Chapter Thirty-Seven
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
GEMMA
Every time I see another tear drift from Bonnie’s eyes, it takes a little bit of my heart with it when it dries on her skin. She’s exhausted—the sun is coming up, for fuck’s sake. I brushed her hair again and dried it, and before I could get her into clothes, she fell asleep sitting up on the bed. I only knew when I went to get up to get her clothes, and she shifted back onto the mattress before I could move.
More than once, I had to catch myself from breaking down with her in the shower.
More than once, I had to sniff back my tears and remind myself that I was not the one who was attacked. I was not the one who had to live with that memory and trauma.
I was just the person cleaning it off of her—
For the second time.
At least this time she could tell me if something hurt, she could tell me if she wanted the hospital, the police, or anyone else. She wasn’t unconscious and covered in blood, semen, and vomit. She wasn’t a rag doll. I didn’t have to keep checking her pulse to make sure she was still breathing .
I sink onto the steps outside her trailer and hang my head, trying like hell to continue holding it in, to be strong and remain neutral in case someone were to come by.
However, as the dewy morning air envelops my skin, I break.
How did I let this happen to her again?
Behind my eyes, all I can see is the last time I was in this situation with her, the last time I had to wash someone else’s grime out of her hair and off her body.
The last time she grabbed me by the wrist and asked me to stay after an incident that broke her.
I can still see her lying in the bed that dreary November 1 st as I stand beside it, my mask still on. I stood by that bed when she woke up the next morning, and I couldn’t hold her. I couldn’t hold her because I didn’t want to scare her.
I couldn’t save her then.
Just like I couldn’t save her last night.
The worst part is that I thought I was helping when I sent her into that dressing room.
After she fell asleep, I stayed up thinking about all the ways to punish myself for letting this happen, all the things I should have changed and done differently. I’m itching for a drain, for a blade. I deserve to hurt even more for this. I deserve to watch the blood that keeps my body going dripping down my thighs.
A door opens nearby. I try to swipe the tears from my cheeks and take a deep breath, though air hardly fills my lungs. Someone flips out a lawn chair beside me seconds later, and when they take a seat, I don’t bother peering over to see who it is.
“I’m fine, Kade,” I say, assuming.
The person presses a hot coffee my way, and the sight of the skull face tattoo on his hand makes me tense. I lift my head out of my hands, finding Mads relaxed in the lawn chair, ankle propped up over his knee, a Young Decay t-shirt under his usual open, red plaid button-down. His sage eyes meet mine, brows lifting expectantly when he extends the coffee to me again.
“Hi,” I manage, taking the hot bean water. “I didn’t realize anyone else was awake.”
He smoothes back his mustache and takes a sip of his own. “I like waking up before anyone else,” he says. “It helps me work through the shit that kept me awake all night.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t sleep,” I say, finally pressing my lips to the warm cup.
“Me, too.” He pauses for a beat, and the longer he sits there, the more wary I get. I know he’s itching to say something, and there’s a knot in my stomach telling me I’m not going to like it.
“What’s on your mind, Mads?” I ask.
“We’re going to have a chat in a few days,” he replies.
“If it’s about the attack, I’m handling it,” I tell him. “I have leads—”
“It isn’t about the attack.” He uncrosses his leg and leans up so that he’s level with me. “Not entirely. I’m not worried about the person who got to her. Seeing you, realizing some things… I know you have her. I know you’ll take care of it.”
I glance his way, my entire body on alert. “What’s this about, then?”
He leans sideways and grabs something from his back pocket. Something black. Something with sequins and studs and…
Fuck .
And when he sits it across my knee, I feel like the world just collapsed on my shoulders.
“That’s yours, right?” he asks, settling back in the chair.
“Where did you get that?” I ask.
“I saw some things that made me curious last night on my walk, so I took a look around your trailer,” he says.
“A bit invasive for a hunch, isn’t it?” I ask as I take another sip of coffee. “Did you also snoop through Kade and Liam’s things?”
He scoffs. “Maybe a little.”
I glance at the half-mask, the voice changer box inside it. “It’s just a mask. You have plenty of them.”
“That’s fair. We could talk about the rampage you went on last night instead,” he says with a shrug.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Breathe.
He doesn’t have anything.
Mads takes another sip of his coffee and sits back in his chair. “What makes you think Rad had something to do with all this? Why would he attack Bonnie?”
“Why do you think he’s one of my suspects?” I ask.
“Because you threw him into a wall and told him he had his revenge, to leave her alone. And then he asked if she knew. Which… honestly fucking adds up. All this time I thought you just had a crush. But it’s a lot more than that, isn’t it?”
Motherfucker.
I chew on the inside of my mouth and turn the cup in my hands. There’s no way for me to lie out of this without causing a scene, no way to call his bluff or even argue his point.
I’m still staring at the cup when I ask, “What exactly are you accusing me of, Maddox?”
Just say it.
Accuse me already.
Right now, I don’t know if I can fight back.
“You and I aren’t that different, Gem,” he says as his own trailer door opens, Andi coming into view on the threshold. She pauses to stretch and rub her arms, smiling at Zeb who’s just approaching from his trailer nearby.
“You and I will both do whatever it takes to keep them safe,” Mads goes on. “We get a visceral reaction to them being harmed… What it costs us… that part doesn’t matter.” He gives Andi a small smile, then leans over his knees and peers my way again.
I don’t know how to take the look in his eyes.
It isn’t rage or anger. It isn’t entirely sad.
Whatever it is though, it’s fucking terrifying.
“When are you going to tell her?” he asks.
“Tell her what?” I manage, though my voice is hardly audible.
Mads’ jaw tenses like he’s waiting for me to react in a more defiant manner.
“That you’re her. You’re her shadow.”
I feel my eyes flutter slightly when he finally says it… when he finally accuses me of the thing I’ve hid for nearly a decade.
I want to tell him he’s wrong, argue and claim that he’s obviously still in shock from the shooting, that there’s no way I could possibly be the person he’s claiming I am. I’m just Gemma. I’m looking for her stalker. I’m looking for her attacker. Obviously, I can’t be this person—
Yet when I open my mouth, nothing comes out.
I barely have the energy and willpower to keep myself upright, let alone get in a fight here with Mads, of all people.
Bonnie can’t know right now.
I can’t tell her today.
“Please don’t,” is all I can whisper.
Because I’ll get on my knees right here and beg him to keep it to himself if he needs me to.
I’ll do anything.
Please don’t tell her.
I glance sideways at him, feeling my jaw quiver, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. I’m already a fucking wreck. If he tells her…
“Maddox…”
However, Mads reaches over, takes the mask from my knee, and tucks it into my jacket pocket closest to him. “I’m not heartless enough to bring it up to her now. Not today. Not when she’s been through fucking hell the last twenty-four hours. I have a lot more questions for you, and this is by no means over… Still, I needed to say something.”
I shove a tear off my cheek. “Is this a—”
“Warning,” he says, finishing my sentence. His gaze shifts sideways to Andi approaching us. “Like I said…” He stands just as Andi reaches him and gives her a kiss on her temple. “We’ll talk,” he tells me.
Andi eyes him. “This looks way too serious for sunrise,” she teases him.
He smiles and sinks his arm around her waist, kissing her cheek this time. “Morning, beautiful,” he says to her.
I kind of hate how perfect they are.
But I also envy them immensely.
I want that with Bonnie more than anything.
Andi smiles softly and turns her attention to me. “How is she?”
“Ah… Passed out,” I say, fumbling with the cup. “I don’t really know much more. She didn’t say much last night.”
Andi nods. “I get that. Is it okay if we see her later?”
I push off the steps and glance behind me at the closed windows to the bedroom of the trailer. “You’re all her safe people. I would never block any of you from seeing her. She’s your friend.”
“Well, I just meant…” Andi pauses to sigh. “Actually, I don’t know what I meant. God, I hate this. I’m immediately treating her like she’s broken or something and not Bonnie , my friend. She’s my friend. Obviously I can see her later.” She sinks her head into her hand, and Mads squeezes her waist.
“She would flip me off and tell me to get a grip if she heard me right now,” Andi says, looking at Mads.
He chuckles. “Yeah. She would,” he agrees. He tugs on Andi’s waist. “Come on. Let’s go get breakfast and come back.”
Andi nods. “Do you want us to bring back anything for you?” she asks me.
I hold up the coffee Mads gave me. “Got my coffee,” I say, nodding at the bassist.
He pushes his arm around her shoulders and turns her around to leave, and I hate the look he gives me before they walk away.
Goddammit.
I’d rather him be yelling at me. I’d rather him rage, throw things, and scream at me. I’d rather him fight me and punch me in the face.
Not this. Not whatever that was.
That was more petrifying than any threat I’ve ever been given.
Zeb pauses to chat with Kade outside the security trailer, and I take the opportunity to get back inside, check on Bonnie, and get myself together.
Warning.
Warning.
Fuck .
I grab one of the pillows from the couch and kick it across the trailer, immediately regretting the action when my foot strikes the table. My knees hit the ground, and I slump backward onto my ass, bringing my knee into my chest so I can massage my bare foot.
When are you going to tell her?
I don’t know.
I don’t know how.
How do I say it without completely losing her?
I knew it would hurt when it came time to tell her, that it wouldn’t be easy. We’d fight, and I’d beg and plead and surrender anything she wanted if it meant her forgiveness.
I don’t think I ever thought I’d be in this deep with her when I had to tell her, though.
Before all this, I think I thought I was in love with her. I was obsessed, feral just to have her look at me.
However, nothing that I felt then comes close to what I feel for her now.
She’s my entire existence, and I know that’s a shit feeling to put on someone. But she is. I’m nothing more than a hit woman without her, a person wading through life one job at a time.
I never realized I might be so fucking far gone in love with her that telling her who I really am would rip me to shreds. That the reaction my body currently has to losing her would be more powerful than preserving it.
There’s a quick knock at the door before it opens, and I can’t scramble to my feet fast enough to beat Zeb bounding through the threshold.
“Oh yeah, you are still here. You good?” he asks upon seeing me on the ground.
“Yeah,” I say, getting to my feet. “All good.” I swipe the emotion off my face and give him a forced smile that he smirks at.
“You don’t have to lie,” he says. “I can’t imagine this is easy. Especially after…”
His voice trails, and I feel my eyes narrow. “After what?”
“Ah… Bonnie told me,” he says. “About you two, I mean.”
“Oh,” I manage.
“Oh,” he says, teasing me.
I stare at the ground as I grab the pillow I previously hurled across the room. “I don’t know how long she’ll be out. And I don’t want you or anyone to think that just because I’m here that you can’t… that I’m keeping her from you. I’m not. I’m—”
“Gem, if you were anywhere else and she was alone, I’d be on your fucking ass right now,” Zeb says, cutting me off. “I know it’s hard. But if you want to go shower, eat something, go on your morning run that I know you like to do, go. I got her.”
I glance back at Bonnie over my shoulder, heart constricting. “I don’t want her to think I left her.”
“Look, whatever this is—” he gestures to Bonnie and I with his hand “—it isn’t going to disappear because you went on a run. It’s Bon. She’d tell you to go fuck yourself and have a normal day rather than sitting around and waiting on her to get it together. She might even tell me to piss off, even if I know she shouldn’t be alone.”
“Yeah, no, she shouldn’t,” I say, agreeing with him. A heavy exhale leaves me, and I hang my head. “Okay. Um. Are you sure—”
“Yes. Get the fuck out of here. Go for a run, check in with Kade, get something to eat. Bring me back a meatball sub.”
I snort, and he grins.
“Go.”
“Yeah, okay. Alright, I’m going,” I say, making my way to the door. “Text me when she’s up?”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head. “No, I’m not doing that. If she’s up when you get back, great. But do what you need to do.”
I nod, finally surrendering entirely to his suggestion. “Meatball sub, huh?” I ask.
“Make sure they put onions, mushrooms, and jalapenos on it,” he says. “Orange soda.”
A quiet laugh leaves me. “Okay, Havoc,” I say, opening the door.
“Hey, Gem—”
I pause, one foot on the steps. His joking expression is softened as he glances at her sleeping figure, then back at me.
“Do you have any idea who did this?” he asks.
I’d tell him, except he doesn’t need to get mixed up in it.
“Yeah,” I admit, swallowing. “Yeah. I do. And I need you to trust me when I say I’m handling it. Me. No one else.”
He hesitates like he wants to say something, but nods instead.
I tap the doorway twice, look at her once more, then leave the trailer.