Timber (Hades, #4)

by Tate James

I should shoot him and get it over with. Yet... I hadn't. Deep down, I knew I could if that was what I really wanted. Zed would have handed me the gun himself if I'd really wanted to kill him. But I didn't. Because goddamn it, I still loved him. And that just made it all a thousand times worse.

Zed had hurt me worse than I'd ever known was possible. Worse than all of Chase's physical abuse. I'd let him into my heart; I'd fallen in love. Stupid, foolish me.

I should have known better. Part of me wanted to spit and hiss, raging about how no one could be trusted any more. That love brought nothing but pain. But the other part of me just sat there and pointed to Cass and Lucas, the physical contradictions to all my negative thoughts. The living proof that just because Zed had betrayed me, not all love brought pain. Sometimes it made us stronger and better humans.

Enough was enough, and I needed to take control again. I needed to stop giving other people so much power over me. It was a promise I already knew I couldn't keep. But the intention alone gave me strength.

I gave a long exhale, running my fingers through my tangle-free hair. Lucas had saved my ass by combing all that conditioner through it a couple of days ago. I'd have probably just lost my shit and cut it all off.

"I'll survive, Cass. I always do." His mouth tightened, and his brow dipped low. "I'll be back the second the weather clears. I love you, Angel."

Foxglove Manor, from what I knew, was a massive estate that had been added to multiple times over the years to accommodate the increased wealth of the Lockhart family. I didn't blame Cass for thinking it was the kind of property Channing Lockhart might have kept a vault within.

My feet had mostly healed up, but the muscles all through my legs were still aching, so my speed was roughly that of an arthritic tortoise.

"Pretty sure that boat sailed about two weeks ago," I snarked back, grabbing a bottle of soda and slamming the fridge shut again. "Or, shit, maybe it sailed years ago. Either way, it's long fucking gone, hit a storm, capsized, then been smashed against jagged rocks. We're done, Zed. There's nothing left to discuss."

So instead of throwing the remote at the screen, I took the mature option and flicked the TV off.

"I'm not. You're doing me a hell of a lot better being there. Is anyone giving you a hard time?" Lucas gave a low chuckle, the sort that warmed me all the way to my toes. "Nah, nothing I can't handle with a little help from Demi and Rex. He's a barrel of fun, by the way. You didn't warn me." I wrinkled my nose. "Fucking Rex. I knew he'd take this as an invitation to slink back into the Timberwolves."

I huffed a sigh. "I guess. Are his boys keeping their dirty fucking hands off Seph?" "They're getting along alright according to Rex. I'll stop by and see her tomorrow if you want."

"Thank you," I murmured, meaning it. "I'll work it out, though. I can't shower with you for the rest of my life." "Why not?" Lucas replied, and I could hear his grin. "I'm not complaining. It's kind of nice being able to take care of you for once." Then he gave a small groan. "I didn't mean... Ugh, sorry that came out wrong. Obviously, I don't think—"

Except logic and trauma occupy two totally separate areas of the brain, and no, they don’t talk. No matter how calm and rational I got myself, when I reached out to turn the shower on, the trauma side slammed front and center.

Slowly, I undressed myself and muttered motivational verbal abuse at my reflection, pepping myself up for taking this next step in busting through my damage. Ultimately, though, I decided that I was just making myself more anxious.

He didn't push me away, either. One of his arms was tucked securely around my waist, holding me against him as the other rubbed circles on my back. He just held me and gently talked me down, helping me regain my sanity piece by piece. Just like he'd done countless times before.

I'd once said to Lucas that without Zed, I doubted I'd have kept even a shred of my humanity. And it was true. He'd kept me grounded while I massacred my father's gang and my fiancé's family. He'd tethered me to humanity throughout five years of ruthless killings and violence. And now here he was, pulling me from the brink of total despair. Again. Yet this time, it was tainted with the ache of his betrayal.

"Sorry," I croaked, having seen the bloody scratches on his cheek and forearms. "I'm fine now."

"You're the furthest thing from fine, Dare."

Instantly furious, I snapped my gaze back to glare death at him. "What the fuck would you know? You're the one who handed me over to him all wrapped up in a nice, neat bow. Everything that happened to me? Is your fault, Zed. You did this to me just as much as he did." I was so mad I was shaking. "How dare you look at me with pity. Shouldn't you be off somewhere with your old friend, toasting your successes? Why are you even still here? Or is this part of the game? Save me, just to bask in how utterly fucked up he left me?"

Then he came storming back in with a Glock 19 in his hand, and I stiffened with fear.

Deja vu ffs

"You heard me, Hades. Shoot me." He stretched his hands wide, his chin tilted up in stubborn defiance. "You're Hades. You don't suffer betrayals or insubordination from fucking anyone. If you truly believe everything you just said to me, this should be easy. Shoot. Me."

"You can't do it because you know that's not what happened. You fucking know how much I love you, Dare." His voice cracked, and raw pain shone through his eyes. "You know I will spend every damn second for the rest of my life regretting the choices that got us here and desperately trying to make this up to you. But you need to hear me out."

"Or pull it now," he pushed. "But this ends now. I've given you time and space, but you're hurting yourself now. That's where I draw the damn line." My brow creased. "What the fuck are you talking about?" Zed nodded to my shoulder, and I gave it a lightning-fast glance, just long enough to see blood seeping up through the dressing. Shit. How badly had I been flailing when he pulled me from the shower?

"What the fuck was that?" Zed exclaimed, eyeing the destroyed TV.

"Checking if you were bluffing." His brows hitched. "You thought I would give you blanks?" "I don't know what to fucking think anymore, Zed," I admitted with a tired sigh. "Grab my shirt from the bathroom; I'm not having this conversation sitting here naked."

"Start from the beginning." He gave a small nod, shifting away to sit on the edge of my bed, close enough to touch if I wanted to. Not that I did. "Alright," he agreed, rubbing a hand over his short-cropped hair. "So we start on the night of the massacre." Somehow, this didn't surprise me in the least. Deep down, I'd known that was where this story began. The Timberwolf massacre.

"You remember how badly messed up I was? How Chase had stabbed me sixteen times with my own fucking knife and you saved my ass? Then after you shot him, you dragged me out of the cursed Lockhart mansion like I weighed nothing. Like you had a sixth sense that the whole place was about to go up in flames."

"Did you mean it?" It was the first time I'd ever told Zed that I loved him. "You know I did," I whispered, feeling my heart breaking all over again. How could he have betrayed my trust after everything we'd been through together?

"You sold us out to save your own ass? Jesus, Zed—" "Not for me, dipshit. For you. They told me that if I took the job, that you and only you would be off limits. The case against you that had been started would be tossed out, and you'd be safe." His eyes implored me to see the truth in his words. That he had whole-heartedly believed he was protecting me. "All I could hear in my head was you telling me that you loved me, Dare. They offered me a chance to protect you not just against the crimes we'd just committed, but against everything we hadn't yet done. I couldn't say no to that."

"Because the offer came from the one person who knew how to manipulate me better than anyone on earth." He hissed a breath through his teeth, shaking his head. "My mom." "What?" "Yeah." He grimaced. "I know. So much for being dead, huh? Turns out she’d been working for the FBI the whole damn time. Dad blew her cover, so she shot him and 'disappeared' so she could go back to her real life—without the fake name, fake crime family, fake son."

In the aftermath of that bloody night, so many things had happened so damn quickly. Archer, Kody, and Steele had bought their freedom from the Reapers with blood and fear, and I’d provided the insurance they needed by handing Archer half of the black market trade routes for Shadow Grove. I'd gone headfirst down the rabbit hole of my new life, eating, sleeping, and breathing Hades. I'd shut off my humanity as much as possible just to survive the awful things I'd done.

"Rehab," I croaked, dabbing my lips on the sleeve of my shirt. Zed knew what I meant and nodded. "Yep." I drew a long breath, letting it swell my lungs, and winced at the press on my ribs. "They put you through some kind of crash course in how to be a snake in the grass or something?" My words dripped with bitterness, but Zed didn't shy away from it. "Three months isn't long enough for standard FBI training."

"You're right. I had a thousand opportunities to tell you, but I didn't. Then it was like... the longer I went without telling you, the more I convinced myself you'd never forgive me. I got it into my head that so long as I was protecting you, then you never needed to know. I couldn't..." He trailed off, his words drying up. Taking a swallow of his drink, he leaned his head back on the sofa to look at the ceiling for strength or something. "I was scared, Dare."

"You're not scared of anything, Zayden," I muttered back. He grunted and shook his head. "Not true. I was scared I would lose you. I watched you harden after that night—the way you closed yourself off from the world, from your own emotions. You did everything you needed to do to survive your new role. But I was scared that it meant you wouldn't forgive me for lying. For deceiving you. For being the fox in the hen house. I was so fucking scared that if I told you, then that'd be the end of us. So I convinced myself the only thing to do was keep my mouth shut and... keep going as I was."

"I didn't give a crap if you shot me," he continued, his voice low and quiet. "I just couldn't stand the thought of... not being us. I didn't want to lose us, because even though you’d seemed to have forgotten what you’d said to me that night when I was bleeding out and heading toward the light, I never had. I was just biding my time, waiting until you were ready to let your walls down again."

"And then I met Lucas." He gave me a lopsided smile. "You know, I started to tell you everything so many times after you met Gumdrop that I lost count. But every damn time, I came up against the exact same problem. You were letting your walls down, so I needed to confess everything. But..." I groaned. "But I thought you were trying to confess feelings and totally derailed everything, didn't I?" Zed wrinkled his nose. "A little bit. Because then I could see a future for us that rivaled even my most farfetched fantasies, and I had an even stronger desire to never fuck it up." "Until you did."

That proud smirk was back, and I rolled my eyes. Only Zed would be proud of someone punching him in the face. "Good," I muttered. "I hope it hurt."

"You tracked me?" I repeated, shooting Zed a puzzled look. "How?" His eyes widened, and he looked uncomfortable for the first time since we'd started talking. "Uh, I thought you knew. Wow. Cass implanted a GPS tracker under your skin."

"Dare, I honestly thought you knew. He never said you didn't, and I couldn't imagine that was something he’d done against your will... but look, it was a fucking good thing he did. We spent all that time searching the wilderness of Montana and coming up blank, then all of a sudden you were back on the tracker. We piled into the helicopter, Cass almost killed us a couple of times flying too close to trees, then when we got close to your location, he dropped me down to try and find you on foot."

"I hope you know how sorry I am," he told me, his eyes shining with emotion. "If you let me, I'll spend every day for the rest of our lives apologizing for this fuckup. If I could go back and do it all again..." He trailed off, his expression tightening. "If you could go back in time, you would still take the deal," I finished for him, my tone neutral and nonjudgmental. He gave a slow nod, anguish creasing his features. But I just shrugged. "So would I, Zed. I'd have done the exact same thing for you."

Was I still holding a grudge? Probably. I lacked the emotional maturity that Lucas seemed to have in spades and didn't find it so easy to let bygones be bygones.

So, were we okay again? Friends? More than friends? Or just people who used to be so crazy in love that it physically hurt? Who was I kidding? That love hadn't faded. Not even a little bit. It was just clouded by heartache, betrayal, and confusion. Most of all by anger. Anger which had all but fizzled out with the clarity of context and open communication.

Carefully, I collected my lady-balls and stepped into the shower cubicle.

A small, startled sound squeaked out of me, but he didn't hesitate before stepping into the shower with me, leaving his boxer-briefs on. "Zed—" I started to protest as he got wet. "Shut up," he muttered back, his voice dark. "Close your eyes and pretend I'm Lucas or something."

It was a quote written in Tibetan, a tattoo I'd had done after a trip we'd taken when I was fifteen.

"Everything happens for a reason." It was a statement that our guide had used far too often but also one that resonated with me at that stage in my life. "Yeah, I do. Don't you?"

Instantly, I wanted to call him back, to take things further like my heart was begging for. No words passed my lips, though. Zed held out a towel for me, and I stepped into it with bitter disappointment choking me. He just wrapped the towel around me, hugging me through the thick fabric.

"I'm not going anywhere," he whispered in my ear. "No matter how long it takes, I love you, Dare. That will never change, and I'll never stop waiting for you." We both ignored the silent tears tracking down my cheeks after that.

"Cass wanted to talk to you himself." I quirked one brow. "That's nice." I'd been ignoring his messages since finding out he'd chipped me like a prize bitch. He huffed a laugh. "Yeah, I figured that was how you felt. Told him to take his licks in person like a big boy."