35. Wolfe Counting To Ten
thirty-five
Wolfe: Counting To Ten
Threx eyed me from the alleyway shadows. The slick of his boot pressed into the brick, while the stench of gasoline lingered on his fingers. Strange how these garbage-filled, wet streets felt more like home than anywhere else.
I froze, my throat burning as Daphne’s name pulsed on the screen.
“If at any point this becomes too much for her,” Threx warned, keeping his voice muted and his hands buried in his pockets as he turned toward me. “This conversation is over.”
I nodded and swallowed hard, the taste of vomit still clinging to my gums.
“Hey,” I answered, pulling the camera up and angling it toward my face so she could see me.
Daphne stilled for a minute, glancing down as if to check who she had called. I searched for a hint of disappointment in the lines of her face, but there was none. She only smiled at me, warm and bright like she always did. Because in this moment, she was still mine.
“Hey, right back,” she smirked, falling deep into my eyes. “Is Thay okay?”
I loved that she asked this first. Loved that she thought I’d ever cry for him.
“Asshole as always,” I nodded. “He’s taking a piss.”
“I miss you,” she leaned forward as if she were about to kiss me, and nudged the phone with her nose.
I fucking adored that perfect little scrunch. I could kiss it forever, and maybe one day, I would.
“Oh yeah? How much?” I asked out of reflex, the question hitting me square in the gut.
Daphne paused, lips tilting, twisting my heart before she muttered, “Ten.”
Ten.
She said ten.
Fucking ten.
I broke.
Nathem had warned it would come quietly, and it did. Not in her body or her soul, but in the fact she loved me… anyway. Just like Threx had fucking said. The universe might have thrown them together, but I was her choice, which was better. Which made what I was about to do even more necessary.
I closed my eyes, hitting the alley wall, allowing the heaviness of her words to drag me down on my ass. I did not care that I was sitting in filth, crying for the first time I could remember.
Fucking hell, I did not know how to do this.
“Wolfe?” she snapped, forcing me to her eyes. “What is going on? Are you okay?”
I searched her face for answers, all four walls of the universe tilting their heads to watch me die.
“No, babe. I’m not,” I attempted a half-smile, despite the salt filling my mouth. “I am about to tell you something you are not going to like, but I need you to listen.”
Daphne’s breath faltered, fear and dread fighting for space in her chest as she searched me.
“It turns out the shit with Lyla was more complicated than we thought, and I have a meeting tomorrow that may not go very well.”
“What do you mean?” her voice cracked, the center of everything splitting in two.
“They want my club, Daph, and they want you.” We stared at each other. “But the thing is, I will not let them have either, whatever the cost.”
“Stop,” she puffed her cheeks, shaking her head at me, thinking it would be enough.
Damn, she was so goddamn pretty.
“You’ve got this, and you will fix it, just like you always do.”
“This isn’t childbirth, Daphne. This is broken people playing broken games. How we fix things down here is not the same.”
Daphne paled, the color in her cheeks going hollow.
“I watched Threx give you his soul,” my voice slipping when a sob ripped through me. “This is my ten. I refuse to let them have you. I won’t let them take me, either.”
“Wolfe. Stop,” she pleaded, making no attempt to wipe the tears from her eyes.
“I remember the day you stumbled into my bedroom for the first time in Threx’s oversized shirt and a pair of socks pulled up to your knees. I was so jealous of him! Even before I knew I was.”
“Please,” she slumped, but the words kept tumbling out.
“You are so goddamn perfect.”
“I am not,” she argued, shaking her head.
“Yes, you are, Daphne. From the way you close your eyes when you eat toaster waffles to the poor choices you sometimes make, everything about you is something I want to kiss.”
“Wolfe. Why are you doing this?”
“Because I used to keep you safe, and now I am holding you hostage.”
“What does that even mean?” she asked, digging her nails into the side of her face.
“It means you became a player on the board, Daphne. Even a hug becomes a prison if you hold on too long. And I am so fucking sorry, I just didn’t want to let you go.”
“You are not making any sense,” she cried, wiping her eyes and leaning forward.
“It will. But I need you to let me have this.”
“Wolfe,” she buried her face in her hands. “Please stop.”
But I couldn’t. Tomorrow would come whether she wanted it to or not.
“So, I need you to keep me,” my voice shivered, the clouds in my eyes making everything rain. “And I need you… to let me… let you… go.”
“Let me go?” she scoffed. “You are a fucking liar,” she shook her head, glaring at me with a rogue defiance that could burn worlds. “I know what you are doing, and they will never believe you.”
There was nothing Daphne hated more than her safety. It was the reason Threx had denied her for so long, and here I was playing the same card but in a different color.
“You just married Threx. They know him, and they won’t argue with me when I say you chose.”
“But I didn’t!” she sobbed through the cracks.
Fuck, this hurts. Not just under my chest, but in my skull. In my breath. In my goddamn bones.
Thay shifted uncomfortably, his instincts to protect her firing on all cylinders.
“You are right, pretty girl. I did.” I paused, wishing I could hold her. Put her inside me and kiss her all better the way she needed me to. But I couldn’t get to her. Not this time, and she was safer because of it. That she would be in Maine tomorrow meant that none of this could touch her.
“I love you,” I said in a whisper, watching her eyes brighten just enough. “You are the only one I have ever said that to, and the only person I ever will.”
“Yeah?” she bit her lip. “Well, I fucking hate you. You are a fucking asshole!”
I laughed, wiping my eyes.
“You don’t get to die tomorrow,” she ordered. “And I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing, but don’t.”
“I am way too valuable to die, beautiful,” I cleared my throat of the lie. “And there are fates worse than death.” That part was true.
“I don’t care what you say, I am still yours. Put Thay on. He will stop this shit.”
“But if a gun is at your head and they ask who you’re loyal to,” I leaned forward into the frame. “You don’t say both. You say Threx. And you use that name, do you fucking understand me?”
Her breath hesitated, the silence storming between us.
“Say yes, Daphne.”
She blinked rapidly, raking at the sides of her skull in irritation while she tried to process my words.
“Say it.”
“Yes… Daphne,” she mouthed, rolling her eyes.
“Now say the other thing, too!”
She glared, arching a brow at me as if she wanted to light me on fire, and by all the fucking stars that kept her, I wish she had. Rinley had it so damn easy; all he had to do was make stupid choices and burn.
“No!” She dug her heels in, and I thought for a moment she might punch through the goddamn phone.
“Daphne.”
“No fucking way,” she said again, this time looking everywhere but my face.
God, I loved her. Stupidly. Succinctly. With everything I was, but most importantly with the pieces of me I wasn’t.
“Please?” I rasped, my voice falling before her in surrender. “Please say it.”
I understood why she refused: no one wants to attend their own funeral. But I needed to hear the words.
“You said you were going to keep me! Put your name next to Thay’s. That next time you weren’t going to watch.”
My throat quivered because I meant every word.
“Please, Daph?” I asked again, the shiver in my body dulling to a dissociative lull.
Threx didn’t move; his broad shoulders and crashing expression seemed stuck on his face as he watched me from across the alley.
“Wolfe.” She touched the screen, her fingers dripping off the glass. “I love you, too… with my whole damn heart.”
And there it was, all the reasons a person would ever need to become the monster. I did not know what tomorrow would bring, but I was leaving my humanity with the only person I trusted… inside her love, where I would always be Wolfe, and that would be enough.
“Got to go, beautiful,” I tried to smile, but I don’t think it landed. She only blinked at me when I hung up the phone.
In deafening silence, I slid the phone onto the pavement and buried my face in my knees.
It had always been so easy to talk myself through the act of breathing, but my lungs didn’t contract.
It felt like forever before the sounds of Threx’s boots stopped in front of me, his shadow devouring what bit of light there was.
“Silas,” he called me, hunching down to pick up his phone. I did not know what he was about to say, but nothing prepared me for the words that came next. “Thank you.”
I looked up over my arms at a man, not a monster. It was Thayor. That little fucking kid who once climbed through Daphne’s window to save our girl.
He offered me his hand, respect, and something else twinkling in his eyes. I looked at the blood-speckled five-pointed weapon, pushing gravity back into my throat before I allowed him to haul me upright.
A truce.
An agreement.
“Does it always feel this way?” I asked, shoving my hands into my pockets.
Threx laughed, turning in the dark toward the light on the street.
“Nah,” we took a step. “It gets so much fucking worse.”
My phone buzzed, and I looked down, expecting to see Daphne’s name light up the screen, but it wasn’t.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Marianne is busy tomorrow. She wants to have dinner tonight.”
I paused on the street, inhaling the grime into my lungs. It was nearly midnight.
Threx was right.
So much fucking worse.