Chapter Twenty-Six
Savage
I don’t know how long I wait for Micah to come home from work. I’ve spent a lot of my life in a mental state where time becomes a little abstract, and this is definitely one of those times.
At least I’ve showered off all the blood, unlike the last time I came home like this. The bruising on my face is even more obvious now that I’m clean, but he’ll understand as soon as I tell him I saw Patrick today.
Eventually, the door cracks open and my name rings through the apartment. It immediately settles some of my nerves, but that only makes me feel guilty as hell. Why should I get to be soothed by Micah’s presence when I couldn’t even stand up for him?
I’ve never stood up for him. Not really. The only way I’ve protected him is by committing violence or accepting it. All the times I’ve had the chance to actually tell Father to shove his hateful opinions or make it clear that Micah will be hurt over my rotten corpse, I freeze.
Because that man still has more power over me than Micah does.
Because I let him.
Of all the things I hate myself for, I think that’s the one that I hate the most.
“Tadhg, what the fuck?”
He must have seen my face. I look up from where I’m sitting on the couch, trying my best to blink the world back into focus.
“It’s okay, Bambi. It’s just bruises.”
“Yeah, but shit.”
He rushes over to me, throwing his keys somewhere in the process before perching next to me on the couch. Micah grabs my face, still with the tenderness he’s come to always touch me with, but also with that clinical efficiency that tells me he’s still in work mode and I’m not exactly helping him relax.
My face is tilted this way and that as he examines me, stopping occasionally to prod my bruises with his fingers. It stings, but I take the pain because I definitely fucking deserve it.
I wait for the questions to come, but they don’t. The first thing he says after a long silence is, “Anywhere else?”
Nodding, I take off my shirt to show him. There’s no point in hiding it from him.
He makes a grumbling noise when he sees the bruising over my ribs that would be adorable under any other circumstances, then continues his exam there too. More poking and prodding. Moving my arms and checking my range of motion. At some point he pulls the stethoscope off from around his neck to listen to my lungs, muttering under his breath that if I have a punctured lung, he’ll kill me himself first.
When he’s finally, finally satisfied that I’m not dying he sits back to look at me, although his hand continues to rest on my knee. It’s a single point of contact, but I let it tether me to the earth. It’s selfish, but I need it.
“Tell me what happened. At least as much of it as you can,” he says. His eyes are round and wide with some unreadable emotion, and I immediately feel yet more guilty that I’m making him feel this way.
“What happened?” I ask. Do you mean before or after I—a grown-ass man—let my father beat the shit out of me? “It was Patrick. You know how he gets.”
Micah sighs, and it seems to sink his entire bodyweight into the couch.
“I’m sorry. Was it about us?”
“No,” I lie. At least, it’s not about the part of us he’s asking about. “It was bullshit work stuff. He just lost his temper, and I didn’t want to make it worse.”
“That’s it?”
He looks so open. So willing to take me as I am. I almost want to tell him the truth. The whole truth about what I did. I can’t, though. He asked me for one fucking thing, and I couldn’t even give him that.
Instead of pushing me to answer him, Micah takes my silence as an answer in itself.
With more patience than I knew he had in him, Micah helps pull me up and get me ready for bed. It’s late. Sometime in the middle of the night, I think. At some point he shoves some toast at me, which I eat mechanically. Then water, which I drink.
By the time I’m in bed with him curled around me like a protective buffer between me and the world, I can practically feel his concern vibrating off him. There’s nothing I can do about it, though.
I can’t tell him what I did. I can’t tell him what’s going to happen to us. And I can’t even pretend that everything is going to be okay.
Eamon doesn’t even turn around when I shimmy open the lock and let myself into the motel room I finally found him in. He’s at the small Formica table next to the A/C unit, his gun spread out in front of him in pieces while he picks up each part to clean it.
This isn’t a dream. Not exactly. I don’t think I’m asleep enough for it to be a dream, because the details are all too sharp. It’s just a fresh, raw memory playing itself in my mind over and over, refusing to let me sink any deeper than this into rest.
“It took you long enough, pet. I was beginning to think I’d have to come out and catch you again. The clock is ticking until I put your little bartender buddy in the ground, remember.”
Ah. So, he’s expecting Tobias back. That’s why he’s not on his guard.
Lucky me.
There’s only six feet or so between us, and I cover the distance quickly and silently. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this, and it feels like so much of me has changed since then that even my cells have probably shifted in how they function.
Apparently, I was wrong. Nothing’s changed. My body takes over, remembering exactly what to do. Even though I’m still stiff from my own beating. Colm had picked me up and cleaned me with his sad, sympathetic eyes and surprisingly tender hands, and then I was ready to do my job.
Eamon still doesn’t know what’s happening when I grab the back of his skull with my hands and smash it into the table. It comes up bloody, because the trigger assembly was right under his face and cut straight through the skin of his forehead.
He normally looks slick. He’s kind of pretty, but it never fits with the reptilian look in his eyes. Now, with blood rushing down over his nose and mouth, it looks more like his external self matches his internal existence.
I like it.
He’s shocked for a few moments, but his training kicks in just like mine would and has him reaching for whatever other weapon he has tucked in his pants. I don’t give him the chance, though. I’m operating on muscle memory. There’s no hesitation in me right now. I’m a relentless, violent machine.
I kick the chair legs out from under him, sending him tumbling to the ground, and immediately step on his right wrist. The toe of my work boot grinds into his forearm hard, and I take great satisfaction in the cracking, popping sounds that I hear right before he screams.
Conveniently, he chose the best possible motel for no one giving a fuck if they hear screaming, as well as the room farthest from the office. Thanks for the assist, Eamon.
I still don’t want to give him any time to regroup, because I’ve seen guys fight through more injuries than this. He’s heaving raspy breaths while blood fills his mouth, but he’s not down for the count. There’s a four-inch Gerber in the side pocket of my pants.
As soon as I have it in my hand, I sink the blade into his left knee. From the side in, right in the little declivity behind the kneecap that gives me the perfect, soft entry point. He doesn’t scream this time, which irritates me. I give the knife a little wiggle, seeing what I can stir up inside the joint. That pulls a much more satisfying noise out of his lying, scheming mouth.
Now that I know he’s at least not running anywhere, I right the chair and then haul his quivering body into it. He slumps to the side, but when I try to pull him back up, he lunges at me with his good hand.
Asshole.
I slap him across the face. Not gently, like my father did to me, but hard enough to disorient him. I really don’t have the energy to tie him up, but I also don’t want to play catfight with him all night, either.
I need him to answer my questions, and then I need him dead.
“Tell me about the contract,” I hiss.
Eamon blinks at me, blood running in his eyes. I give him a minute to get his bearings again, and I can tell when he really comes back to himself because the motherfucker grins.
“What contract?”
“The contract on me. The Aryan Brotherhood coming for me. Is it real? Did you make it up? Tell me the truth or I’ll take your other kneecap.”
Of course, Eamon has to be as obnoxious as possible, right up until the end. He laughs, like he genuinely finds this all hilarious, and I have to resist the urge to cave his fucking face in with my fist.
“I knew you were stupid, Savage. I didn’t really think you were that stupid. Apparently, I overestimated you.”
My eyes narrow, and I watch him take one wet, rattling breath after another while he continues to grin at me.
“You lied. Why?”
None of this makes any sense to me, but I’m not an unhinged, abusive loser with a god complex.
“You were in the way. The golden child heir, blah blah blah. I needed you gone. As soon as I realized you’d rather be spending time playing fucked-up house with your little sister,” I growl and put my hand around his throat, but it doesn’t stop him. “I figured it would be easy to distract you long enough to show your father how fucking worthless you are. You don’t deserve the title of lieutenant, Savage. The only reason you have it is because of your blood. And if he knew who you really were, he’d have killed you himself a long time ago.”
“You’re such a fucking hypocrite,” I whisper, tightening my grip on his throat enough to make him struggle for air.
He can sexually assault a man barely out of high school, and he thinks it makes him strong. But me loving the shit out of Micah makes me a weak little queer in his eyes.
I’ve hated the Banna for a long time, but I think this is the first time I truly realize how stupid we all are. It’s not just a shitty lifestyle. It’s fucking dumb.
Eamon gasps when I release his neck. Sudden nausea and disgust hits me that I’m even dealing with this guy. Micah was right. I shouldn’t have let myself be the one to kill him. He’s not worth sacrificing any more of my karma for.
It’s not like I have a choice, though. I have to protect Micah, and that’s more important than my own worthless, ragged morality.
Eamon keeps breathing deeply, and as soon as he licks his lips I realize he’s about to start talking again. It’s probably a good thing. I have other questions for him. I need to know more about the Aryans and whatever else he’s fucked up for his own purposes. I should wring every last bit of information out of him that I can.
“Tell me, Savage. Does Micah’s pussy taste as good as I—” His words are cut off when I pull the knife out of his kneecap and then jam it into the base of his skull.
It takes a while for him to die. I wanted it to be quiet, even though I’m confident no one here would call the cops, which is why I didn’t shoot him. Or maybe I just wanted to watch the light slowly fade from his eyes.
The important thing is that he can’t fucking talk. He just makes gurgling sounds and works his jaw with a blank expression, as the capillaries burst in his eyes and pink foam collects at the corner of his mouth.
When he’s finally gone, the first thing I feel is a curl of satisfaction. Bone-deep satisfaction that hasn’t entered my body in a very long time. Of course, it’s quickly followed by shame. This is just one more thing I did to let Micah down, and one more dirty secret I’ll have to keep from him forever.
At least it’s done.
I guess.
Micah
I’m exhausted, because it was a long shift and then the forty minutes I spent taking care of Tadhg afterward was mind-numbingly draining.
I hate not being able to know what happened to him. I hate that he can’t talk to me. But I know if I push him, it’ll only make things worse.
Instead, I’m watching him sleep, like a lunatic stalker. I can’t help it. My body won’t let me rest until I’ve gone over all these possible scenarios a million more times. I can already feel him pulling away from me. Just tonight, he didn’t look like he wanted to tell me the truth but couldn’t.
He looked… blank. I hate it. It feels like looking at him through a pane of glass. It’s not really him.
Maybe I underestimated how hard it would be for him to separate from the Banna. Which seems ridiculous, because I already thought of it as this insane, insurmountable task. But I think that was looking at it in the practical sense.
Getting them to let him go. Getting him safe and not being followed. That was what I was focusing on.
I never really thought about how difficult it might be for him to let it all go. Even though I know he wants out, I’m sure there are a million layers of guilt and shame and other complex emotions that I couldn’t even begin to understand.
Is that what he was thinking about tonight?
Or was he really hiding something from me?
I trace my finger down the side of his face. Super gently, because I don’t want to disturb him. Although it’s clear he’s not sleeping well. He’s twitching and moaning a little, like he’s dreaming about something that’s agitating him.
If this were a movie, he’d blurt out his secret in his sleep and then all this wondering would be moot. I wait for longer than I should, but he never says anything. At least nothing intelligible. It’s just soft, sad noises and more uncomfortable twitching.
Eventually I put my head back on his chest and hold him tight. It leaves me feeling useless, but I don’t know what else I can do.