Chapter 20 Indie #2
I can see the clogs turning around in his head, trying to fit the pieces of information together. The last time he saw me, I was a shell.
Fractured. Hurting. Lost.
You’d take one look at me and think I was never coming back.
The turn of events life handed me were always going to have a profound impact, but this is something no one saw coming, not even me.
When I don’t answer, he continues, “Do you know how insane that sounds? I haven’t seen or heard from you in six years. Then I find you sneaking onto my rented property, with a fucking rifle, in the middle of the night, trying to take me out?”
“I didn’t know it was you! Someone we were looking for was there.
We started it after…” My exhale shudders, taking away another truth I rarely voice.
“We uncovered some type of secret society from university. All of them are hiding something, Saint. Every victim we found had the same thing that happened to Gina and me done to them.”
I battle with myself internally, watching the way his face constricts with each of my words.
“You…left without saying goodbye, and a year later, Gina and I started this.”
Saint flinches, but he skips over my revelation on what I’ve been doing with my life since he’s been gone.
“Are you serious?” He eyes me, the rise in his voice no longer there. He sounds…hurt.
An emotionally filled golf ball tries to dislodge itself down my throat when I swallow.
“I know I pushed you away. I’ve had to live with that regret every single day since, and the day I felt strong enough to not burden you with my darkness, you were already gone. I know it was selfish to expect you to wait for me during that time. But I…”
The rest of the words die off. I sound so fucking condescending.
It’s a mixture of anger, heartbreak, and pain.
Each of them I brought on by myself for what I did to us, thinking I was doing the right thing.
The moment I realised how truly wrong I was, that if I’d just worked on myself with him by my side.
I might never have darkened my entire soul beyond repair.
Saint could have likely talked me off the edge, saving Regina in the process, too.
But those days were dark, and nothing could have kept my head clear enough to see what I do now.
Not even him.
It’s a double-ended sword, because I like what I do.
I know that’s absolutely grounds to charge me as clinically insane, but being able to offer people like me a real method of justice? Not an ounce of regret seeps through my body.
It wouldn’t be right for us to only go after the two that hurt us, when there’s evidently an entire swarm of them.
His voice is barely above a whisper, to the point I almost missed it. I’ve never heard Saint’s voice sound so small.
“Didn’t you read the letter?”
My muscles tense up. “What letter?”
I move from the safety of the wall, daring myself to take a step closer to him.
His chest expands as he inhales, and I’m smacked once again with the intoxicating scent that is Saint.
“I wrote you a letter. I gave you my new number to contact me, and an address where you could write to”—he swallows, gaze shifting above my head before it locks with mine—“and whenever you were ready, I’d come back for you.”
My heart twists agonisingly inside my chest, like there’s barbed wire imbedding itself around it, the pricks penetrating through the muscle.
I didn’t receive a single sign that he even existed.
He’d vanished without a trace, leaving me living in a world tortured by his ghost, and the remorse for making the biggest mistake of my life.
I broke his heart, and his face when I spoke my last ever words to him tortures me more above anything else.
He reads my silence as an answer, his eyes jamming closed.
“Fuck,” he grits out, reaching his arm behind him as he tugs his phone from his back pocket to write a text.
Clicks from his fingers battering the screen is the only sound between us. The speed matches the same rate my pulse is strumming at.
“What’s wrong?” I eventually manage to ask, watching the tight muscles of his shoulders tense, the veins in his neck protruding against inked skin as he barks something out through text.
The sound of the message sending swooshes through the tension between us.
“Doesn’t matter right now. But listen to me, Indie, you’re in danger. Serious fucking danger. You and Regina need to leave, right fucking now.” He marches to the window, peering out to the side as he nods his head.
“Wait, Saint—”
“You’ve both been fooled, and this goes way beyond Sumus.
The person that asked you to take me out?
They’re bigger than anyone you’ve likely dealt with.
Seriously. You have no idea what they’re capable of, or what the fuck you might have gotten yourself involved in.
” He softens his voice, those familiar eyes scalding onto mine.
“These people don’t leave behind unfinished business, and that’s what you’ve now become. ”
Wait.
I didn’t even mention the name Sumus. How the hell does he know about them?
Regina and I obviously knew something had gone wrong; everything’s been sketchy since the get go, now that I look back. But the fear in his voice?
It threatens my own.
“Our contact tried to hack our system; Gina stopped them.”
He drags his bottom lip between his teeth, cursing under his breath.
His phone dings again, and he immediately replies, occasionally flickering a glance up to me.
My hand smooths up my arm, feeling the trail of goosebumps that haven’t settled since he made his presence known.
“Why were they trying to kill you?” I finally ask, breaking the silence between us.
Why would anyone want to hurt him?
I get he looks like one of those guys assholes might want to mess with, but what the hell has he been doing during our time apart?
What does he know about them that I don’t?
“It’s a long, long story.”
“I’ve got time.” I fold my arms across my chest.
His phone goes off again, and he keeps his focus on whoever he’s communicating with when he answers me.
“No you don’t. Where is Gina?”
Shit.
This might be the event that pushes her off the edge if she sees Saint up here.
She thinks—knows—he’s my unhealthy obsession.
The fact he was the guy that chased me through the woods like a gun-wielding maniac, and it wasn’t John?
She’s going to have fucking kittens.
“Out getting a new setup. Where the hell are we supposed to go? We can’t just leave.”
This is our home, and despite the hurricane of feelings I have right now, there’s still so much to process, years’ worth. So many questions lining up in my head and fighting with the need for answers.
Where did you go?
How do you know about Sumus?
What did your letter say?
Are you still in love with me as much as I am with you?
“My people will clear the house. You two are coming with us.” He finally pockets the phone, giving me his full attention.
There’s a deadly concoction brewing in me.
My heart skittering that he’s swooping me out of here, taking me with him after years apart.
My independence, on the other hand?
It’s ready to crack its foot down that he’s just outright demanded we leave without knowing what’s going on.
“No, you can tell me first, before Gina gets back. You can’t just show up here and bark fucking orders, Saint. Let’s not forget you chased me with a gun less than twenty-four hours ago.”
A knowing, wicked smile comes over his face, his eyes darkening with a look that I’ve been all too familiar with in the past.
It’s like a ravenous hunger, and those same damn feelings dust themselves off inside me, rising like a phoenix from their ashes as he steps closer to me.
“A feisty little thing now, aren’t you? You used to love the chase.”
He looks me up and down, and it dawns on me that I’m almost naked.
There was a time I was the shyest person in the world around him, and then he coerced something feral out of me.
Moulding me into a woman who was confident around her man, but most importantly, herself.
One who would willingly drop to her knees to obey the creature before her, do anything to please him.
I managed to crawl my way back, only this time the inside of me mirrors a darkness I used to glimpse inside of him.
I was reborn the minute I took another’s life, and I’ve never looked back since.
He steps another foot forward, and my back hits against the wall. Butterflies erupt in my chest as he cages me in, his thick arms going to either side of my head, the veins protruding against his inked forearms.
His darkening gaze lazily roams over me, igniting heat over the laser trail he leaves on my skin, awakening a need deep inside my core.
“Put some clothes on. I’m not in the mood to kill anyone on my team today.”