CHAPTER TEN
WARD
The body wasn’t half as heavy when another man helped me lift the unwanted weight. We weren’t as quiet as I wanted, however.
“Your knees giving you grief?” I asked the other black masked man as he hefted the wrapped package into the trunk of the car that belonged to neither of us. “Massage should help with that.”
“Thanks, Coach.” The balaclava did little to muffle Solace’s frustration. “This used to be a helluva lot easier before my injury. Call Valentine, or break in your new boy, next time, alright?”
“Knox?” I shook my head and tossed the legs into the owner’s own boot, and closed the lip, noting the peeling paint. “Hell, no. That kid talks twice as much as Shannon, and has Hux’s moral compass. He’d be a fucking nightmare.”
“Point.” Solace shook his head. “Where do you want me to take him?”
“I’ll drive.”
“Nah, go back to your girl. Lewis and I are gonna take the scenic route to his final destination. You just gonna tell me the where, and it’s done.”
I frowned. “Won’t Hallie want you for the night?”
It felt wrong, taking him away from her when this was my job. My duty, when the little shit of an intern had nearly killed my wife. Left her scared because he’d become obsessed with the woman I loved. I’d missed that while I was blinded with a little obsession of my own.
Solace shrugged. “I’ll see her after. We’l make up for the time apart." His eyes glittered, and I had no doubt of his intention.
“If you’re sure.” I left the offer between us, but I wanted to be back with Sia, and if he would take the project on…
I’d take the extra time with my girl. I’d given too many years away with her as it was.
“I’ve got this,” Solace repeated. “Go. Take her home as soon as they’ll let you.”
I nodded. “I appreciate this.”
“Give my knees a glowing motherfucking report.”
“Will do.” I watched him pull away, and prayed that Solace would do a good job of keeping Lewis’s orange hair hidden.
In the end, that hair was what sank him.
Sia didn’t keep cats, and neither of us took lovers.
Thank fuck, or Solance and I would have a collection of baggies to dispose of.
She didn’t collect stuffies either. But Hux had a cop friend, and he ran an analysis on the hairs found in her apartment kicked beneath her bed.
Out of the way.
Missed.
But not by us.
After the police went through and cleared her townhouse, we did our own search, determined to turn up the sort of evidence that didn’t need a judge or a jury to convict.
We found what we were looking for. The incontrovertible proof that another man stood over my wife and hurt her.
We had or who.
And after we talked to Lewis, we even had our why.
The sickening part? It led back to our strange relationship.
It seemed that it wasn’t only our friends who caught on to the focus of our anniversary.
Lewis twigged pretty fast who we were to each other.
Maybe it was coming into a new workplace, meeting fresh people, new places.
Maybe it was putting all those people together as one work entity.
Maybe he was always going to obsess over her.
I should have realised she never meant me when she talked about the presents. I never picked tacky shit, only things I thought she’d want.
And every year, Sia threw a few out. Things I knew she wanted to keep. It was a part of our ritual. I chose expensive, ostentatious gifts. Crazy, out there presents, and she opted to throw some back in my face, tossing them right in front of me, just as she had this year.
Only I never bought her two of the same box, or even similar boxes, like the ones she threw out near the AV room.
Or the cheap crap she whined about my gifting her.
Lewis jumped on that bandwagon fast, doubling down on my little habit. And it wasn’t the only one.
He had us all figured out, from the love bombing to the stalking side. The only part he didn’t have down, thank fuck, was the endgame.
Instead of taking the pretty offering Sia presented on her bedroom floor when he walked in two full hours and change ahead of me that night, Lewis opted to carve my wife up with a kitchen knife instead of fucking her.
Ruin over rape.
His voice still bounced about the inside of my skull, justifying his reasons while I did the job that he couldn’t.
“She was just there, waiting. And you weren’t.” Desperate reasoning lit his eyes with the sort of fervor that fuels an obsessed man’s heart.
The darkness I knew well.
“Just waiting.” I nodded, gliding my fingers along the blade that he used to carve her flesh open with.
“Exactly.” He smiled, pleased that I got it while Solace twisted his plump little arms behind his back. He still hadn’t registered his predicament. Or maybe he had, and this was his brain’s way of shutting down.
I didn’t much care.
“Thanksgiving turkey. Overdressed,” Solace muttered, yanking at the younger man’s collar. “You’re doing the honors.”
“It’ll be messy either way.”
Awareness crept into Lewis’s eyes. “She was there. She was waiting!”
I smiled and pressed the blade to a soft part of his anatomy. “But that wasn’t your home, any more than it was mine. Not any more. Her space, kid. And you didn’t have an invitation.”
He fell to his knees a few moments later, no longer needing Solace’s assistance to prevent the sounds that gurgled from his mouth.
“Squishy.” Solace made a face. “He wasn’t a team player.”
“Jokes. At least he fell on the plastic.”
Removing him saved her, but the ease that he’d found and used her in his way sickened me.
When I called her after the game ended, she was minutes away from bleeding out into the carpet.
I cradled her, my shirt pressed into her wounds, waiting for the ambulance to arrive to tend to her unconscious form.
No matter what I wanted, this couldn't happen again.
Tonight was the first time I’d left, four days later. She seemed safe, for now. But she wouldn’t always be that way if we continued on the way we were. Breaking my vow of touching her was the beginning of a new habit. One I couldn’t continue.
I owed Solace several. Bad knees and all.
He peeled away in Lewis’s rust bucket of a car, and I headed back toward the hospital to sweet talk a doctor who hated me into letting her release my wife.
***
Sia’s warmth in my arms was the most beautiful luxury of my life.
I savored every second, nuzzling her hair as I kicked her door in the moment I worked the key, and then shut again.
Every time she offered me help, I refused it, making sure her hands stayed exactly where I wanted them—knotted in my shirt, over my heart.
“Don’t you move, Sia.” I kissed her temple again.
“No chance,” she murmured, drowsy as fuck with the remnants of the hospital’s drugs still in her system. She had weeks of the stuff left to keep her comfortable while she healed, but heal, she would. None of the damage Lewis did on the outside was permanent.
“Where do you want to be today?” I paused in the middle of the living area. “I can put you in your bed with a book, on the sofa for steaming, or…” I shrugged, turning her in a semi circle for choices.
She looked up at me and winced when moving her neck tugged at the glue and internal stitches holding her inside bits together. Yeah, there was plenty of other damage done, and the mental stuff wouldn't disappear any time soon.
“You’re not staying?” Sia’s lips turned down, her eyes filling with tears. “I just hoped—”
“I have to go to work,” I said softly. “I promised you wouldn’t be alone, though. Hallie?”
Hallie walked through the kitchen doors.
Sia glared at me. “I love you, Hallie, but you are not the same,” she said without looking at my assistant and her friend.
“What?” Hallie said, chowing down on toast. “I can puff up the pecs. Also, you’re out of avocados. But we have a present for you.”
She received a glare from me, too.
“Nope.” Hallie shook her head, defiant. “The present is from both of us. Because I trained him.”
“You, what?” Sia’s head whipped around and she moaned.
“Easy.” I cradled her to my heart. Fuck, this was gonna hurt.
“Who? What did you do, Ward?” Her nails dug into my arm.
“I got you Hansen.” Fluff brushed my ankles.
At Hallie’s nod, I placed Sia carefully on the sofa, and crouched before her, reaching out. The bundle of fluff walked into my palm. The perfect size. I picked Hansen up and deposited him on Sia’s lap.
“You got me a kitten?” Tears cascaded over her cheeks as she gently tugged him into her chest, over her heart.
Mine broke.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” I murmured, stroking the back of her hand.
“I’m happy. Confused happy,” she whispered. “How will I…?”
“There’s kitty feed in the kitchen. One of us will be around to help out whenever you need.
Here’s his log book. You can learn all about him.
” Hallie sent me a look over her toast. “He’s six weeks old, loves biscuits, even though he shouldn’t have too many, and likes climbing.
Everything. So don’t leave your coffee mug on things.
I know you can walk, but take it easy, okay?
He goes to the toilet with you. Not with, with you?
But he comes along for the trip. His kitty litter is… ”
I leaned down and pressed a kiss to Sia’s cheek. “Love you,” I murmured, soft enough to be lost beneath the tiny cat’s purrs.
Her breath hitched. She heard me. I rested my forehead against her temple, seeing one last moment of warmth with my wife.
Then I left.