Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC) (25 page)

He kept dragging me. “I’m gettin’ you the fuck out of here and somewhere where I can shake some fuckin’ sense into you,” he growled, bursting through the double doors and into the parking lot.

I started to panic as the dirt became unbearable and his touch had my mind flickering between the parking lot and that room.

The room where I was covered in dirt. Nothing but dirt and ice.

“The man who is dragging me bodily is talking about sense?” I shrieked. I kept struggling against his grip. “Let me go,” I ordered.

Gabriel ignored me, just kept dragging me through the parking lot.

I didn’t notice anything except the way his hand on mine made the grime unbearable. It was creeping up my arm like a flesh-eating virus and it had to stop. I wrenched my hand from his grasp but it didn’t work, so I stopped, forcing him to stop too. It was either that or drag me. The look on his face might’ve been foreign, but I didn’t think he was about to drag my limp body on the ground through a parking lot.

“Let me go!” I screamed, unable to hold the panic and terror in anymore. Because the longer his touch remained on me, the longer I was in that place, in that room.

He did so immediately. My voice had been unrecognizable even to myself.

“You can’t touch me,” I said, my voice lower, hoarser. “I can’t have that.” I rubbed my arms in an effort to get it off. “I can’t have people touching me,” I muttered, trying desperately to escape that little room.

“Fuck,” he whispered, all rage gone from his voice. Only sorrow and regret was left. I felt him more than saw him step back.

I blinked and was back in the parking lot, looking at Gabriel put his hands to the back of his neck, his face tortured.

There was silence in that moment, enough of it for me to get my breath back, to convince myself that there was nothing under my skin.

His eyes burned into mine and he moved his foot an inch, then froze, as if he realized I needed the distance. “You’re safe, Becky,” he whispered, his hands clenched at his sides. “No one’s touching you. No one’s hurting you.”

I clung to his words like a life raft.

“I—” He took a breath. “Fuck, I didn’t mean to come in there like that. Do this to you.” His gaze flickered up my body. “I’m sorry, Becky. So fuckin’ sorry. I didn’t realize—”

“It’s fine.” I was finding my strength now that the images were gone. Now that his touch was gone. “I’m fine,” I lied.

He wasn’t convinced.

“Apart from being moderately pissed off that you came into my place of work shouting and acting like a maniac,” I added icily.

He clutched the back of his neck once more, his jaw hard. “I didn’t mean to lose it, Becky. I fuckin’ promise. Jesus, I know I need to handle you with care. I only just got you back. I didn’t recognize that.” He nodded to the building. “But when Gage told me you were going back to work, I saw red.” His eyes went hard. “What the fuck are you thinking, Becky?” His voice was soft, but the edges were rough with fury.

I folded my arms. “I was thinking that this is my life and I’m in control of how I live it.” I paused. “And I’m totally not inviting Gage to my next sleepover. That mute can’t keep a secret.”

The cords in his neck pulsed, I was guessing at the effort it took to stay calm. “Yeah, babe. It’s your life. I want you to live it. You don’t, I don’t fuckin’ live mine,” he declared. “So I don’t want you self-destructin’, doing something you think you need to do to prove to people, to yourself. Jesus.” He ran his hands over his head. “After what you went through? Puttin’ yourself on stage?” He shook his head. “I can’t let you do that, Becky.”

I glared at him. “I wasn’t asking permission.” I sucked in a breath. “I didn’t ask for any of this.” I waved my hands down my body, between us. “For you to come into my life. To get so wrapped up in you I don’t know where you begin and I end. I certainly didn’t ask for that…. I may have set events in motion to make it so, but I didn’t ask for them to take me. To do what they did to me. To turn into this person, this thing I am now. No, it all just happened. I had no control. I don’t have control over any of that shit. Over the fact I can’t even stand my best friend fuckin’ hugging me because any human touch sends me right back into that room. That all hurtles out of my control. That”—I pointed to the building—“is something I can control, screwed up as it sounds. It’s the only thing I can control right now. So I’m doing it, whether you like it or not. And I’m sorry if it hurts you or damages your ego or whatever, but I don’t care. I can’t take on your shit as well as mine. I’ve got to be selfish right now or I’ll lose it.”

I was breathing heavily by the time I finished on a whisper. I didn’t exactly mean to blurt all of that out, but it had come to a bottleneck.

Gabriel wasn’t breathing heavily. He didn’t look like he was breathing at all. He was a statue, a beautiful, damaged statue, coated in rage and regret. The moment yawned into silence that filled the open air with my words. I was tempted to do something to break it, but I’d said enough. Far too much.

I was also tempted to wave my hand in front of his stone eyes to make sure he hadn’t left the building.

“Okay,” he said finally, his voice low and rough. “I get it, not havin’ control. ’Cause that’s all I want, to be able to control every single thing you can’t. To make it better, or at least kill the people who made it that way.” He clenched his fists to his sides. “And because I’ve got no one to kill, no way to control what they’ve done, I want to control you. Yeah, it’s fucked-up no matter what way you look at it, that need to control everything you do to make sure you’re never hurt again, but that’s me. That’s the real me. Fucked-up in ways I didn’t even know I could be. And I don’t want to be normal ’cause that means I won’t be tangled up in you either. So I can’t control you. I won’t like it.” His hard gaze traveled from me to the building. “In fact, I’m tempted to finish what that fucker started and burn that place to the ground so you won’t have anywhere to go but to me. But that’s ’cause I’m selfish too. But I’ll find a way to get right with it, only ’cause I can’t breathe without knowin’ you’re safe. This month, not being able to see you, has been hell. Having everyone see you?” He shook his head. “’Spect that’ll be similar. But I’ll deal.”

I drank in his words, sweet and bitter at the same time. Everything I wanted to hear but nothing I could handle.

“I can’t stay away from you, Becky,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

I stared at him. “I don’t want you to,” I admitted, sick of lying to myself. “But I don’t know how to be around you now. I barely know how to be around myself. It hurts to see you. What you are. What I turned you into. But it hurts so much more not to see you.”

He stepped forward, careful not to touch me. “You didn’t turn me into anything,” he growled. “They did. And they’ll die a thousand fuckin’ deaths once I get my hands on them, you can trust that. You’re sayin’
you’re
selfish? I gotta be too. I can’t not be around you, babe. Just can’t. I’ll wait for however long it takes for you to get to know yourself. I’ll wait a fuckin’ year just to get you to hold my fuckin’ hand. But I’ll be waiting here.” He pointed to the ground between us. “Not close enough to touch, but close enough to fuckin’ feel. Feel the way the bitterness on my tongue goes away knowin’ you’re here, breathin’, existin’ survivin’. And I won’t go ’cause I know, underneath it all, you don’t want me to either.”

My shaking hands went to my hair and he followed their journey. “Okay,” I whispered.

He jolted.

“But I don’t know how long I’ll take. You could be old and fat and gray by the time I’m ready.”

A shadow of his old grin tickled his face as he rubbed his flat stomach. “Can’t fatten a thoroughbred.” He winked. “You look wiped. Can I walk the lady to her car?”

I nodded, slightly thrown by the change in persona. It was something I was coming to expect, but the effect was that much more jarring when I could see through the transparency of his actions.

We started walking together in silence until we got to my beat-up car.

He faced me. “Any chance you’ve changed your mind about getting up on stage?”

I raised a brow. “In the thirty seconds it took us to reach my car?”

He nodded seriously.

“No. I’m stubborn. You know that. And it’s what I’m going to do, like it or not.”

His eyes flickered. “I’m gonna go with not. But I’ll deal.”

“‘Deal’ does not mean you shoot anyone in the audience.”

He scowled at me. “When was that agreed upon?”

“I think that’s just something universally known. You don’t shoot people for patroning a strip club,” I said, rifling through my bag for my keys. I was driving now, all by myself, with only one panic attack that had me parked on the side of the road for half an hour. But I dealt. I found them and glanced back up at Gabriel. “One you seem to own, so I think shootings might hurt your bottom line.”

He clenched his jaw. “I don’t give a fuck about my bottom line. I give a fuck about you.”

I sucked in a breath, trying to find a way to navigate this situation. Gabriel beat me to it when his eyes zeroed in on my arm.

“Becky,” he said quietly, almost a whisper. “You get a tattoo?”

I couldn’t quite understand his tone, so I turned my arm up for him to inspect, careful to keep from touching distance. It was healing now, flaking at the edges, but still looking pretty kick-ass.

Tattoos were definitely something I could get addicted to.

Though that wasn’t saying much. I could get addicted to anything—Pop-Tarts, serial killer documentaries, people. More accurately, the man in front of me tracing my new ink with his hazel eyes.

“
The Walking Dead
, I dig it,” he said finally.

I frowned at him. “I’m kind of used to following your train of thought, but even I’m lost now.”

His eyes met mine. Something twinkled from underneath their new hard shell. “The quote. It’s from
The Walking Dead
. Great show. Glenn is, like, my spirit animal. You’re definitely Maggie.”

I blinked at him. “Okay, I have no clue what you’re talking about, but this quote isn’t from a zombie show. It’s from a book. Ever heard of them?”

He pretended to ponder. “They’re just like really long magazines, right? Without the pictures?”

I wanted to smile. I almost did. That stupid little line gave me hope that Gabriel was still there. That this stranger was temporary and I hadn’t damned him for eternity.

My hope was quashed when he stepped forward. When the stranger stepped forward and Gabriel disappeared. He made sure not to touch me.

“Why, babe?” He nodded down to the ink.

I swallowed. “I’m covered in scars that I didn’t get a choice in.” I glanced down at the one on my arm from where the handcuffs had scraped my wrist almost to the bone. “Most of them you can’t see. Which is good ’cause if you could, that’s all you’d ever see. The ribbons of scarred skin, the ruins of me. I wanted to put something permanent there that I designed, that I controlled. I’ve got a mostly blank canvas on the outside, so maybe if I cover it with beauty I can disguise the ugly, even from myself.”

He stood there for a long time after I said those words, digesting them. “I hate this,” he rasped, his voice rough with emotion. “That you can’t see that you are beautiful, with or without the ink. Though, I can admit, the prospect of you covered is fuckin’ brilliant.” He gazed at me. “I hate that this darkness has settled over you, swallowed you so you’re blind to your magnificence.”

I stared at him. “I hate it too. But it’s life. And I’m here. And that’s it,” I whispered.

“I’m gonna get you out, baby. If that’s the last thing I do, I’ll tear you out of the shadow of this fucking thing.”

I stared at him. “That’s the thing. I don’t need the light, and I don’t need saving. I’m learning to love this darkness because I’ve realized it’s always going to be me. There’s no changing what they did, only learning to accept what they made me. What I’ve turned into to survive. And I think the only place I can survive is the hell I’m in. I’ll make it homey, chuck in some throw pillows. I think I can survive here. Maybe even live, actually
live.
Not as the same person I was before, but as someone who kind of resembles her.” I glanced down at my arm. “Or maybe someone completely different, a whole new stranger I’ll get to know. Either way, I’ve got to find a way to embrace it all. The ugly, shitty, and uglier.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“If I can’t bring my Becky back into the light, then I’ll just have to make the dark comfortable as fuck. Make it better than before. If you’re settling into hell, then I’ll make it our own version of heaven. Let the darkness come.”

This was a lot.

Too much.

“Why do we always have these conversations in fucking parking lots?” I huffed.

He shrugged. “’Cause mostly our shit’s too big to be contained in one room. We need the open air to swallow it up, give us a chance to breathe. And we will. Breathe, that is.” He leaned in to take the keys from me. His tattooed hand just brushed mine, but it was enough to set my skin afire with ice. I stepped back, hitting the side of my car.

He pretended to ignore that and unlocked it for me, putting the keys in the ignition. “Go home, babe. Breathe,” he ordered softly. “’Cause I know this, us, even without the monsters in your head, is hard for you to fathom. So go have some time. Some. Not a lot. Then we’ll take it slow. Take the darkness. Make it ours.”

He moved forward, like he wanted to kiss me. I stiffened and he caught himself. Instead he gave me a stiff nod and walked away.

I watched the leather of his cut as he did so. Watched the darkness trail behind him like invisible smoke only I could see.

I sucked in a breath. Then another one.

Then I got in the car. And it wasn’t empty. It was full with my monsters. The ones I was yet to tame.

He leaned forward on the table, clenching his fists. “She can’t deal with anyone touching her,” he bit out. He kept his head down but felt the atmosphere in the room change. “Even Lily. Her fuckin’ best friend. Says she can’t even stand her touch. Makes her feel
dirty
,” he spat, his body shaking. He snapped his head up, meeting his president’s troubled gaze. “Why the fuck don’t I have anyone to punish for that, Cade? Someone whose skin I can rip off their fuckin’ face? It’s been
weeks.
And I don’t get that. It’s easy. Track down scumbags. Kill scumbags. Rinse, repeat.”