21. Chapter 21 – Lincoln
Chapter 21 – Lincoln
I stepped out of the shower, running the towel over my head to dry my hair as I sighed, exhausted.
I’d been up for almost three days straight, and the shower I just took was the first time I stopped moving that whole time. The fatigue in my bones was so intense that I almost fell asleep standing up.
My brain finally stopped spinning too, it was so tired, I could no longer obsess over her.
Peyton.
I left Hartington three nights ago on a mission to wash her memory from my skin and replace it with blood. I never craved bloodshed anymore, I was a different person than who I used to be when I ran wild with Tamen.
But her rejection burned in my gut in a way that would have eaten me alive if I didn’t find another outlet for it. So I reached out to an old contact, who has a reputation for being the most unhinged man in the game .
Maddox ‘Whisper’ Renner was the worst kind of psycho out there. He had so many screws loose he had no conscious or moral compass anymore. Which served him well in his life, hunting down the worst of the worst and taking them out. He was a mercenary essentially, only taking jobs that promised to be hard for him for the fun of it.
Which meant the jobs he gave me over the last seventy-two hours should have been damn near impossible for me, thanks to being out of the game for so long.
But the level of unrest I’d become in the wake of Peyton’s rejection left me just crazy enough to get them done.
But I was done. I was empty and fulfilled at the same time.
I was calm.
With her back within reach, just a few hundred yards away from me even at that very moment, I didn’t know how long it would last. But I couldn’t stay away from her anymore.
I had made sure she made it back safe after our time together at the maze, and then I went black. I couldn’t look in on her without losing my resolve to stay away.
“Maybe I don’t know what I want then. Maybe I got it wrong.”
Her sweet voice echoed through my brain nonstop since I walked away from her, and it wreaked havoc. She said I wasn’t what she wanted after all. Which meant she didn’t want me, as me.
If I was a normal man who gave her niceties and flowers instead of hand-necklaces and dirt stains on her knees, she’d want me. But that wasn’t me .
That was why I came to her as Dane first, instead of Lincoln. If I had pursued her as Lincoln, she never would have understood the depth of my tendencies and tastes, she’d see the polished businessman and fall without understanding the risks associated with it .
Never mind her own emotional hang-ups, thanks to her family always demanding perfection from her so she could be the pride and joy of their storytelling. Regardless of her own happiness, they expected her to be perfect.
I studied her parents extensively when I started recon on her before I hired her. To be honest, I didn’t think they were bad people. They were simply obsessed with giving their kids more than they had, even going as far as working their own fingers to the bone and breaking their backs to give their kids every chance as success.
It took no time at all to realize that wasn’t what Peyton wanted, though, and I couldn’t understand how they never saw it. Or maybe they did, but they turned a blind eye in the name of greater good for everyone, I don’t know.
Peyton loved them more than her own happiness, that much was clear, so she did as they expected, crafting the perfect life her parents could brag about to their friends. Silently dying a little more inside each day.
That was why I allowed myself to infiltrate her life. Between that and her closet desire for the dark and depraved, it felt right to break her out of the mold of perfection for a little wrong and dirty.
But I was wrong.
I had gotten it all so fucking wrong.
I slid a pair of sweats on in my closet, looking away from any surface she may have touched while I was gone and then pulled a sweater on. Avoidance was only serving for so long, and I had responsibilities to see to that I couldn’t ignore any longer.
Even if all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for the next week straight.
I walked down the hall to my office, fighting the urge to look out the gigantic windows across the grand living room below that looked directly at her guest house because I didn’t know what I’d do if I actually saw her. Thankfully, she was probably asleep, given that it was after three in the morning.
As I neared the locked door to my office, an alarm from inside piqued my ears and I froze, trying to get my sleep deprived brain to place that particular tone as I pushed my finger to the biometric scanner on the knob.
And then it clicked.
Perimeter Breech Alarm.
I ripped the door open and looked at the chaos of alarms going off on my screens as I tried to make sense of what they all were.
Perimeter Breech Alarm- South Quadrant- four minutes ago .
“Fuck.” I scanned to the next one, trying to assess who was fucking stupid enough to cross my property line. Four minutes was a long time, they could already be—.
Guest House Alarm- Forced Entry- Main Entrance- one minute ago.
“No!” I roared, grabbing two firearms and tearing out of my office at a dead sprint for Peyton. “Fuck!”
As I jumped down the five steps to the concrete patio, a shrill scream pierced the air and my heart seized completely in my chest as I fought through the fear and fatigue in my brain and focused my thoughts into that deadly calm space I found before a kill.
Because I was going to kill whoever dared to touch my girl.
The locked side door off the pool deck was no match for my kick, as I sent it splintering out of the jamb. Barefoot, I entered the house, hardly noticing the pain. Another scream ripped through the air, followed by a crash of something glass from her bedroom.
“Peyton!” I roared, and lifted my guns as a dark figure came out of her room, backing up with his arms over his face as another large object flew through the air and hit him in the head.
“Fucking hell, woman!” The intruder cursed exactly one millisecond before I pulled the trigger on both guns aimed directly at his head.
“Tamen?” I paused as Peyton’s voice carried through the dark house.
“Get the fuck out of my house!”
“You belong in an insane asylum!” Tamen yelled back, turning around and stopping short when he saw both guns aimed at him. “Oh, he is home.”
“Lincoln?” Peyton’s shaken voice floated seconds before her head popped out of the doorway that Tamen had thankfully moved away from. “Oh, my god.” She dropped her arms, lowering the footrest she clutched as a weapon as her wild eyes locked onto mine.
I could hardly fucking breathe seeing those green irises again after three days away. “Are you hurt?” I asked her, finally lowering my guns from my brother’s face. She quickly shook her head and wrapped her arms around her indecent body. Because, of course, she wore only a light blue nightgown that hugged every single inch of her lush curves to perfection. I looked away from her and glared at my stupid idiot brother, directing him to the door with one pistol still clutched in my hand. “Get the fuck out!”
He raised his brows at me and smirked, “Who am I speaking with right now?” He squinted his eyes, “Lincoln or—”
“GET OUT!” I roared, taking a step at him, herding him toward the door so I was between him and Peyton.
“Definitely not Lincoln.” He mused and glanced behind me to where I felt Peyton still cowering at the entrance to her bedroom. “Interesting.”
I fired a shot, aiming directly over his right ear and hitting the wall behind him as he flinched slightly with an amused look on his face. Peyton’s scream of fear cut through the gunpowder before my vision even cleared. “I said get out.” I repeated in a lethal voice I didn’t even recognize.
He held his hands up in surrender, after quickly dabbing at the blood dripping down from the graze I gave him on the top of his ear. “I’ll be in your office.” He looked over my shoulder once more to where Peyton was, “My apologies, Ms. Everett.”
His use of her name only made me want to pull the trigger all over again, this time aiming at his heart. He was my only blood relative left on Earth, but I would put him six feet into it if he even dared to come near Peyton.
When he was out of the house completely, I lowered my gun and forced myself to turn around to look into the eyes that had haunted me since I left her in the maze. “Peyton.”
“You shot him?” Her eyes were as wide as saucers and she still cowered behind the door frame into her bedroom.
“I should have done far worse for him invading your space, like he did.” I slid the guns into my waistband, careful not to let her see my ink under my shirt, and scrubbed my hand over my face.
“Who is he?” She carefully stepped around the broken remnants of the lamps she used as projectiles and came out into the living room, flicking a switch and bathing the room in warm light.
I glossed over her question, fighting every urge to pull her against my body. She doesn’t want you, Linc. “Are you okay? ”
“I think so.” She rubbed her hands over her arms. “He didn’t touch me. He just scared me.” Her shoulders shook as the weight of it all came crashing down. “I woke up to him walking into my bedroom and I—” She stared off at the wall, remembering her fear, “I guess I went into fight-or-flight mode.”
“You went into fight mode, Peyton.” I nodded to the broken shards of glass and porcelain on the floor of her bedroom. “Rightfully so.”
“Sorry.” She sank in on herself slightly. “I’ll pay for the broken stuff.”
“Stop it.” I shook my head and took a step toward her, with my hand fisted to keep from actually pulling her into my arms like I wanted to. She didn’t know me as Lincoln, only as Dane, and she didn’t want Dane. And I couldn’t separate the two anymore, so I was hopeless. “Stay right here.”
She sank down on the couch and watched me as I went into her bedroom. “What are you doing?”
I took her duffle bag from underneath of her bed, not even pretending not to know where it was, and started putting some clothes into it for the next day or two. “You will stay in the main house until I can repair the door.”
I caught her glance over at the side door as I moved to her bathroom, grabbing her toiletries and putting them into the bag too. “Oh, dear.” She stared at the wrecked splinters of her door and then stared up at me as I came back out to the living room. “You did that?” She looked down my body, “To get to me?”
I put her bag over my shoulder and tried to convince myself to stay silent, but I couldn’t. “I’d do far, far worse to get to you, Peyton.” While helping her up, I abandoned my attempts to avoid touching her and reveled in the way the bare skin of her arm felt against my palm. I held out her bathrobe from the back of her door and pushed it onto her arms. The sooner her hard nipples were covered up, the sooner I’d be able to think straight. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
She let me put my hand on the small of her back and lead her across the pool deck into my home in a trance. When we got to the bottom of the staircase, her steps faltered, “You don’t have any guest beds.” She chuckled lightly, looking up at me as I herded her up the steps. “I know, because I clean all the empty rooms.”
“That’s so I don’t get any visitors.”
She mulled that over for a moment, no doubt taking longer than normal because of the events that happened and the ungodly hour.
When we got to my bedroom door, though, she snapped out of the haze. “Wait.” She turned and faced me in the now open doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Getting you settled in my room so you can get some rest.” I walked forward, forcing her to go into my bedroom, and shut the door behind us. Her eyes were wide and her lips parted as she licked them, looking up at me.
“Your room?”
I grinned for the first time in days, setting her duffle bag down on the footstool at the end of the bed, and then pulled the blankets back. Twenty minutes ago, I couldn’t wait to slide under those blankets and sleep for the next few days. Yet there I was, welcoming her into my bed while simultaneously trying to convince myself not to join her.
She doesn’t want you.
“As you stated, I have no spare beds in the entire house.” I walked back over to her and she held her ground, staring up at me. She probably hated Lincoln as much as she hated Dane after how I treated her at dinner the other night. Or better yet, right after dinner. “Get into the bed, Peyton. ”
“What about you?” Her eyes roved over my face as she stared up, unmoving. “Where will you sleep?”
“I won’t cross boundaries with you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I stepped back, indignation burning from her recent rejection aligned with the new one.
Her hand shot out and grabbed mine before I could back away completely. “I didn’t mean that.” She licked her lips again, and I fought the urge to growl and take a bite of them. “I mean, you look dead on your feet. You obviously need to sleep too.”
I took a step forward. “Are you worried about me, Peyton?” I tilted my head the way Dane always did, tempting fate to burn my hopes and dreams at my feet just so I could get out of the perpetual limbo I got myself into.
Her green eyes parted wide and her breath hitched, before she blinked and let go of my hand. She opened her mouth to say something, but I stopped her.
“Go to bed,” I moved around her tempting body, gripping my doorknob with enough strength to crush it in my palm. “I’ll sleep on the couch in my office.”
I didn’t wait for her to agree or not, closing the door behind me and heading into a conversation I didn’t want to have.
When I found Tamen behind my desk with his feet up, he was staring at the screens and observing Peyton standing in my bedroom, who was lost in thought and not moving.
I clicked the kill switch, effectively locking down every screen so he couldn’t see anything else. “You’ve got five seconds to explain yourself before I leave bits and pieces of you on the floor.”
He grinned in his usual asshole way and dropped his feet when I shoved them off my desk and dumped his ass backward out of my chair. I knew he could have deflected my move, always one to be fast as a cat, but he fell to the ground with a thud. Laughing, he got up and exaggeratedly brushed off his clothes before choosing to sit on the couch across the room instead of going back for my chair.
“Hello, dear brother. I missed you too.” His thick English accent grated my nerves like it usually did, when I first spoke with him after a long time apart. It reminded me of everything he got that I didn’t.
It reminded me of the life he lived that should have been mine.
“T.”
“Fine.” He cocked his head to the side in the familiar Bryce family mannerism we didn’t discuss and rested his elbows on his knees. “I heard on the wire that you went back underground.”
I scoffed, righting my chair and sitting in it, depositing both guns back in their holsters under my desk. “If I was back underground, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Thirty-seven.” He raised one brow at me, mocking me like I didn’t know the final number from the last three days. “You eliminated thirty-seven contacts in one run. What else would you call it? The chatter is going wild about the Ghost’s return to the game, out from behind his computer screens for the first time in years.”
“I’m not in the game, Tamen.” Leaning back against the chair. “I simply distracted myself in it for a moment.”
“Because of her?” He challenged, “Peyton Everett?”
“Careful,” I leveled a death glare at him, “That’s your only warning.”
He snorted and pointed at his red angry ear, “This wasn’t a warning? Has your shot gotten that bad in retirement?”
“What are you doing here, Tamen?” I snapped, tiring of his antics.
My brother held my stare and relaxed, “No one has heard from you in too long, Linc. And then I hear that you not only hired someone new, even temporarily, but also went back into the darkness that nearly fucking killed the both of us last time.” He sighed, “I’m checking in on you.”
“Welfare check complete.” I turned away from him to face my computer screens, already itching to see Peyton on my screens without him lurking. “Only your welfare was in jeopardy.”
He stood up with a groan and shook his head, “She doesn’t know, does she?” I didn’t look at him, hoping he’d leave as I stared blankly at the black screens, but he didn’t drop it. “That you’re the masked man she’s been fucking?”
I slowly turned my head to face him, leveling him with a glare only my enemies saw right before I ended the lives of their dearest loved ones. I was too irrational to kill my enemies for their crimes; it hurt them more to make them watch the ones they loved most suffer first. “If you so much as utter one word to her, I’ll eradicate your entire branch of our bloodline.”
He raised his brow at me and nodded solemnly on his way to the door. “That’s something you’ve wanted to do for decades now, Linc. Next time threaten me with something new, or I’ll start to wonder if you’ve gone soft on me.”
I didn’t reply as he left my office, but I pulled my security system back up and watched him go to the home theater I never used and make himself a bed in one of the recliners. I should have kicked him out instead of locking the door remotely, caging him in so he couldn’t do something stupid or harmful to Peyton as I got some desperately needed sleep.
When Tamen heard the lock click on the door, he smirked to himself and flipped off the sky.
He knew I was watching. I was always fucking watching.