23. Ghost
The morning light is too bright. It cuts through the gap in the curtains like a blade, reminding me that the world didn’t stop turning just because I finally found my center.
I’m lying on my side, Angel tucked into the curve of my body.
Her skin is warm, smelling of the expensive hotel soap and the raw, musky scent of the woman I claimed a dozen times last night.
I don’t want to move. I don’t want to get out of this bed.
Leaving this room means the end of the bubble.
It means facing the music. It means riding back to Seaview and looking Doc in the eye—the man who raised her, the man who is going to want to take my head off for what I’ve done.
But as I watch the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of her shoulders, I know I’d do it all again.
A thousand times over. Being with her last night...
it was the rightest thing I’ve ever done.
For the first time in thirty-two years, the hollow ache in my chest disappeared.
I felt whole. I felt like I wasn’t just a collection of scars and leather.
But the foundation of us can’t be built on secrets. Not after what happened in London. If I want her to trust me with her ghosts, I have to give her mine. Even the ones that scream.
“Angel,” I whisper, my voice rough with the weight of what’s coming.
She stirs, a soft hum vibrating in her throat as she turns in my arms. Her eyes flutter open, green and clear, and she offers me a sleepy, beautiful smile that makes my heart swell and break all at once.
“Hey,” she murmurs, reaching up to stroke my jaw.
I catch her hand, kissing her palm before settling her so she’s facing me fully. The air in the room feels like it’s thickening, turning to lead. My walls are up—they’ve been up since I was a child—but for her, I have to tear them down. Piece by bloody piece.
“I need to tell you,” I say. My voice is steady, but I can feel the tremors starting deep in my bones. “About Onyx. About why my body... why I reacted the way I did.”
The sleepiness vanishes from her gaze, replaced by a quiet, focused gravity. She doesn’t speak; she just waits.
I swallow hard, looking at the space just above her head because if I look into her eyes, I might lose my nerve. “I… I’ve been sexually assaulted.”
The words feel like glass in my throat. I’ve never said them out loud.
“I don’t want to go into the details,” I rasps, my hands shaking now as they grip hers.
“But it did something to me. It broke the part of me that can handle a woman being in control. When you kissed me that night... when you pushed me back and took charge... my brain didn’t see you, Angel. It saw the past. It saw a version of me that was small and helpless. I need to be in control.
I need to be the one who dictates the pace, or I lose my fucking mind.”
I feel her hands flinch in mine, and the first sob breaks from her lips. She’s crying—hot, silent tears that track down her cheeks.
“Damien...” she chokes out. “I’m so sorry.”
“I thought I could bury it,” I continue, the words spilling out now, a confession I’ve been holding since I was a boy.
“I thought if I was big enough, strong enough, lethal enough, that no one could ever make me feel that small again. But you... you’re the only person who can get past the armor. And when you did, the monster was right there waiting for me.”
She’s shaking now, her grief for me filling the space between us. “Who?” she asks, her voice a fragile whisper. “Who did that to you?”
I close my eyes. Immediately, the images are there. The smell of cheap gin and weed. The sound of a trailer door clicking shut. The feeling of being pinned down by someone who was supposed to be my world.
“My mother,” I whisper. The word feels like a curse.
I feel her go rigid. I expect her to pull away. I expect the revulsion to set in—not for the act, but for me. I feel small. I feel like that ten-year-old boy hiding under the kitchen table, wishing I could disappear into the floorboards.
But Angel doesn’t pull away. She lunges forward, her arms wrapping around my neck with a strength that surprises me. She buries her face in my chest, her sobs turning into jagged, angry gasps.
“I’m so sorry,” she wails into my skin. “I’m so sorry I came on so strong. I’m sorry I made you relive that. I didn’t know, Damien. I would have never...”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, my voice breaking as I finally let my own tears fall. I wrap my arms around her, clinging to her like she’s the only thing keeping me from drifting away. “You didn’t know. You were just loving me.”
She pulls back just enough to look at me, her face flushed with a terrifying, protective rage. “I want to kill her,” she spits, her eyes flashing with a green fire. “I want to find her and I want to destroy her for what she did to you.”
A ghost of a smile touches my lips—dark and weary. “I already did.”
She freezes, her eyes widening.
“When I was sixteen,” I say, the memory as clear as the sunlight on the floor. “She came home late. She was drunk. She tried to... I finally stopped her. I didn’t plan it. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I snapped.”
I look at my hands—the hands that have taken so many lives since then.
“Bear grew up in the trailer next to mine. He heard the fight. He came over and found me sitting on the floor next to her. He didn’t even ask questions. He just grabbed a shovel and helped me bury her in the woods behind the park.”
Angel’s shock is visible, her mouth parting as she tries to process the image of two teenage boys disposing of a body in the dark.
“Nobody cared,” I shrug, the numbness returning for a moment.
“It was a trailer park in the middle of nowhere. A drunk woman goes missing, people just assume she hopped a bus and left. I lived in that trailer alone for a year before Bear and I hitched a ride to Seaview. We were seventeen when we started hanging around the clubhouse.
Stone didn’t ask about our past, and we didn’t offer it. I started prospecting the day I turned eighteen. Bear came with me because even though his story wasn’t as twisted as mine, his old man used to beat the life out of him every night. We were just two kids looking for a pack.”
Angel reaches out, her fingers trembling as she traces the scars on my arms that aren’t from the road. She looks at me with so much love, that the last of my walls finally crumbles into dust. She doesn’t look at me like a murderer or a victim.
“You’re not that boy anymore,” she whispers, leaning in to press a lingering kiss to my forehead. “And maybe we can fix each other.”
I pull her back into the pillows, the weight of the confession leaving me drained but lighter than I’ve been in my entire life. The ugly truth is out. She knows the worst parts of me, and she’s still here. She’s still holding me.
“I’d like that,” I say, the words finally feeling like they have enough room to breathe.
“I love you, Damien Mercer,” she says, her voice a steady vow.
We stay like that for another hour, the silence no longer heavy, but healing. The reality of Seaview and Doc is still waiting for us at the end of the 101, but I’m not afraid to face it. I have my wife. And I have a future that isn’t dictated by the ghosts of a trailer park.
“Let’s go home,” I say, sitting up and reaching for my boots.
“Yeah,” she says, a determined look on her face. “Let’s go home and tell my dad he’s a father-in-law.”
I chuckle, the sound finally feeling real. “God help us.”
I watch her move across the room, the sunlight catching the gold of her hair, and I know that whatever happens next, we’ll face it together. The Halos might be my family, but Angel is my soul. And for her, I’ll fight anyone.