He nodded just once to acknowledge the forbidden aspect of his past lover. The exciting wrongness of it all.
“We kept it a secret while we were dating. Once we got engaged, I pushed to tell the higher-ups, but she didn’t want to.”
“Well, that’s not a great sign.”
James sighed heavily. “No, it’s not.”
“What happened?”
The cords in Reyes’ thick throat drew tight. A surprise gust of wind tousled his hair back, revealing the furrowed wrinkles in his forehead before he answered.
“She got sent on an undercover assignment. Never came back.”
Something in my chest caved like a boulder falling and splashing in the pit of my stomach, the waters reaching up and chilling my insides with horror.
“She was killed?”
James breathed a stiff laugh. “Worse. She joined their side.”
Oh shit.“Well that’s a twist ending I didn’t see coming.”
“Neither did I. Better pay. Less hours,” he spat, betrayal staining his words.
“Fuck, that’s harsh.”
“Not as harsh as what she told me when I went up to get her, thinking I could talk some sense into her.”
The more he spoke, the more his reluctance to relive past pain unraveled, unfolding a brutal tale of heartache and ruination laid on a man who was unquestionably terrified of both.
He didn’t hide it as well as he thought he did. It was sitting right there for anyone to see if they cared enough to look. I was trying my damndest not to care, and I still saw it. His need for control wasn’t born of ego or entitlement or even power. It was a learned behavior, born of fear and all of its paralyzing facets.
James Reyes was afraid of his pain, and that’s why he lived to control others.
“She’d been brainwashed by that point, and I knew before she even said anything that day that she wasn’t coming back. I spelled it out that she was being used for information and that there was no way they’d keep a former agent in their circle. That was three years ago, and they will kill her if they haven’t already.”
In the back of my mind, strange prickles of familiarity began to tap, tap, tap.
James pulled his lips back into a sneer. “To that, she said she’d rather die with them than live with me. And then she kept the fucking ring.”
Holy fuck.
No wonder he had issues.
“People are a constant disappointment, aren’t they?” Again, not a question, but a well-known fucking fact. “There’s not a single person on this Earth who makes me want to live on it,” I added, ducking my head to the side.
There had been one once, but I’d gone ahead and gotten him killed.
“Not even the person you called when you locked yourself in the bathroom at the motel?” James’ curious tone pulled my attention back to him, and I wanted to smile thinking of Demitri.
I wanted to, but I didn’t.
“He’s good.”
Too good for me.
I’d swallow his goodness up whole if I let myself love him like he wanted me to. I couldn’t do that to Demitri.
The fewer people who loved me, the less grief to go around when I was finally dead. Finally fucking dead in the ground where I belonged, black dirt strewn across my body and caked around my white as snow limbs, covering me in a permanent blanket of wet soil.