10. Venom
10
VENOM
“ L ily. Look at me,” I demand, pulling the covers off her head once my belt is fastened. “Sweet thing, don’t cry.”
My woman rolls away from me, stopping when she reaches the far side of the mattress. On my knees, I crawl across the bed, then take hold of her shoulders to turn her to face me. Although she struggles, slapping at my hands and hissing that I should go, I stay firm.
Giving her space last night was a mistake.
One I’m not going to make again.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere.” Lily scoffs at my declaration but continues her refusal to look at me. I swallow down the fury that ripples through me at the sight of the bruises on her beautiful body and infuse honesty in my tone. “I can’t fuck you when you’re hurt, sweet thing, ’cause I’m not an animal. I don’t get off on seein’ you in pain. Can’t take my pleasure from you when you’re wearin’ another fuckin’ man’s brutality on your skin.”
Lily lifts her gaze to mine, then she scans my face. I try to keep my anger on a leash, unwilling to put any of my torment on her shoulders. Still, she sees through me. Her cheeks redden and her eyes take on a sad glint. Removing one hand from her shoulders, I massage my tight chest as I watch the battle she’s waging from within play out in her expression.
Rejection.
Humiliation.
Pride.
Anger.
Failure.
Realising that she’s reached her limit, I plonk down on my arse and pull her into my lap. Her backside scarcely touches my thighs before she’s slapping at my chest and gingerly scrambling to her feet as fast as she can. With a rage that burns so intensely that Lily forgets her nakedness, she glares down at me.
“I told you I was fine , Zeke… but since you don’t trust my word, you can go.”
It takes every ounce of willpower I possess not to give in to the urge to tell her that I know what she’s doing right now. This is Lily’s pride speaking. What she sees as my rejection is the final straw, and the emotional meltdown that I knew was bound to hit soon is beginning.
When I found her talking openly with Charlie, hope had grown within me that we’d be out of lockdown before she erupted. No such luck, it seems. I should’ve been satisfied with the win I had, left with the sounds of her orgasm ringing in my ears rather than giving into my urge to bury myself inside her. My foolish misstep, so soon after Lily confessed the true extent of Alex’s depravity yesterday, is going to have a flow-on effect through the clubhouse.
She’s entitled to her emotions. Fuck knows she’s earnt every skerrick of rage that consumes her. It’s just her indiscriminate aim when the pain that resides within her shattered soul becomes too much to handle makes it hard for people to empathise with her. I’d deny it if anyone ever tried to tell her this, but Lilianna Mayberry doesn’t do vulnerable well. She burrs up. Lashes out. Insults anyone who comes too close. Presses our soft spots until we react with enough anger to justify hers. Then she pulls inside herself and pushes away her totally legitimate feelings... until they build back up to a level that she can’t handle and the pattern repeats.
I’ve walked this road with her once before.
The cycle almost killed us both back then.
I will not allow her to get to the point where cutting her flesh becomes her coping strategy. If that means I feel the full extent of her wrath right now, if it splashes over everyone in the compound while I try to reach her soft centre, then so be it. It’s been more than five years of silent struggle between us. Half-truths and secrets on both sides. White lies. Outright bullshit. And the time has come for her to tell me the whole story of her relationship with Alex back then.
For four years, I’ve allowed her to keep me in the dark.
To evade the reason, she feels guilty over what happened with Alex.
To avoid my own culpability in it all.
Another reason I haven’t pushed is her father and his propensity to indulge Lily’s dark side. He encourages all five of his children to swallow their pain—like he did after Scarlett died. It’s not healthy. It creates more problems than it solves. But it works for him because he can continue hiding from his own fuck ups. He can minimise his betrayals. Excuse his disloyalty with a veneer of shame and unspoken blame.
With the way things are between me and him at the moment, I can see Brutus making things worse than usual for Lily, just to prove some inane point. He won’t move to protect his daughter from herself. He’ll press her buttons, drive her to complete collapse.
Anything to take the attention off him.
“Metukà shelì… sweet thing.”
Lily ignores me.
I sit uselessly on the bed while she pulls the drawers open to grab a razor back sports top and a pair of yoga pants. Once she’s dressed, I watch her pile her hair on her head and secure it with the hair tie she keeps around her wrist. The boxers and t-shirt she wore last night are dropped with a defiant huff onto the back of the chair I use to keep my worn clothes off the floor.
When Lily makes a move toward the door, her cuts and bruises on display, I step in front of her. As she offers me a sneer, I fold my arms over my chest. “Are you gonna ask for my side of this or have you jumped to all the conclusions you need and found me guilty already?”
A flicker of remorse crosses her face that she quickly masks. “There’s only one conclusion to be made… you can’t handle this.”
“Nah. It’s not the bruises I can’t handle.” Although she gestured at her body while accusing me of not being able to handle her, I lean forward and touch her temple. “It’s the fact you won’t let me in your head that hurts me.” A shudder runs the length of her lithe frame as I drag her over to the recliner and trap her between my legs once I’ve perched on the arm. “You wanna talk about trust, Lily… how’s about you trust me with what’s goin’ on inside your mind? How’s about you realise that he might be your nightmare, but I’m your reality, and I can help you fight back? Talkin’ to each other, leanin’ on each other—that’s the only way I’m gonna know if it’s right for me to fuck you while you’re swollen and bruised and bleeding.”
My words hit home, causing her legs to come close to buckling beneath her. I curl my fingers around the back of her thighs to hold her upright and angle a look at her face to see how she’s going to react.
Regret invades her expression.
Lily forces it down.
Guilt makes her eyes gleam.
She fights it back.
Fury settles across her face like a second skin, and I’m forced to admit that this is going to turn nuclear before I have a hope of her accepting my straight talk.
Lily swipes the last of her tears away, then glowers at me with absolute defiance.
She all but spits her next words at me. “You can fuck right off with your psychological mumbo jumbo. I’m not the one with the problem here… that’s you .”
I can’t hide the way I flinch at the hatred in her tone.
She drops my gaze and hugs herself around the waist.
“You’re about to take this too far,” I warn, even as the voice in my head shouts at me that this is the wrong approach to take with my woman. “Maybe you should go shoot up the range to calm down?”
“The only thing that’ll calm me down is my fiancé not going soft when he looks at me.” As she retorts, I see the pain in her eyes. I fucked up. My refusal to touch her after she opened up to me has battered Lily’s confidence, and there’s no way I can fix it—except to wait out the hurt I caused, then try to talk to her again. “You might think I’m ruined, Ezekiel .” Lily snorts after she pronounces my full name like a curse. “But I’ll have you know that I can find plenty of other men to fuck me if you can’t keep it up.”
After shoving my chest with both hands, Lily steps out of my reach and storms out of the room. The door slams shut behind her, rattling the picture frames she carefully selected to hang on the wall, punctuating her exit like a gunshot. I’m not sure where she’s headed. No one will let her out the front gates while we’re on lockdown, so Lily will have to stew in the bar with the others, blow off steam in the workshop with Fret, or picture my head on a target as she unleashes her turmoil in the Shamrocks gun range.
Whatever her choice, I need to know she’s okay.
I grab my cut off the back of the chair and fish my phone out of the inner pocket. Lily’s best friend, Nadia, has a shift at the hospital, so it’s up to the Shamrocks to help me manage her trauma tonight.
Opening up a group chat, I type out an SOS to all the brothers I trust to handle her with the appropriate combination of tough but honest love wrapped in the softly-softly of kid gloves.
VENOM: Cherub needs a shoulder that isn’t mine
VENOM: Anyone but fucking Brutus
The text responses come through in rapid fire.
FRET: If she comes to the workshop, I’ll put her to work
FRET: Got some sanding that’ll keep her mind busy
TOKER: I’ll make sure there’s a Glock ready
HUNTER: I’m in my room… watching a serial killer doco she’ll love! Someone send her this way.
CUB: Keep her outta the office—I’m working on something
TOKER: and a fat blunt *insert bong emoji here*
SLASH: Little Cherub has stormed the bar.
SLASH: I’ll get our Cherub nice and drunk for you.
SLASH: A screwdriver or two will loosen her tongue.
TOKER: Will probs loosen her fists too *insert boxing gloves emoji*
Toker’s reply is nutty but accurate. He’s right—adding alcohol to the mood Lily’s in could backfire, but if her responses denigrate into punches, I’ll send her his way. He wanted a fight last night, he’ll be lucky to subdue his favourite cousin today without receiving a bloody nose from her.
The thought makes me grin.
He’ll take it too, if it means Lily feels better.
Scanning the responses a second time, my smile widens at Toker’s lack of technological prowess. He flatly refuses to upgrade to a smartphone, happy with his Nokia brick that’s almost as old as he is by this point. It’s that old he still has to press the keys multiple times to get the letter he needs. The day Lily and Nadia showed him their custom keyboards, I thought he was going to crack, instead he began adding emojis to his texts via written description.
My phone pings again.
SLASH: I’ll text you when she’s ready to talk.
Knowing that my best friend is with her loosens some of the worry squeezing my chest tight. I scrub a hand over my face, doing my best to blot out the urge to interrupt them so I can force her attention back to me. I’d never admit it out loud, but sometimes it makes me jealous to see how many other men she has for support. Her closeness with Slash, especially, gnaws at me. They’re both book worms. Love the same music. And their endless dissection of the tv shows they binge watch together sometimes leaves me feeling like more of a spectator than an active participant in her hobbies.
I want to be hers.
In everything.
It’s dumb. It’s wrong. It’s definitely a little too close to the way Alex treated her for comfort. I figure since I’m aware of it, and would never let it spill over onto her, it’s okay. Times like this, when I’m imagining beating my best friend’s arse for being the person Lily has picked to lean on, also remind me that karma’s a bitch. Teaching me one lesson at a time, whether I want it or not.
Lily isn’t going to choose me today.
Not when I’m the problem.
Ego sufficiently dented; I type out my thanks, then silence my phone.
VENOM: I’d be up shit creek without the lot of ya
VENOM: Slash – let me know the second she’s calm enough to approach
SLASH: Will do.
With a sigh that’s fifty percent frustration and fifty percent annoyance, I flop back on the bed and press Lily’s pillow over my face. Inhaling her scent, I hold my breath until my lungs burn, then roll onto my side to stare at the door. I grip my phone in one hand, ignoring the ongoing vibrations as the rest of them text back with their version of support. My head is spinning with all the things I need to say to her, yet I doubt I’d be able to form a coherent sentence if the opportunity arose.
My gut churns with the need to track down Alex and kill him.
My chest aches with despair at the agony I know Lily is feeling.
My mental voice, the one that offers me all the good advice I regularly ignore, is shouting at me for failing her.
Even with the bruised side of my face to testify to the way I tried to save her yesterday, I can’t help but drown in the knowledge that this is my screwup, yet I’m not a single step closer to shutting Alex down permanently than I was five and a half years ago. He’s out there. Wounded. Semi-victorious. Still capable of plotting and planning. Growing more determined to rain down pain on Lily’s head by the minute.
And there’s not a thing I can do about it until Cub has a breakthrough. Our futile ride out to the Kingsley manor on the outskirts of Inadale this morning proved that. I have no way to reach Alex, to eradicate his menace from Lily’s world, until the Shamrocks find a way around the rings of security surrounding him. He’s protected by the law and the Irish mob. Hidden away on an estate that sits on the very outskirts of our turf.
Even wounded and beaten, Alex remains untouchable.
I can’t help but think that Brutus quite enjoys my misery over that fact.
When the clock on the wall catches my eye, I shake my head.
It’s not even two in the afternoon yet.
Fuck me dead.
How much more can one day throw at us?