I wished him suffering. Pain.
But not an end to his life. Not an end to chances to make his life better.
But this woman had beauty in her life. This woman had a half of Gage, had a family with him, and she’d murdered it.
A little girl.
Bile rose in my throat.
I struggled to stop myself from throwing up at the thought. That’s how violently ill it made me. Just hearing it. A decade on.
I couldn’t imagine what it was living it.
How Gage lived it.
But I know killing that woman—that monster—was an unforgivable sin, at least in the eyes of whatever passed for God these days.
But not to me.
I didn’t consider it a sin. I considered it a service.
Because after, Gage had literally torn the skin from his body. Cut at it. Hacked at it. Scarred it forever.
I swallowed razors. “Do you…?” I swallowed again, seriously worried about my ability to calm my stomach. “Do you still do it?” I asked, my voice a shadow.
His eyes were leveling. “No, babe, not since I patched into the club. Not since Ranger found me while in his own personal Hell and the club dragged us both out. Not gonna lie, there’re times when the pursuit of the opposite of nothing seems impossible without a knife, blood and pain—I mean my own, since I do it to others often enough—but then I met you. And you’re my new torture. Though I’m not sure which of us I’m torturing more.”
I forced myself not to break his gaze. “You’re not torturing me. You’re loving me.”
His eyes were cold. “My love is torture, Lauren.”
“Without love, life is a tomb,” I whispered.
“Robert Browning doesn’t mean shit in my life,” he growled back.
“The very fact that you know that’s Robert Browning means everything.” I stepped forward, boxing him in, using my body to make sure he couldn’t escape. Because he was used to battling, and he was used to winning. But I wasn’t going to let him win if that meant he was going to leave. “You made your tomb because you think your past defines your future. That your darkness defines the amount of light you’re going to be entitled to.”
“I’m not entitled to shit, Lauren,” he hissed. “You most of all. Your fucking light.”
“Why?”
He glowered and the cords of his neck strained with his need to move. To fight. But that would mean he’d have to fight me to move. And he didn’t seem like he was ready to do that yet.
“Why?” he repeated, voice low and dangerous. “Just fucking look at me, Lauren.” He yanked up his sleeves, thrust his arms in my face. “This is fucking why!”
He was trying to push me away and hold me tight at the same time. Because there were two different versions of himself, like there were of me. My light and dark side. But he had only the blackest of midnights and the onyx of the grave inside him. Because he was blaming himself for too much. For his daughter dying. For not noticing an addiction that he himself had battled.
For killing the woman suffering from that addiction.
For killing countless people after that.
“You’re carrying your guilt around like a pebble in the base of your shoe. You can still walk with it. Live with it. But it’s uncomfortable. Painful. Unnecessary.” I held up my hand when his eyes glittered with fury. “Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, Gage. I’m not talking about your suffering. Your grief. People who torture others—or worse, torture themselves, do not have monopoly over suffering, Gage. But hearing your story, the nightmare you’ve freaking lived, that you’re always going to live, has showed me that if I want a life with you, then that suffering will always be between us.” I took a breath as he tensed. “And I want life with you. Death. Suffering. Make no mistake about it, because I need you. More than I need the sun. More than the ocean. More than the order of my life. Because suffering in chaos is better than pretending I’m not suffering in logic. But you need to let go of that guilt for what you think you did to your daughter, because it won’t serve you. It’s going to destroy you.”
“It already fucking has.”
I shook my head. “You’re here. In front of me. And you’ve changed my life. People who’ve been destroyed don’t do that. But I know you need to destroy others to do that. To keep on. You need blood, pain, death. And you don’t think I can handle or understand that that’s going to be a constant need. That I don’t realize that no matter how good things are with us, it won’t change the bad you need. But I do. And I can handle it. Will continue to do so until we conclude.”