s strange.” My heart beats even faster. “What?” I snap. “You don’t have a heart at all.” She flashes me a cavity-inducing smile and flounces toward the tender.
“If it happened in the dark, it didn’t happen.” Fuck. That’s why she never told Rory about the incident in the garage or the night I showed up at her house and taught her how to get out of the trunk. The girl’s taken my father’s rule and spun it into a whole new meaning. And—dare I even let myself think it—she’s into the fucking idea. Is she?
I know I’m bluffing myself just even thinking about it. Her shadow alone makes my chest feel too tight in my shirt. It’s tiny and five shades lighter than mine, and the mere sight reminds me of the foreign flicker of guilt I felt slamming down the lid of my trunk on her screams.
I look down as her bound hands rise to my cheek. She moves slowly, watching me as though I might bite, before spreading her fingers like a flower in bloom and brushing them over the welt. Every muscle in my body seizes. Her touch is as light as a whisper; soft enough to hurt. I don’t stop her. Can’t. Instead, I stare at her and wonder if her gaze would soften like that if she knew why I have it. If she knew she is behind every slash, bruise, and ache in my body right now. If she knew how sick I am, how desperate I am to know her secret.
catch her finger between my teeth. A rough warning bite—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to make it stop. She blinks up at me and lets out a puff of air. “Do you bite every woman that touches you?” I don’t reply. Mainly because my brain’s spinning too fast to think of one, but partly because I wouldn’t know. In my thirty-two years on this earth, she’s the only girl I’ve met who’s been brave enough to touch me with such a gentle caress.
