Chapter 49
FORTY-NINE
brINLEY
There was no longer time to tiptoe around this thing. It was do or die.
So I gave him the challenge. Did he feel the same way about me as I did him? Could he see himself as a good man? Could he find himself worthy of love?
Every harsh angle of his handsome face hardened. Razors sharpening in defense.
That severe brow pinched in pain and discipline.
He growled a throaty sound and once again he rumbled my name. “Brinley.”
This one was a warning. A warning for me to back away or else I was going to be standing in the path of a broken dam.
Because I could feel it tremoring all around him.
His restraint was fracturing. The truth spinning like a vortex in his hazel eyes.
“My only job is to keep you safe, and I’ll gladly die seeing that through.” His voice was gravel.
“That’s not what I asked you.”
Grief curled through his expression. “I don’t deserve it, Brinley, I don’t deserve you. But I’ll give everything for you.”
“Except for the parts you think you’re not worthy of giving,” I whispered. “And those are the very best parts.”
“I’m not…the things I’ve done.”
“They don’t matter.”
His scoff was shallow. “But they do, Brinley. Those are the things that define us. And my definition is foul.”
A frown twisted my brow. “I don’t believe that for a second. Do you think I don’t see you?”
My fingernails scraped over the fabric of his tee. Right over the erratic thrumming of his heart.
We were swaying, barely moving in the whorls of potency that swirled in the room. Whipping around us in the same volatility as it had the first time he led me to the room above the club.
An undefined connection that had pulled between us from the get-go.
“You only see the parts I’ve shown you,” he grated.
“No, Silas, what you try to keep hidden are the good parts. But they’re there, and they keep rising to the surface no matter how hard you try to keep them concealed.”
His eyes squeezed closed for a beat. “I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t want to drag you into this world.” His attention skated over my shoulder to Kai’s crib. “Just like I’m terrified of having him in it.”
“Do you really think you’re bad for him? That you’d let anyone or anything hurt him?”
“Never.” It slashed out like a blade.
“Then don’t be afraid of loving him. Because I’m not sure if you’re aware, but that is exactly the meaning of the promise you just made. That’s love, Silas.”
He flinched so hard I might as well have punched him in the face.
A rake of horrified words spilled into the addled air. “My blood is cursed. Tainted. And I’ll do anything to save him from that.”
“So you’re saying he’d be better off without you?”
His thick throat bobbed as he swallowed, wavering, hesitating, his attention back on the child.
He was so conflicted I was surprised this man didn’t cut right in two.
“No.”
“Then love him, Silas. Love him with everything you have.”
I gulped and pressed forward, laying myself bare.
“Love me.” The appeal croaked from my mouth.
Silas froze. Torment seethed in his being, and his eyes pinched closed as he muttered, “I can’t.”
It was a blade stabbed directly into my heart.
A violent evisceration.
But I expected it, didn’t I? I knew there was no place this could go but to its end, and I’d begged for it, anyway.
Somehow, I managed to keep it together enough to nod, though I could barely speak. “Goodbye, Silas.”
I hurried across the hall and into his room, frantic as I gathered a few things, stuffing what I could into my duffel and leaving the rest.
I had to get out of there.
Far freaking away.
I wasn’t about to go back to the room over the club.
I was going to disappear.
From everything and everyone.
Dereck could fend for himself because it was time I looked after myself.
Time I went after the things that I deserved and the things that I wanted.
Too bad what I wanted was the man who stood as a dark silhouette in the middle of Kai’s doorway when I flew back out of his room.
I nearly stumbled with the look on his face.
Crushed all over again by the absolute devastation carved in the slashed, explicit lines. I guess he was right, after all. We both were going to end up ruined.
I forced myself to drop my head, slinging the strap over my shoulder and beelining for the stairs.
Head down as I raced to the bottom, holding onto the railing to keep myself steady when I felt every inch of me falling apart.
“Brinley,” he heaved from over the upper railing.
Misery lancinated out.
I shook my head with the impact, swallowing down the sob that thickened at my throat.
I hit the landing and rushed for the door, trying to keep my movements quiet since Elena and Meems were trying to sleep. I didn’t want to disturb them, but I was pretty sure whatever Silas and I were emitting was likely rattling the walls.
I pulled open the door and slipped out into the night. Bugs trilled in the trees, and I could hear the faint echoes of the party happening at the clubhouse in the distance.
I diverted course, ducking under the cover of branches and heading up the shortcut that led to the front of the property.
I knew I was going to have to go toe to toe with some of Silas’s men, but they weren’t going to stop me.
I was leaving.
Silas had made it clear there was no place for me here.
I realized I didn’t want shelter.
I wanted a home.
I was finally almost free, and I didn’t want to go anywhere.
The full realization of that bled out. Rolling off me in staggering waves. The thought of never seeing Elena and Meems again splintered my heart.
But the thought of never getting to hold Kai again? Of never seeing Silas again?
It was gutting.
Knowing I’d never get to experience the high I felt when Silas walked into the room. Of never getting to feel that sense of surety. Of completeness. Of someone fully understanding me, and I didn’t have to be afraid or ashamed of it.
A sob hooked in my throat, and I attempted to smother it as I ducked through the shadows that played through the night.
That was when I felt a flashfire of heat roll over me from behind.
A shockwave that torched the air.
“Brinley!” The shout hit me from behind, an echo that reverberated through the heavens.
I stumbled a step.
Knowing Silas, he was setting out to stop me. A job he had to see through.
No more.
I hurried faster, the sandals I’d quickly shoved my feet into slipping over the damp grasses below.
My heart thundered and my senses whirled.
His aura caught up in a flash.
“Brinley!” he shouted again, that time closer.
And I got the same sense I had the night he chased me down when I initially tried to escape.
The fear that I was about to be destroyed, but this time it was a completely different form of annihilation.
“Brinley, please. Fucking stop.”
I fumbled, and one second later, I felt him like a landslide. His presence was nothing but domination.
Taking hold of the air that shivered with his potency.
White-hot lightning licked across my flesh, and every hair on my body lifted in awareness.
I inhaled a fractured breath, drawing him into the aching well of my chest.
Sweet, liquored cherry always muddling my mind.
I shouldn’t have looked back, but I couldn’t have stopped myself even if I knew the sight of him would prove lethal.
Not with the way he had a hook in my heart.
I guess it was.
Because a little piece of me died as I stared at him standing beneath the cover of a massive oak.
At one with the shadows that writhed around him like they’d become partner to that untamed volatility.
Swirls of darkness twined and twisted.
His cheeks and jaw carved of steel.
Towering and massive and robbing me of my faculties.
Too ferociously beautiful to be real.
“I warned you that you’d do well to hate me.” Every word cleaved from his mouth like splinters of broken glass.
My entire body squeezed in refusal. “I can’t.”
His big hands fisted at his sides, and those eyes burrowed right through to the secret places that I’d never allowed anyone to go before.
Not even before my belief and confidence had been demolished. Not with any boyfriend or man that had come before him.
It was only Silas. The last man I should want and the first one I’d ever needed.
He took one step closer, and the ground rolled beneath his feet.
His strong features were written in conflict.
“You want this? You really want this?” His words cut through the dense, suffocating air.
Severing through the despair and touching down on that place within me that he had exposed.
“I want it. I want you.”
I said it without reservation.
Torment pierced his expression, and he kept moving, a shadowy eclipse that slipped forward until he was standing right in front of me.
Covering me in a blanket of his ferocity.
“You shouldn’t.” It was close to a growl.
“But I do.” I whispered into the force that drew us together.
Silas reached out and took me by both sides of the face. His hold was acute, like he was trying to get me to understand the severity of what he was saying. “You don’t know the full of who I am.”
“I don’t care.”
He gave a harsh shake of his head.
“I’m a killer, Brinley. It’s what I do.” He ground through every word.
My knees knocked, legs going weak. It was Silas’s unrelenting hold that kept me standing.
I already knew it. I knew it the second Dereck rolled onto his property. I could feel the violence screaming from his body, and he’d all but admitted it many times over as he’d issued his warnings.
But not like this.
This time, he delivered it like blunt force trauma.
I wondered which of us sustained it the worst.
Me or Silas, who tore himself open wide.
Exposing the underside.
Showing me the places he hadn’t wanted me to see. Yet they were painted as distinctly as the horrors he’d painted on his flesh.
“I know.” It tumbled off my tongue, and I wondered if I’d completely lost my mind.
Accepting this.
“Do you?” he demanded, eyes merciless in their claim.
Big hands clutched my jaw as he stared down at me. I inhaled his panted breaths, and our hearts raced as wild as the demand he was making.
“Yes. I know. I see it in you, every bit as clear as I see something beautiful trapped inside.”
I set my hand over the thunder in his chest.
“It’s your heart.”
It’s what he had tattooed there. I figured he meant it as condemnation, but I issued it like praise.
He nearly bowled over, and a sound of desperation rolled through him.
Feral and thinly hinged.
“Knowing who I am, you still want me? You want this?” It was pure disbelief.
“I see you, Silas. Who you really are. I don’t care about the rest.”
Dubiety rolled with the relief.
“Are you sure?” he grunted. “Because once I take you to my bed, I’m not letting you leave it. Once I take you there, you’re mine.”
And I knew we were on a precipice. Standing on a cliff, ground crumbling below us. But I still had time. I could scramble back and run to safety.
But I no longer had any fear of the fall, and I grabbed onto his wrists and pushed myself higher on my toes so my lips brushed against his.
And I whispered, “Yes.”