16. Nyah
NYAH
Dear Diary,
He warned her about the wrong monster.
Cops swarmed the clubhouse within minutes of War calling it in. They came with sirens blaring and lights flashing.
The media followed. Cameras and microphones were shoved in the faces of anyone they could find, and War ordered everyone, me, Luca, and Dax included, back behind the gates.
He locked them tight, telling Fang and Hawk, who stood like soldiers staring out at the carnage on the other side, that no one entered without a warrant.
One by one, the guys all called in their families, until the clubhouse was bursting at the seams with people. I moved around, made coffee, and helped prepare food in the kitchen because there was suddenly a lot of mouths to feed.
But the entire time I felt like I was being stared at. I was sure they all knew I’d spent the night in Lynx’s bed, and that at some point while I’d slept, he’d gotten up and murdered a woman.
None of it made any sense. I poured drinks and nodded woodenly when spoken to, but I couldn’t make any of it fit together in my head. Lynx had liked Virginia. The two of them had been my only friends when I’d been at the Guerra house. I couldn’t believe Lynx would do this. I just couldn’t.
The longer the day wore on, the more sure I became.
I found Dax outside the clubhouse, sitting on one of the weather-worn chairs mostly used by the members who smoked. I stood beside him and ran my fingers through his hair absentmindedly. “Did you get something to eat?” I eventually asked because the silence was killing me.
“Not hungry.”
I wasn’t surprised. Neither was I, but preparing food had given me something to do other than just sit and cry.
Dax stared out into the trees while the sun started to sink. “I’m going to hurt you.”
I stilled my fingers in his hair because those words on his tongue didn’t make any sense. “No, you’re not.”
He finally looked up at me. “You care about him. So when I kill him, it’s going to hurt you. And for that, I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t even know how I’ll live with myself, but I don’t know what else to do.”
I breathed out a long, shaky breath, but fear came with it. Not for me and the hurt Dax was promising to deliver to my doorstep.
But because I could hear in his voice he’d already become judge, jury, and executioner. And he’d decided Lynx was guilty.
I’d never thought of Dax as a man who could kill. Luca could. Lynx, obviously. But Dax was soft and gentle. He could fight, but he was the sort of man who walked away from one when it wasn’t for sport.
His kindness was one of the things I loved most about him.
I had always been surrounded by men with no respect for human life.
My father, my uncles, my brothers, the Guerras, the people they associated with…
none of them cared about putting a bullet in the head of another man. Or about selling a woman.
But Dax cared. He cared so fucking deeply it was who he was, right down to his core.
But right now, he wasn’t that man.
He was just a man who’d lost his mother in the most brutal of ways, and he was searching for someone to blame.
“It wasn’t Lynx, Dax. I swear, he wouldn’t do this.”
Dax snorted, pulling away from my touch. “You aren’t seriously defending him? You saw the marks on her back, Nyah! They were identical to the ones Lynx leaves on his victims.”
I bristled at his tone, my gut and a little piece of my heart unwilling to hear anyone talk bad about a man I cared about. Even if it was the man I loved. “Anyone could have copied him. Why would he go after your mother? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Dax’s frustration and grief all spewed from his lips. “Serial killers don’t need to make sense, Nyah! All they need is opportunity. She thought I was here! If she was on her way to see me, and she crossed his path while he was triggered, which we all fucking knew he was, then—”
I refused to believe it. “He was with me. And Luca. We…”
He stared at me. “You what?”
I said nothing.
He blinked, realization settling on him. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, his shoulders drooping. “Wow. Okay. You and Lynx and Luca.”
I hated the hurt on his face. He might have said I could have whatever, and whoever I wanted, but when presented with the facts I’d spent the night between two other men, he was clearly jealous.
I hated I’d made him feel like that. And yet I also knew I’d done what I could. I’d been honest in how I felt and he was allowed to feel however he needed to feel too.
I couldn’t give up Luca and Lynx any more than I could give up Dax.
He shook his head, not with anger or even sadness, but more like he was trying to shake everything around in his brain so it made sense. “So you’re telling me Lynx was with you all night?”
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to lie for him, and say I’d woken up wrapped in his arms, hot and bothered from sleeping in them all night.
And yet I couldn’t. Because it wasn’t the truth.
“He left at some point. I haven’t seen him since.”
Dax gave me a knowing look and pressed to his feet. “He’s a dead man walking, Nyah. I’ll never forgive myself for hurting you, but I’ll never forgive myself for allowing this to happen to my mother either.”
I grabbed his hand when he tried to walk away. “This isn’t your fault.”
He spun back and glared at me. “Of course it is! I should have done more. Should have taken her somewhere safe. But instead, I was all wrapped up in you. I spent the night we got home touching and kissing you. Fucking you. Because you were all I’d thought about, all I’d wanted for months.
And now my mother is dead because I didn’t do enough to protect her from a danger I fucking knew was lurking. ”
I squeezed his fingers desperately, so badly wanting him to hear me. “You did nothing wrong! You called her and told her not to go back to the Guerras’.”
“It wasn’t enough though, was it? Apparently, I warned her about the wrong monster.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
He pulled his hand away. “I can’t do this with you right now. I love you, so fucking much, but I just need to be alone tonight.”
I nodded, understanding, but still hating it. Nothing good happened when he and I were apart.
But I let him go.
He kissed my mouth so gently that I knew every word he’d said was true. How Dax felt about me was always obvious in every touch, every look. But he was battling demons in his head and grief in his heart, and I couldn’t fix that for him. He just had to go through it, one day at a time.
As evolved as Dax was, if he didn’t want to fall apart in front of me and just wanted to hide somewhere to lick his wounds, that was understandable.
As long as he stayed here.
And Lynx stayed away.
Because I knew Lynx hadn’t done this. And there was no way I was letting Dax or anyone else hurt him. “You take the bedroom we had the other night,” I said softly.
“No, you take that.”
“It’s a full house here tonight. Every bed and couch is going to be needed. I’ll sleep in Lynx’s room.”
Dax’s eyes darkened. “Not a fucking chance.”
I pressed my finger against his lips. “Nobody else will.” I’d seen the way everyone had given Lynx’s room a wide berth, like he might suddenly spring out of it and shout, “Surprise! Who wants to die next?”
People were already filling air mattresses and finding spots on the common room floor, so leaving a perfectly good bed empty, one I’d slept in the night before, didn’t make any sense.
“It’s really not your choice where I sleep.”
There was no sass in my tone. It was quiet and honest, but a reminder that while I loved his protective side, he didn’t get to dictate what I did.
Dax’s expression gentled, like he knew I was right.
And that was the difference between him and my father and Carlos. The older men would have pinned me down, put me in a cage, forced me to submit to their will.
Dax listened when I told him what I needed.
And then gave it to me unconditionally.
So I was doing the same for him, in giving him space when he asked for it.
“Goodnight,” he said, strain in his voice.
“Goodnight.”
I didn’t speak to anyone else. Violet grabbed my hand as I passed her, and she squeezed it reassuringly, but I could feel everyone else’s gazes following me, right up until I slipped inside Lynx’s room.
I tried sitting on the mattress, the springs giving a squeak of protest at having to accommodate my weight.
Even through the door I could hear the hushed conversations, everyone so sure Lynx had murdered a woman in cold blood and left her body barely past the Slayers’ gates as some sort of…
what? Tribute? Warning? Prize? None of it made any sense to me, but I seemed to be the only one on Lynx’s side.
Except maybe for Reaper, I knew him better than anyone. And my entire body twitched, knowing that Lynx was out there somewhere, and that something was very wrong. I opened the window and sucked in deep breaths of cold night air.
I knew he hadn’t done this. Triggered or not, he was not that man.
I fell asleep in sheets that smelled like him, knowing with every inch of my being, no matter how bad it looked, of this crime Lynx was not guilty.
My dreams turned into nightmares within moments of closing my eyes.
One minute, everything was fine in my head, and in the next, everything was all wrong.
Blood spilled across white floors. Virginia’s unseeing eyes stared up at me, but her mouth moved, saying my name over and over, begging me to save her.
I drifted in and out of consciousness, my kicking and thrashing around the bed keeping me too aware, the sheets crumpling into a ball somewhere at the bottom, sweat breaking out across my skin and plastering my hair to my face.
When I woke with screaming in my head, I was sure it was about to come out of my mouth as well.