Chapter 23
Ami
I wanted to trust Gage. I’d given him everything. All of my body. Willingly. I’d done things with him that I never thought I’d be able to do and share with another person.
I just couldn’t let it lie. I needed to know what he’d done to my attacker. And now I know, I’m still trying to come to terms with what it means for us. For our future.
It drives me insane that Gage can stumble from bed, his hair mussed in all directions, flat on one side, ridiculous on the other, knotted in the middle, rubbing sleep from his eyes, in nothing but his jeans, and my heart goes absolutely wild.
I don’t want to be affected. I don’t want my heart to start knocking all funny or my stomach to knit itself in knots. I hate that my palms are sweating and areas which I refuse to think about are throbbing wildly. I’m still sore from what we did only a few hours ago.
“You borrow those clothes from your sister?” Gage asks as he rubs his hand at the back of his neck, like he’s slept funny and he needs to massage out the kinks.
I wish I didn’t notice. I wish that my fingers didn’t ache to take the place of his and soothe the tension away. I wish that I didn’t want to hear him sigh in satisfaction and melt against me, all his strength at the mercy of my hands, for me to use as I wish.
I shouldn’t want anything to do with him. Especially after I found out that he lied. It seems that our whole relationship has been based on lies or duty. Never any space for us.
It was never really our relationship at all.
“Nope.” I grip the papers in my lap a little tighter, using them to occupy my hands. “Went home and changed and came back.”
“Why would you do that? You could have just borrowed a t-shirt. Or thrown your clothes in the dryer.” He drops his hand back to his side. “Or stayed in bed.”
“With you?”
“Yeah. With me. Is it really such bad option?” His eyes drop to the divorce papers in my lap. “I guess it is, since I see that you drove all the way home and back. Must have grabbed them on the way.”
“I did.”
“And then you came back?”
I tilt my chin up and force my voice not to come out wobbly and wrong. “Yes. Because I need you to sign them.”
I watch as he blinks. His face hardens, giving little away.
I hate that shuttered off look. I hate that he’s closing me out.
Most of all, I hate that I hate it. I don’t want to care.
This was never supposed to be about me caring.
About me doing any of the things we’ve done.
About me falling so fast and so hard and so helplessly into something I don’t even understand.
Gage crosses his arms over his chest, so that his biceps bulge and his abs zip up even tighter than they are already. “I guess we’ve come full circle then.”
I swallow hard, past the dryness in my mouth. I have to tell him. I have to tell him why I’m here. As I drove for hours, I planned what I was going to say. I rehearsed it over and over again. Tried to find the right words.
“After you fell asleep, I thought about going to see one of my sisters. I needed to talk, get my head straight about some things. It wasn’t just you I cut off when I left Helena, I left my family too. I don’t know. I just… I made it halfway to Leena’s and I pulled over. I just…”
“You couldn’t trust me.”
“Leena gave me some numbers earlier. When I couldn’t find you. When I thought you’d gone off and done something terrible. I had a number I never thought I’d use. I know he went with you. That he was the reason you found him so quickly. I had to know. I—”
“Couldn’t trust that I told you the truth. You thought I’d killed him?”
“I was worried!” I rip my head up so fast that my neck aches.
The pain spreads down my spine and straight into my heart at his accusatory tone.
“And apparently, I was right to worry, and to question, because you didn’t just rough him up.
You tattooed rapist on his damn forehead.
That’s not nothing! That’s not roughing someone up!
That’s extremely specific. And then you…
you cut off the tips of his fingers! What the hell were you thinking?
If he finds out who you are, he could press charges.
You could go to jail! This is exactly why I didn’t want you interfering! ”
Gage’s face changes, the storm sweeping over his features so fast that I barely see the clouds coming before I’m thrust right into the heart of it. He looks so hurt.
“I did it for you! For every other woman out there! So that he could never touch another one of them. Never hurt anyone. So that every single person knows who and what he is. No more hiding. No more harming. No more fucking taking something that doesn’t belong to him, that was never given freely.
He’s a sick bastard who was never gonna get justice because his victims lived in shame and terror. ”
The bottom of my world drops out. “Victims?”
“He did it four different times, Ami. He told me. I fucking made him confess, and I knew he wasn’t lying at that point. Four women. Four lives he’s ruined.”
My head swims as the world tilts sideways around me. My stomach lurches and bile splashes up the back of my throat.
“If I- if I had… if I’d gone to the police… to the hospital… told them what happened maybe it wouldn’t have happened to anyone else.” I keep my eyes squeezed tight shut, unable to look at Gage, but I hear him. His words are soft and blanket me in ways that I don’t deserve.
“You don’t know that. And you can’t blame yourself.
You lived for years with this, Ami. A secret that could have destroyed you.
He took more than just your body. He took your future.
He took years from you. He changed you in ways that you’ll always be changed.
Marked you physically and in every other way.
You can’t blame yourself for making the choices you did.
Yes, maybe you could have stopped him. Maybe not.
Maybe he would have got away with it. Maybe he would have got a slap on the wrist or gone to jail for a year and got out and done it again.
Who fucking knows. What you do know for sure, is that one of your family members, maybe more, would have gone away for murder.
That’s a life sentence. It was your family’s lives, or his.
You made the only choice you could have. ”
“That’s not true I could have gone to the police and maybe they could have got to him before… before…”
“Your brothers? Your father? Doubtful. They would have got him sooner or later. I believe that’s true, given that I know a little about them.
Viking can be brutal when he wants to be.
Your brothers are no better. I’m glad they’re a second chapter of The Riders, and not our enemies.
There’s a reason Steel agreed to the truce between us.
To the crazy marriages your father asked for. ”
“But those women… I could have stopped it. I could have… I can’t… they suffered, like I did.”
“Yes. Yes, they did, and neither of us can change that, but what I did ensures that he won’t do it again. It was justice, the only justice I could give you. And them. You know as well as I do that the cops would do nothing.”
My hands shake so violently that the papers on my knees rustle loudly.
I want to still them. To bury them in the folds of my dress, but I can’t.
I can’t move. I feel paralyzed. I can’t even begin to fathom the horror.
Three other people suffered. They suffered because I made the wrong decision.
Or did I? What could I have done? Condemn one of my brothers or father to languish in prison for the rest of their lives, just to avenge my honor?
I know Gage is right. The bastard would have got off.
Even if he went to jail, he would have got out eventually and my brothers, or my dad, would have been waiting.
He probably would have hired a smooth lawyer and got a year or two, or community service or something ridiculous. I don’t know it for a fact.
“Ami…”
I start when Gage’s hand, warm and firm, closes over my own. “You can’t blame yourself. He’s taken enough from you. You can’t change the past. You can’t change any of it. All you can do is move forward.”
My eyes snap open and I stare at the man kneeling in front of me.
His face is pale, his mouth a thin, hard line.
His eyes are obsidians swimming with rage and sorrow.
This man, this is the man who has given me so much.
He’s tried to do everything he could to give me back everything that was taken from me.
He tried to undo the pain. The years of rage and hurt and terror. He did the only thing he could.
“It’s not what you did that I’m angry at,” I confess, even if it makes me look like a monster.
Thinking about that bastard being punished for what he did, being marked, being labelled…
it eases my chest and sets me free, breaking the final chains binding my heart.
“Even if it makes me a terrible person, I’m glad that you did it.
I didn’t want you to. I didn’t ask you to.
I’m terrified of what it could mean for you- if he ever… ”
“Presses charges? He won’t, Ami. With the word, rapist, tattooed across his face, you don’t think the cops would be more than a little suspicious?
It would come out. All of it. He’d be found guilty now.
I made sure he won’t ever do it again. He knows that I’d be coming after him if he ever tries to surface.
No, he’s going underground. He’s not going to be after me or you or anyone else.
He’s lucky I didn’t put him there. The only thing that stopped me was you.
I knew you wouldn’t want it. I knew you’d be angry with me.
I knew it would be like victimizing you all over again, not giving you a choice.
So I did the only thing that I could think of doing. I made him stop.”