I’m Not Scared, Part Two (Masked Men of Fear Island #2)

Chapter 1

Kayla

Vero is all the way across town, on the island, sleeping off his episode. It has left me a little rattled and feeling fucking helpless—I hate those feelings. I sent him a message when I got to work because I needed to know he was okay and wanted to let him know I was thinking about him.

The bar fills up around seven, and I fall into the grind of the night, which is what I needed. I don’t have to think when it’s busy. I just pour and smile.

You heal a part of my soul.

I meant it. He heals a part of me every time he is close, and I don’t want to stay away.

Bianca sends me a look from the other end of the bar, and I shake my head.

I’m fine, I mouth, so she stops worrying.

Bianca rolls her eyes and goes back to serving customers. Vero messages me somewhere around eight, and the knot in my chest loosens when his name comes up on my screen.

He is okay.

I take a picture, sending it quickly when Vero asks, saying he needs to see my face. I know more about him now after my talk with Brawley; he helped me understand him a little better.

I place my phone face down behind the bar and get back to work, and don’t look at it again for twenty minutes. By the time I do, the crowd has thinned out a little, and Rogue is doing her rounds of the floor. I unlock my screen just to check he hasn’t sent anything new.

A silence settles over the bar, causing me to look up from the glass I’m pouring. I startle at seeing Vero standing on the bar top, wearing his orange jumpsuit, his Hannibal mask pushed up onto his head, and he doesn’t look like himself. My heart drops straight through the floor.

“Vero.” I set the glass down. “Get down.”

He doesn’t look at me, too fixated on glaring at someone at the far end of the bar. I already know from the way his whole body is angled that something is happening in his head right now; he already has a target.

“In a minute,” he says distractedly.

“Now.” I hold my hand out. “Come on. Get down, and we can talk.”

He looks at my hand and then past it. I can see that Bianca has already signaled Bruce, and I shake my head at her. Bruce won’t help this situation; he will only make it so much worse. I need her to trust me.

I know what this is. Brawley explained it last night while we were sitting in the hallway outside Vero’s room.

He told me what it looks like when it is coming, what it looks like when it is passing, and what to do versus what not to do.

This is what it looks like when it is not passing and turns dangerous.

“Vero.” I say his name again. “Look at me.”

He doesn’t. He moves down the bar toward the man at the end, and I follow, needing to stay close. People on their stools are pulling back, giving him room, watching with their phones out, and I hate every single one of them.

“She is mine,” he says to the man, and my chest aches.

The man says something, and Vero laughs.

Everyone goes still.

I push around the end of the bar, needing to get to him in time. I make it three steps before the stool goes flying, and the sound of breaking glass makes me flinch.

I don’t even register the pain at first, then I look down at my hand and see the blood across my palm, a clean slice from a shard that caught me in the chaos. Curling my fingers into my palm, I press my fist against my upper thigh. It’s not deep, and it doesn’t matter right now.

Vero is still going. There are now two men on the ground and a table on its side. Rogue is now behind me, calling my name. She is trying to get me to breathe, but I am breathing—I just can’t make my legs move.

The doors to the bar fly open.

Clay comes in first, followed by Brawley, then Ares is behind them both. The bar feels small with all of them here. Brawley moves toward Vero, while Clay goes left, and Ares comes straight toward me. But I don’t want any of them near me right now; I can’t manage all of this at once.

He puts his hands on my arms and says something as I look up at him.

The room comes back into focus. Broken glass.

Overturned furniture. Bruce lying flat on the ground, along with two other men who just wanted a quiet drink on a Wednesday night.

My regulars are pressed against the walls with their hands over their mouths.

Bianca is behind the bar, arms crossed and eyes bugging out of her head.

This is where I work. It’s not the island, not their world. This is the place I have worked for three years. A job that pays the rent on my loft and lets me not be the daughter who wasted her potential.

My hand throbs, and I look down at it again. Blood has soaked through my jeans where I pressed my fist, and all I can think is that I have a shift on Friday and I can’t pour drinks with a bandaged hand.

Vero has finally gone quiet. I look up, and he is staring at me, waiting. I know this feeling. It’s one I have known my whole life: the moment where you are standing in the middle of a mess someone else caused, but everyone is waiting to see what you do with it.

Every time before this one, I have made the wrong choice. Stayed too long. Absorbed too much. Or told myself it was not that bad—he didn’t mean it. Made excuses for a man.

Vero is not him; I know that. I can tell the difference between a man who hurts you because he wants to and a man who loves you but can’t always find the right way to show it. I know the difference in my bones, but it doesn’t change what just happened.

Rogue says my name as her hand settles between my shoulder blades.

“Fuck, Kayla,” Vero starts. “He was watching you. I saw the reflection . . . I know how that sounds, but I saw it.”

I believe him, and that is the worst part. I believe him completely.

“Get out,” I say, trying to keep my composure and not break in front of him.

His face reflects something I will think about for a long time after tonight. Raw panic. The way his hands come up to where his hair used to be, yet find nothing, followed by the instinctive sound of hurt he makes.

“Please,” he begs. “I . . .”

Running my gaze over them all, the expressions I find on Clay, Ares, and Brawley’s faces are ones I have seen many times in the past. It’s only Vero who doesn’t look like himself.

I said I would never want him to leave, and I meant it when I spoke those words. I mean what I say now, too, and both things can be true. This is the only thing I am capable of giving him tonight.

“All of you.” My voice doesn’t break. I won’t let it. “Get the fuck out.”

Vero’s mouth opens and closes.

Brawley reaches for him and he pulls away, but Clay gets a grip on him while Vero thrashes around and says things I swear I will not carry with me, leaving them in this room when I walk out.

Rogue keeps her hand on my back, and I keep my eyes on the door.

Then they stop, but I don’t know why at first, until I follow their gaze down to my hand. Blood leaks from my fist and drops to the floor at my feet.

Vero pulls free and walks toward me, falling to his knees in front of me on the broken glass.

But I don’t tell him to get up because I don’t have anything left. “I’m sorry,” I whisper instead. And I am so sorry for all of it, for what he is carrying and for what I can’t give him tonight. “But get the fuck out of my life.”

He doesn’t move.

I look down at him, and he is staring at my hand and then up at my face. As I watch him understand what he has done, I want to reach for him, but I don’t.

Brawley finally comes and puts his hand on the back of Vero’s neck, and Vero lets him pull him to his feet.

I look away because I can’t watch. I refuse to cry, so I hold my tears back.

Rogue says nothing, instead gently taking my hand and turning it over to look at the cut. She makes a concerned sound. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s sort your hand out.”

I follow her, and I don’t look back at the door or let myself think about his face. I think about anything except the fact that the last thing I said to someone I can see myself loving was get the fuck out of my life.

Rogue sits me down on a crate in the back room and opens the first aid kit.

“You want to talk about it?” she asks.

“No,” I say.

She nods. “Okay.”

She cleans the cut as I look at the ceiling, breathing deep so I don’t cry. If I start, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop, and there are still three hours left of my shift.

She tapes the gauze down, and I flex my fingers slowly.

“Bianca can close,” Rogue says. “You don’t have to go back out there.”

“I have to.”

Rogue has known me for three years, and she has the good sense not to argue with me. So she puts the first aid kit away and stands up.

“For what it’s worth,” she says, pausing at the door. “They all looked gutted. Even the scary one.”

I don’t ask which one she means by that. I don’t want to think about it.

“Please tell Bianca I’m coming back,” I say.

Rogue gives me one last look and goes back into the front of the bar, while I sit in the back room for another minute.

I press my hand flat against my thigh, and I let myself feel the pain for sixty seconds.

All of it. The cut, the mess, the pain on Vero’s face, the words I said and the ones I didn’t.

I let it be as bad as it actually is instead of pretending it’s nothing.

One minute is all I am giving it tonight.

Then I stand up, take a deep breath, and go back to help put the bar back together.

Bianca doesn’t say anything when I take my spot beside her; she simply slides down to give me room. The music is still going, someone has righted the overturned table, and the glass has been swept up. The people who stayed have gone back to their drinks.

I pour a drink for a woman at the end of the bar who has been waiting patiently.

“Sorry about that,” I say.

She wraps both hands around the glass. “Honey,” she says. “Is he okay?”

I open my mouth.

“He loves you,” she adds. “You could see it from across the room. It’s just not . . .” She stops. “Sorry. None of my business.”

“It’s fine,” I say.

She’s right, it’s not her business.

Love can’t look like that. It cannot cost someone else’s face or my boss’s bar. Loving someone is not the same as letting them take up all the space inside and consume you.