He steals the bottle from me, twists the cap on it, and sets it to the side. “I’m going to need you to clarify that, Mary. What do you mean you didn’t care? You knew what they were going to do to you, right? They weren’t the kind of men that were going to tell you they loved you or fluff your goddamn pillow at night.”
“I know. They were going to drug me, keep me loopy, use me up, and spit me out. I know. Yeah, that didn’t scare me. Like I said, it would have been a good change to the norm.”
“And what was the norm?” he asks.
I turn to him when I hear the murderous rage. His jaw ticks, and the Knives that is about to flip the switch and disappear from this moment is close to the surface.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me. No one knows anything about you.”
“I don’t know anything about you either,” I point out, then reach out to steal the whiskey from the side of him, but he snatches it away from me in time.
“I’m an open book.”
“With a damn lock on it that no one has the key to,” I sass, and my words take him by surprise, so I hurry to grab the bottle. “Got to be faster than that!”
And then he jerks it away from me right as I take the cap off. “Gotta have a tighter grip than that!” he winks, and the way his lashes curl at the tip and fan over his cheek, heat floods me.
My nipples bead, and I pull my legs up to my chest to hide the traitors. The way he says, ‘I need a tighter grip’ sounds like there are implications in it, like he is giving me a dirty secret.
Maybe he likes a tight grip?
“So, what’s the story with Mary St. James, Hellraiser? What has her wild?” he asks, eyes glittering with humor.
Being wild isn’t new.
My wild just isn’t being suffocated.
I’m free.
The moment I could, I unleashed what’s been hidden inside me for so long. It isn’t about being untamed or a rebel.
It’s about living, and that’s all I’ve ever really wanted.
I’ve only ever want to feel alive.
Not just to wake up every day, thankful for the heartbeat in my chest, but the electricity in my veins and the wild thump of my heart when something exciting happens, that kind of alive.
I’ve been searching for it, and I’ve found it.
And I fight with him every day.
I want to kill the man that made that kind of abuse a norm for her. How the fuck can she sit there and tell me she was looking forward to what the Atlantic City chapter had in store? They were monsters. A girl like her with the pearls, the class, the riches, she isn’t supposed to know the hardships of life.
I guess it doesn’t matter what walks of life people come from; shit happens that will change you forever.
“I feel like all we are doing is talking about me,” she says, her voice smooth with a hint of vintage. Like if I asked for whiskey on the rocks, her beauty would be the whiskey, and her voice would be the ice.
It’s the only way I know how to describe it
“What do you want to know?” I look up just as another piercing crack rings through the night.
“I want to know your real name.”
“You don’t? It isn’t like it’s a secret. I’m not like the other guys. A name is a name.”
“I don’t know it,” she answers.
“Thomas.”
She blows a raspberry with her lips as she cackles, nearly falling backward in fits of fucking giggles. I can’t help but smile. “What?”
“Thomas? I don’t know what I expected. Tyron or Zeke, maybe Loch or something badass, not something nerdy.”
“Knives is badass,” I protest, shocked and almost offended. Almost.
“Exactly. You’re this badass guy. You have tattoos and muscles. You’re a biker. But to call you Thomas, I can’t,” she snickers. “Thomas is a frat boy who wears khakis.”
“I fucking hate khaki,” I mumble, remembering the time when my mom made me wear them. I only wore them once, and that was the day I lost my entire family.
“I didn’t mean to make you mad; I’m sorry.”
I grab her hand, and it’s warm from the fire. “You didn’t. It’s me. Bad memory.”
“A penny for your thoughts?” she asks, scooting over to inch closer to me. I expect her to move her hand away, but she doesn’t. I should move my hand away.
I don’t know if I can. Fighting her is too exhausting.
My entire life has been a fight. There comes a point where someone in my position has to accept that something I thought might be bad for me will be the best thing for me. I’m not used to good things. I’m used to pain, marveling in it, soaking in it.
I don’t want Mary to turn to pain. I can’t handle the idea of something happening to her to add any more agony to the loss I’ve already experienced. What if I fall for her, which, as crazy as it sounds, I can see myself falling fucking hard, and something bad happens? I’m left with picking up the shadow of myself again.
I’ve done that too many times, and I don’t think I can do it again.
I don’t talk about my past, but since she’s shared a little bit of herself with me, and since we are stuck in this barn for who knows how long, getting to know one another seems to be the only option. We could fuck, but I need to earn getting between those legs, and I’m not going to do that on a stack of hay in the middle of a storm.
First off, it’s cliché, and second, we aren’t fighting, and that needs to be last more than a damn day.
I want to earn her trust. I want… hell, I want her.
I must want a headache for a damn lifetime.
“What do you want to know?” I lean back, prop myself up on my elbows, and hope I don’t have to dig too deep.
“Where are you from?”
“Here. Vegas.”
“Mom? Dad? Family?”
Damn, she has to hit all the spots I don’t want to talk about, doesn’t she? Makes sense, since she loves to drive me crazy.
I shake my head. “No, my family died when I was a kid. I grew up in foster care.” I took another swig of whiskey, but it isn’t enough to burn the pain from my chest.
“I’m so sorry, Knives.” She squeezes her hand around mine. “Can I ask what happened?”
“Car accident,” I whisper, thinking back to the best memory I had. “Remember Halloween? When I nearly drowned because of Tongue’s brother?”
“Yeah, I still can’t get over that detail,” she says. “And yeah, I remember. That was terrible. I was so worried about you.”
“Oh, I bet.”
“Hey, we might fight, but I care. I don’t ever want to see you hurt.”
“I don’t want to see you hurt either.” My voice deepens, and the air between us sparks, crackling just like the lightning outside.
I trace her knuckles with my index finger, loving how soft she is and wondering how anyone could hurt someone like Mary. “People say that your life flashes before your eyes when you die, but I didn’t have that experience. I relived one day.” I smile when I think about my sister running after me, me running after her, and mom yelling at us to stop. “It was a regular day, beautiful, and the sun was out. Dad was grilling, and my sister and I were as thick as thieves. Mom was watching us to make sure we didn’t hurt ourselves, but I remember laughing. We decided to go to a movie that night, and out of nowhere, a truck ran a red light and smashed right into us.”