“This isn’t Romeo and Juliet, Rosie. You think only one person’s gonna die if we get found out? No. We both know, if you’ll just let yourself think about it logically for one second, that we keep doin’ this and we get found out, it isn’t only you and me in jeopardy. It’s your friends and family, your dad, Loulou and her fucking unborn children, your brother and his girlfriend, one of your best friends, Lila, Nova, and Bat, and Maja and Buck. You want to see all those lives go up in flames because we were too selfish to let go of this thing we got between us?”
He shook me gently by the shoulders, his eyes so green they burned through me like acid.
Something in me broke at the poignancy of his words and anger went flooding through me. I wanted to rally at the moon, curse the gods and sacrifice anyone but him. Instead, I shoved him away hard with a two-handed push and snarled at him even as I felt my heart beat and throb for him, the kick beat to every word I yelled.
“Loving you was never a decision I made. There was nothing conscious about it so how can I be logical about it now? I know it doesn’t make sense, the two of us, the good guy and the bad girl, with your family and my family. I know I make you crazy and I make you mad. You think I don’t know all that? Well, I do. So, stop telling me to think logically about this shit. There’s no logic to our love, only a feeling I’ve got so deep in the heart of me if I rip it out, I just know I’ll stop living.”
“You telling me you love me?” he asked, so low I almost didn’t hear the words, but I felt them. Each one hit a note deep inside me, plucking at an instrument only he knew how to play.
I blinked at him, chewed my lips and cursed myself for letting my hot head get me into such a fucked up, vulnerable situation, especially in the face of what I had to do.
But then it occurred to me that Reaper, Mutt and Twiz were outside waiting, guns at their belts and wicked knives in their boots. There was no getting out of what I had to do to guarantee my family’s safety.
It was Danner or them. And there were so many more of them, countless names that he had just reeled off like a grocery list.
One or a dozen.
The love of my life or the people who had given me life and raised me.
I knew what the answer would be.
So, I sucked in a deep breath and decided to be selfish like only I could be.
I decided to enjoy the only moment I would ever have with him where I could love him freely.
“Yeah, so what?” I said, sassy because he liked it and I knew it. “It’s not like you don’t love me too.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” he agreed instantly, in that long, honeyed drawl he used when I said something that affected him. “I love you and know the way most people know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, that bikers know the sound of Harley pipes, and cops know the difference between fucking right and fucking wrong that you and I are made for each other.”
“Fuck,” I breathed through the rush of tears attacking the backs of my eyes. “You’re going to make me cry again. Jesus Christ, what is wrong with me lately?’
Danner bit the side of his grin but then gave up and blasted me with the beauty of his full smile, creases cut into his cheeks and pressed beside his glittering eyes. I even loved his strong, square teeth so white against his skin.
“Fuck,” I repeated again, feeling overwhelmed nearly to the point of hysteria. “I feel like I might faint or something equally wussy.”
His head tipped back as he laughed, exposing the long column of his throat. Before that moment, I’d never known an Adam’s apple could be so goddamn sexy. Before I could shake myself out of my stupor, he was on me, lifting me into the air so that I instinctively wrapped myself around him.
“You love me, Rosie?” he asked, looking up at me with carefree joy, his face boyishly open.
I wanted to rip him apart limb by limb with my teeth and fingers turned into claws. I wanted to hold his lion’s heart in my hands too tightly and feel it beat and throb for me, against me. I wanted to disassemble him, piece by bloody piece, to satisfy my burning passion, my crushing rage at the changes he’d wrought on my life and me.
But then…I wanted to sit crossed-legged in the middle of the mess, smooth my claws turned fingers over the jagged edges of him and put him back together again. I wanted to trace the outline of each of his limbs, knot together his muscles and slot his bones into their joints. I wanted to sew myself into every atom of his DNA and live there forever, intrinsically tied to him so that if any force tried to tear me away like I knew they would, they’d have to kill him to separate us.
It was a gruesome way to love someone, but it was the way I felt about Lionel Danner and I knew that would never change.
“Yeah, Lion,” I said, placing a hand on his strong-boned face. “I fucking love you, okay?”
I gasped as he slid me down his body, each hard plane gliding against my slight curves like a rough caress, and he took advantage of my parted lips by sealing them with his own.
He kissed me like he owned me, one hand going to the skin over my heart and pressed there, warm and heavy, and the other diving into my hair so he could hold me how he wanted. I felt his claim almost painfully as he tattooed himself into every inch of my skin, synchronized himself to every beat of my reborn heart.
“Fucking love you too,” he rasped against my damp lips before pushing me back against the counter. “Brutally, savagely, fucking endlessly.”
I felt my broken heart in my chest, the poisoned blood beating through each chamber until it pumped out through my veins suffused with light so my plasma felt like champagne. Giddiness swelled in my belly and I let it out with a diaphanous giggle that didn’t suit me at all.
He was a good man.
The kind to help old ladies across the street, save kittens from lofty tree branches and open car doors for his dates.
But he was a bad man too.
The kind that liked to mark my skin with ruddy bruises and stripe my ass like a fucking candy cane with the harsh lash of his belt.
He was good gone bad and it was all because of me.
The truth of it shouldn’t have razed through me like a forest fire until I was just cinders and ash in his hand, but it did.
He wasn’t all good and I wasn’t bad.
Not separately, and definitely not together.
Together we were a lot of things, and none of them made any sense, but all of them worked.
I focused on his lips on mine, the feel of his warmth around me, the way his hands cradled my face as if I was precious. And I realized that rotten seed in the center of my soul was gone, that implant from Farrah that had always told me I wasn’t worthy eradicated by his love.
Danner was the best man I knew, and he loved me.
Actually, loved me.
Tears pooled in the backs of my eyes and slid down my cheeks.
I held him close, kissing him with the entirety of my ferocious passion for him and carefully moved one hand across the counter to the cutting board. My fingers clenched around the cool handle, the weight of the knife so similar to the cleaver, but the situation in such contrast to the one with Cricket that for a brief moment, I hesitated.
I pulled away from him so he could see my eyes, filled with tears and the wreckage of a self-broken heart and I whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
Then I plunged the heavy blade into his soft flesh.