Chapter Fourteen
Hayes
“Why are you over there?” she asked, her voice small.
It was painful to even look at her, but I couldn’t tell her that.
She would never know how much it burned me to see the marks of another person’s violence on her.
This entire day had been a nightmare, carefully crafted from the seventh circle of hell.
It was the plane crash all over again, and like that dreadful day, there was nothing I could do to erase the bruises, take away the pain, rip the memory from our minds.
Concerning the past, I was utterly helpless.
Concerning her future, I wasn’t. Focusing on that was the only reason I hadn’t completely lost my shit. My grip on reality was so tight that my palms were bleeding, and they were going to stain her—mark her in a way I never wanted her to be.
“Margo,” I urged, my voice cold.
She was curled up on her side of the couch, her gorgeous hair piled high on her head, green eyes shining with worry. “Don’t you want to sit down?”
“No.”
“Hayes—”
“Who did that to your face?” I asked, ignoring her. I couldn’t be close to her. Not when she told me this.
She dropped her head, curling her fingers together in her lap, eyes tracking every movement. “It’s complicated.”
My voice hardened. “There is nothing complicated about abuse.” Her head snapped up.
“It’s black and white,” I continued. “What was done to you was wrong, and you have every right to press charges. However, seeing as how you’re with me and under the protection of Red Snake, you pressing charging would make things complicated. ” I practically spat out the last word.
“I’m with you?” she breathed, her chest moving with rapid breaths.
“Yes.”
“Hayes—”
“I don’t have time to argue with you, Temper. Not about this.”
She reached behind her, bringing her throw pillow to her front, wrapping her arms around it. After a minute of stretched silence, she whispered, “You can’t just claim me. I’m not yours, Hayes.”
My jaw tightened, but I didn’t allow the pain of her words to spread. I locked it down tight, throwing it into a lockbox in my brain.
I’m not yours, Hayes.
The box landed harshly in the back corner of my mind, where my mistakes lived, and I shut the door, focusing on what I could control.
“What happens behind closed doors is our business.” I paused, hearing the pain banging on the door I’d just locked in my head.
I closed my eyes for three seconds. Before I could stop it, a string of dangerous words left my lips, laced with a microscopic morsel of hope.
“If, behind closed doors, that’s what you want, then fine.
I’ll learn to deal with the sting of losing you, but to the outside world, until you’re no longer in danger, you are mine. Mine to protect, to take care of.”
When I lifted my head again, I saw a small glimmer of pain in her eyes just before she lifted her chin. “So you want to lie?”
Lie.
I’d been lying my entire life.
Everything I did, everything I touched, became a part of a lie I’d conjured up long ago in order to tolerate the son of bitch looking back at me in the mirror. But this lie would protect the only thing I wanted in this world. This lie wouldn’t be coated with shame.
No, I would wear this one like a badge of honor.
“Margo, you underestimate the lengths I would go to ensure your well-being,” I murmured darkly. “If lying keeps you safe, then yes, I will.”
She tore her eyes from me, her butterfly tattoo moving as she tried swallowing. I let her have that. There was a lot to take in. “So, we fake it?” she finally asked.
I couldn’t give her a choice. If I did, she would tell me to go to hell and leave. That simply wasn’t an option.
“Whoever did this to you thinks you’re alone,” I told her. “He would’ve never laid a hand on you if he knew you were with me.”
“That’s bold of you to assume.”
“You have no idea what kind of man you let into your bed, Temper,” I whispered, holding her eyes.
“You’re a good man,” she whispered back. “You’re the guy who has it all together. Grayson told me so.”
I pushed that back too. “Who did this to you?” I asked, getting back on track. She opened her mouth, but I swiftly added, “Don’t bullshit me, Margo. Give it to me straight.”
She shook her head. “Nothing about this story is straightforward.”
“Then I’ll be with you at every twist and turn as you tell it to me,” I returned. “Leave nothing out.”
She looked like she wanted to run and hide.
My body moved on its own, going to her and crouching down. I looked up at her, utterly captivated, surrounded by her sage green. She had no idea what she’d done to me, how deep her hooks were, and when she pulled them out, I was ready to bleed out in front of her, to give her everything I had.
“Start,” I commanded.
“It was Marcus Bennett,” she shamefully whispered, as if it was some dirty secret. “My brother.”
I inhaled a sharp breath through my nose and looked toward the windows, taking in the orange glow of the dock lights lining the edge of Astoria. I expected her to say Gordon. Slowly, I rose to my feet, ready to move away from her again, put some distance between us before I lost my shit.
Her fucking brother.
Her hand shot out, soft fingers wrapping around my wrist. “It’s complicated.”
Staring down at her, fury boiling in my chest, I growled, “A man hitting a woman isn’t complicated, Margo.”
“But—”
“Don’t you dare try to protect him. I don’t give a fuck if he is your blood,” I clipped.
Her bottom lip trembled. “I’m not—I just—” She choked back a sob, her hand at my wrist going to her mouth.
I waited, and when she exploded, I wanted to drop to my knees and take her into my arms. “Everything is so fucked, Hayes! I don’t know how—how he could do this to me.
I’m his fucking sister, for crying out loud!
All I’ve ever done was try to protect him.
I wanted nothing but the best for him, and before his teenage years, I could practically see the potential he had to be a good man.
The future he could’ve had.” Tears were streaming down her face now.
“How can I still love someone who hurt me?” she murmured through her shaking fingers. “Why can’t my heart let them go?”
Jesus fuck, I was going to kill him.
“Because you’re a good person with a good soul,” I told her simply, moving back to the door. If I stayed close to her, I would do something stupid. “Good people hold on to things because hope tells them to.”
“Hope?”
I nodded. “The longer you let hope control you, the more you have to hold on to it. Hope convinces you that people will change, get better, apologize for hurting you. But in reality, beautiful, people don’t change.
What you see is you get. Hope lets you be a punching bag while love whispers in your ear, telling you that you’re doing the right thing. ”
She was studying me, a look in her eyes I’d never seen before as Dela popped into my head. I rolled my neck. “You wanna release the pain? Then let the hope burning inside you die.”
“I—”
I shook my head. “No, we’re done talking about this. Back to Marcus.” My voice was firm. “Beginning, middle, and end. Don’t leave anything out, understand?”
It took her two hours.
Two hours for her to give me every dark shred of her past.
Two hours for me to realize that, though she didn’t want me, I would never be able to let her go.
Margo was a flame of hope, and I knew—fuck, deep in my own dim soul, I knew—her flame was eternal. Her fire would consume me completely before I even had a chance to snuff it out.
“Here you go.”
I looked over my shoulder to find her at the mouth of the hall, her legs bare, arms holding a stack of blankets and sheets. “I don’t need all that,” I told her softly, my gut clenching. “The couch—”
“You’re a guest,” she said, walking to me and shoving the pile of softness into my chest. “It’s eighteen degrees outside and the living room doesn’t get too warm at night.”
My brows come together. “Why is that?”
She gestured to the windows. “This building is like fifty years old and those are old iron windows. The insulation is bad around them, but Joey doesn’t want to replace them because they would be a custom job. An expensive one.”
“If something is broken or damaged, Margo, as your landlord, he has to replace it. It’s against the law for him to ignore something that could be damaging to your health,” I said, my spine snapped straight. “Have you addressed this?”
She nodded as she yawned, lifting her arms up to stretch, the end of her oversized T-shirt rising higher on her thighs, revealing more tattoos that I hadn’t gotten to trace with my tongue that night.
“Yeah, he is just in a bind. He bought me a space heater and told me he would be able to replace it after Christmas.”
“I’m going to break his nose.”
“Wh-what?” she sputtered, eyes wide.
“You heard me.”
“Hayes, you can’t just go around breaking peoples’ noses.”
“You’re lucky that’s all he’s getting. If Grayson knew this shit, he’d set the Buoy on fire,” I told her, dropping the blankets onto the couch before leaning against the back of it and crossing my ankles.
She rolled her eyes, snorting. “Oh, is that too low for your moral standards, Superman?”
I shoved down the way that particular nickname made me feel and shook my head.
“No, I just don’t want to burn down a place that holds pleasant memories with you.
” Her lips parted as my words hung in the air between us.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “You should get some sleep. We need to be in Portland early tomorrow.”
“Hayes?”
“What is it?” I asked softly, watching her stare at the couch.
“Tomorrow at your offices—can we—can you not tell them—”
“I’m not going to be telling my guys anything, Margo.” She let out a sigh of relief before giving me a grateful smile. It was just as breathtaking as all the others, and when my next words were said, a sour taste lingered on my tongue, hating it. “You are.”
“I—what?” She jerked back. “I’m telling them?”