42. BLAKE
BLAKE
“How’d it go, Romeo?”
Scarlett leaned against my kitchen counter like she owned the place, sipping water with an expression that said she’d been waiting for me. Perfect. Just what I needed.
“That well, huh?” She actually patted me on the chest as she passed by. The casual familiarity was jarring. Most people knew better than to touch me, but apparently, Scarlett hadn’t gotten that memo.
“I screwed everything up.” Clearly, I was more rattled than I’d thought, spewing this out to a woman I didn’t know.
“If it makes you feel any better,” she said, examining her nails with exaggerated casualness, “she said it was the best orgasm of her life.”
I leveled my best glare at her. The one that made my interns squirm. She just grinned wider.
“We are not having this conversation.” I pushed past her to the fridge, grabbing a beer. “I don’t know you well enough to have this conversation.”
“I don’t think so.” She plucked the beer from my hand and set it on the counter with all the authority of a kindergarten teacher confiscating contraband. “No drowning your sorrows until after we talk.”
“We’re not talking.”
“Agree to disagree. You need to talk to someone.”
“I have friends for that,” I said, grabbing my beer, holding her gaze, and taking a long pull.
“Ryker.” She cocked her head. “You and I both know you can’t talk to him about this.”
I ran a hand over my face. I didn’t want to tell Jace, Axel, or Knox either. They could tell Ryker. And, hell, Knox was in prison. Let me show up with my little problems in life when the guy was fighting for his.
“I’ve never seen Tessa this angry,” I admitted.
“Exactly.” Scarlett’s eyes sparkled with something that looked dangerously like insight. “She’s angry because she has feelings, and when Tessa doesn’t want to have feelings, she lashes out. Like a tiny, angry Chihuahua.”
The mental image of Tessa as an angry Chihuahua nearly made me smile.
“I don’t want it to be like this between us,” I admitted. “I want things to go back to normal.”
“Which normal?” She cocked her head. “The one where you both pretend you don’t have feelings for each other? Because I gotta tell you, that ship has sailed, capsized, and is currently hanging out with the Titanic .”
“I don’t know you well enough?—”
“To have this conversation. Yes, you mentioned that.” She waved away my protest like an annoying fly. “And yet here you are, looking like someone kicked your puppy, which means you’re terrified of losing Tessa.”
Damn it. She was right. I hated that she was right.
“Can I give you some advice?”
“No, I’m good.” I went to take another sip, but this woman, this fucking woman, snatched it out of my hand.
“Lucky for you, I’m feeling generous.” She hopped up onto my counter—actually hopped up onto my counter like it was a chair—and settled in like she was preparing to dispense wisdom.
“You have exactly one get-out-of-jail-free card that’ll make this all better.
It’ll be like magic pixie dust that erases everything that happened. ”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “And what, pray tell, is that?”
“The truth.” All the playfulness dropped from her voice.
“Tessa’s so angry and hurt right now that I don’t know if she’ll even bother asking you why.
She’s too busy being all I am woman, hear me roar .
But she doesn’t know why you push everyone away.
Maybe if she did, it would heal that scab over her heart that you just created. ”
“I didn’t create—” My words died as the truth of them hit.
Damn it. I had created that. I had hurt Tessa, the last person I ever wanted to hurt.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“Oh, I know.” Her voice was gentler now.
“How could you possibly know that?”
“You know how, sometimes, two people can be in a tornado and not see things clearly, but somebody outside the tornado can see it plain as day?”
“Is this the part where you tell me you’re the tornado whisperer?”
“This is the part where I tell you it’s obvious you’re in love with each other.”
The words shattered my ribs. “We can never be together.”
For several reasons, not the least of which was this: The darkness I’d feared was still inside me hadn’t just surfaced; it had found fertile ground and was spreading its roots through my veins like poison.
The part of me that had always been capable of violence, the part I’d tried to bury in sterile hospital halls and saving lives, now thirsted for blood. His blood. The man who’d hurt Tessa.
Some might call that romantic, this urge to hunt down her attacker.
But they didn’t appreciate the hunger that came with it, the way I caught myself imagining exactly how I’d make him suffer, planning it out with the same methodical precision I used in the ER.
They couldn’t see how my hands itched to hurt him, how I looked forward to it with a pleasure that should have sickened me.
I’d killed once before. I knew with bone-deep certainty I’d do it again, and this time, I’d enjoy every second of it. That wasn’t protection or justice. It was darkness, wearing the mask of vengeance. And Tessa deserved better than a man who dreamed of blood.
In response to my declaration that Tessa and I could never be together, Scarlett just shrugged, completely unfazed by what should have been a conversation ender.
“Well then, if happily ever after is off the table, I guess you have two choices with Tessa.” She slid off the counter and headed for the hallway, then turned back with a knowing look that made me wonder if she could see right through me.
“Let this be the cancer that cuts her out of your life completely or be honest with her and save your friendship.”
She paused. “Oh, and, Blake? Fair warning: if you choose option one, I will personally make sure every coffee shop in a ten-block radius knows to give you decaf for the rest of your life.”
After watching her disappear down the hall, her words echoing in my eardrums, I looked down at my bruised knuckles, wishing they’d made a satisfying crunch against that bastard’s jaw. The pain was a reminder of how far I’d already crossed my own lines when it came to her.
Maybe Scarlett was right. Maybe the truth was the only way forward.
But the truth could destroy us both.