The Finisher (Dark Verse, #4)

by RuNyx

She looked up at him, her hazel eyes shimmery, the greens in them non-existent as her pupils enlarged, and the tightness in his chest got worse. It was a ring, and he was a stranger, and yet she looked at him like he’d conquered oceans for her.

But he didn’t like this tightness. She hadn’t been married to him one day and she was causing him heart problems already.

Your daughter… she’s like a ray of sunshine in my very dark life.”

Maybe, his brain had blocked some stuff out to protect him. She’d seen that happen in movies, but it was realistically plausible, and until she spoke to someone who knew trauma about it, she wasn't going to say a thing and risk retraumatizing him. No, she had to make him love her all over again, this new him with this new her. It could happen.

He was kinda hot when he was threatening her, though she doubted he’d appreciate it if she said that to his face at the moment.

God, he’d gotten sexier over the years, and she had no shame in admitting she wanted him in bed, out of bed, against the wall, whatever way she could have him.

God, it hurt her. It hurt her that he'd built himself a tower with walls so high it had become impenetrable. 'You are hope, sunshine. Hope for a better life.' The boy who'd told her that clearly lived in the tower, unreachable. But she would scale the walls if she had to, get to the top, and rescue her lover. She would give him hope again if it was the last thing that she did.

She took another bite of the delicious sandwich, enjoying the companionable silence as they both ate, silently falling a little more in love with the new him, enough for the both of them until he could catch up.

She looked down at the ring on her finger, the beautiful piece unlike any she’d seen, a band of platinum adorned with tiny rubies, amethysts, sapphires, and emeralds, colorful and unique. ‘One day, when I have money, I’m going to buy you the prettiest ring, sunshine.’ Zephyr felt her nose burn and looked out, remembering the whispered promise on the last night she’d seen him before he’d disappeared from her life. The ring was more precious to her than he’d ever realize.

Dante finally turned to his guests, his smile huge. “Alpha, Zephyr, I’d like you to meet my princess, Tempest. Tempest, this is your uncle and aunt.” Aunt. She was that little baby’s aunt. Holy shit, she’d never been an aunt before.

Zephyr took Alpha's hand she was holding and brought it up, making his fingers touch Tempest's soft skin, praying that the baby didn’t cry. She didn’t. Little Tempest Maroni gurgled and drooled and gave Alpha the same gummy smile, and she saw her husband get wrapped around her minuscule pinkie. Oh yeah, it affected him all right. He didn’t even try to hide it on his face.

“I have to try,” Zephyr whispered, her chest tight. “He’s different now, but I have to try, Zen. I can’t live knowing I found him again and didn’t do anything.”

“You talk to my wife, you die,” he announced coldly. Dante whistled in the distance, and Zephyr flushed. That was the most 'Me Tarzan, You Jane' thing she'd ever seen in her life. She was as taken as she could get.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to smile before she jumped into his world, a burst of colorful explosions in the stark gray of his sky, a sprout of life blooming in the land of death, a festival in a field that had only witnessed funerals. And now that he’d experienced that, like an addict, he wanted more.

She would win him over, one tease at a time. For now, she had his home to make her own.

“Don’t look at me with those stars in your eyes, Zephyr. You’re fooling yourself if you think I’m anything but a beast under this skin.” Zephyr raised her wine glass to him. “Then the world needs more beasts like you.”

"And in the end, we were all humans, drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness." -Christopher Poindexter

She still loved him. And he didn’t. And she was both okay with that and agonized by that knowledge.

He had let her under his skin. She just needed to make herself at home there. Pressing soft, gentle kisses to his scar, she followed the trail of the jagged line, holding the sides of his jaw in her hands, feeling his facial hair cushion her palms. She kissed him over his cheek, down the line to the corner of his mouth, all the while aware of the way he held himself, taut and rigid, while still taking her affection. And she gave it freely, loving him as her heart desired—openly, shamelessly, abundantly.

She didn’t say anything, simply held his face, the urge to tell him who she’d once been to him clashing with the urge to protect his mind from itself. She’d take the burden gladly if it kept him sane and safe. And it was really sad, but she missed him. He was right there against her, and she missed him with every cell in her body.

"I want to eat your smile, sunshine," he said against her mouth. "Swallow it whole and light up my insides with it."

"One day soon," he told her between little bites. "I'll get a car and pick you up from home, so you won't have to walk here. A Jeep." His nose inhaled her scent, and she was glad she'd put on his favorite perfume. "And I'll take you for a long drive away from the city. Would you like that?"

"And one day, I'll get out of this shithole. Get rich. Build you a house. Get dogs. You like dogs, right?"

"And one day, when I have money, I'm going to buy you the prettiest ring, sunshine. Would you take that?"

He dropped a kiss to her lips. "My sunshine. Lighting me up from the insides." Zephyr melted against him, her eyes burning as he continued speaking. "You make me want to be a better man for you."

She stared at him constantly, always finding new reasons to check him out, and he loved that. He loved the way her eyes appreciated his damaged form, openly and honestly. He loved how she lit up when he looked at her. He loved how her eyes followed him around even when she thought he wasn't aware of them.

She'd snuck in, whether he'd wanted to or not, and now he didn't want her gone. It was a realization that he had something to lose, for the first time since his mother died.

“I might not remember you,” he whispered, his lips almost at hers. “But you’re my wife now. Mine. And I’d bathe this whole city in blood before I let you change that.”

He pressed a kiss to her nose. “I’m not done with you, little rainbow. Come home.”

“I’m not letting you go, Zephyr.” His hand simply traced her hip, his words tender in the space between them.

“You know how a rainbow is made?” Zephyr frowned. “When sunlight passes through a raindrop.” “My life has been nothing but gray for as long as I remember,” he told her softly. “Rainstorms and thunder clouds that never went away. You filtered through that, all bright colors and exuberance and life. And the clouds are still there, but my eyes can’t leave the rainbow long enough to see them. You changed things. And I’m not letting that go, Zephyr. I’m not letting you go. Get that out of your head right now.”

"You cannot save people, you can only love them." -Anais Nin

“I didn’t realize how much I missed your touch. You gave a starved man a feast every day until he forgot what hunger felt like, and then took it away.”

“I’m sorry I forgot you,” he told her quietly, and Zephyr soaked up the moment, his sincerity, his softness, his touch. She patted his scar. “It’s not your fault.”

“you’re both my rainbow and my treasure at the end of it. And nothing”— bite— “will”—lick— “ever”—suck—“compare.” He won. “You're the twisted beauty, and I'm the beast, remember?”

His life had been brutal and ugly and monstrous, all rough edges and bleeding wounds and selfish interests, and Zephyr? She was all softness and light and generosity. Her very existence was proof enough that there was good in the world, that beyond the pain and the hurt and the darkness, joy existed in the form of a small woman.

She brushed his hair away from his face, straddling him, taking the eye patch off, exposing the scarred tissue underneath. She loved that he let her see him like that, at what he felt was his ugliest. Idiot man. His ugly was her beautiful.

"Don't leave me again, rainbow," he spoke quietly in the space between them. "I don't know if I'll ever remember anything. I don't know if what I feel is love. I don't know what the future holds. But I know I want you by my side. I know I don't want to forget you now." Zephyr melted, her heart softening. She pressed a soft kiss to his lips. "I'm not going anywhere, handsome. I've loved you as a boy, and I love you as a beast. All of you has always been loved by me."

"Remember when I told you my heart was a dead scar tissue?" "Hmm." "I feel it pumping again with you. My lifeblood. My little rainbow." And he was hers.

He never wanted her to leave. Tasting the fear of the last day, tasting what a life without her could be like... she gave him meaning. She was his lifeblood.

"We'll be okay, won't we, handsome?" she whispered softly, almost fearful to hope for better. His arms tightened around her, and he dropped a kiss on her head. "The gray won't be forever, rainbow."

The Syndicate was only beginning, The Shadow Man was unknown, and the future was uncertain. But in the arms of the man she'd loved for years, would love for years, Zephyr felt herself being able to breathe. The gray won't be forever.