“You see…if it was anyone else, you never would have risked so much.”
“But it was you.” I pushed myself from the ground, grabbed her hand. and pulled her against me. “It was you, and I risked everything because it was you. Because I fucking love you, and there isn’t anything in this entire goddamn world I wouldn’t do for you.” My words burned, my heart on the verge of being incinerated. “Even after everything that happened today, if I had to do it all over again…I would. In a fucking heartbeat. Don’t you see, Neon?” I wrapped my fingers tightly around her shoulders. “When it comes to you, there is nothing else—no oneelse. Only you. My world consists of only you.”
Squeezing her shoulders in my grasp, I pulled her close, kissing her hard—a desperate act of a desperate man determined to show her that my world now started and ended with only one thing…one person. Her.
Reluctantly, I tore my lips from hers, afraid my desperation would grow into a desire I wouldn’t be able to control. Already, I was hanging on by a goddamn thread around her.
Letting out a breath, her shoulders slumping forward, she leaned her head against my lips. “Thank you.” With tired eyes she peered up at me from under thick black lashes. “You gave me something today, something I never thought I’d have again.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?” I tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Control.”
My heart swelled inside my chest, and I was sure it would break through bone. Every risk I took for her had been worth it just by hearing her say that.
I hugged her, wrapping my arms around her tiny waist, and pulling it hard against mine.
“Stay with me tonight. Please.” Her whispered words brushed against my skin.
“Babe, if I have my way, I’ll be spending every night of my life in the same room as you.”
There was a hint of a smile on her face, but her eyes were sad, the radiance of her chocolate irises lost, grieving…just like our hearts.
I let go of her, gently wiping a lingering tear from her cheek. “Can I shower here, though?”
“Sure. Yeah. There’re clean towels in the cabinet below the sink.”
“Thanks.”
Blood had crusted in the corners of my nails, and I wasn’t even sure whose blood it was. That of my enemy, or the brother I lost. Ever since my path to vengeance started, I had dreamed of my hands coated in Slither’s blood, finding joy at the mere thought of it. But right now, I felt anything but joy. My emotions were all over the place, except high, where it would have been if things had just played out the way I imagined it.
But that was the thing about life—things hardly ever worked out the way you planned it. There was always some way or another life could fuck you in the ass, prove to you…you weren’t in control.
Leaning with my arms against the tiles, warm water cascaded down my back, and I watched as streaks of red swirled around my feet, disappearing down the drain. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself the blood I was washing off me was Slither’s, the image of the pool of crimson around Dutch’s body kept flashing before my eyes like a cruel fucking reminder that I got more blood on my hands than I bargained for.
Mia’s blood had been on my hands for years.
Countless men I’d killed in the name of the club, their blood was on my hands.
Slither’s blood.
Dutch’s blood.
I was nothing but a monster bathed in the blood of others. And unlike the water from the shower falling off my body, there was no getting rid of the blood on my hands. Ever.
The shower door opened, and I merely turned my head to the side, watching through a waterfall running over my eyes as Neon stepped in with me.
Without saying a word, she reached for the sponge, her naked body cold as it brushed against mine.
“What are you doing?”
Gently, she eased the sponge around my shoulders. “Taking care of you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do.” She stilled. “That’s what you do for people you love…you take care of them.”
My eyes closed, my heart trying to break out of my chest as I finally heard the words I’d longed to hear for so fucking long. It was more powerful than I ever could have imagined, her declaration of love wrecking me in the most beautiful way possible. I had no idea when it happened, but I lost myself to this woman somewhere along the way. All these years, I never realized just how fucking numb I was, until this exact fucking moment.