After a while, he finally seems to slip back into himself, and he straightens up, giving his head a little shake.
It’s like watching a reverse exorcism, and he becomes slightly more animated as he pins me with an arrogant smirk. “But you care about her, no?”
I don’t bother answering. The leaden ache in my chest each time I think about the little puppet waiting for me back home, proves that anything I say would be a lie, anyway.
Alistair sucks on his bottom lip, releasing it with a pop. “You’re bound to hurt her, you know. That’s the Wolfe curse.”
This time, he doesn’t wait for a response, leaving quietly a few minutes later.
When I lock up a little while after his departure, I take a moment to look around the house, double-checking to make sure everything is still in its rightful place.
It feels odd that I’ve been away so long, but the smell of formaldehyde and industrial-strength cleaning solution that’s practically embedded into the walls relieves some of the nostalgia.
Half an hour after I’ve left, I’m parked in front of the beach house, and I spend a few moments just twiddling my thumbs, staring at the front door.
In truth, I’ve thought of little else since I brought Lenny to bed several nights ago, and I’ve kept her in it every night since.
If my mind was preoccupied with the vixen before, now that I’ve defiled her over and over, it’s as if there’s no room in my brain for anything else.
Normally when I complete a kill, the outside world ceases to exist, and yet when I grabbed the comptroller’s son this afternoon and held him facedown in a dirty puddle outside my pub, Lenny’s face had been everywhere.
Is it because I’m seeking revenge on her behalf? Ending the lives of the men who had a hand in ruining hers?
Or is it more than that?
Worse than that?
An ache flares to life in my chest, and I rub absently at the spot, trying to massage it away. Scrubbing a hand over my face, I dismount from the vehicle and head up the front walk, noting that the curtains in the living room are drawn, and there are no lights on upstairs.
Either Lenny’s asleep, which seems unlikely given her history of waiting up for me, or she’s painting. My cock jerks to life at the thought, already hungry for her even though it’s been less than ten hours since I last had her naked and writhing beneath me.
Now that I’ve had one taste, though, I can’t seem to stop.
Insatiable is one word for it.
Completely and utterly deranged is more accurate.
Throwing open the front door as it unlocks, I peer down the hall, kicking my shoes off.
“Lenny?” My voice echoes off the walls, harsh against my eardrums, and I’m met with terse silence.
Frowning, I shuck out of my leather jacket and hang it on the hook on the wall. Maybe she’s absorbed in whatever she’s working on, and hasn’t heard me come in. Starting down the hall, I whistle lightly, fully expecting her to be on her knees near the sofa with her hands speckled in paint.
Instead, my floor is covered in popcorn, as if an entire field was cooked in the open comfort of my living room. Charcoal streaks across the hardwood, broken pieces littering Lenny’s workspace, while the pages in her sketchbook are torn and her easel is broken.
Paint splatter marks the floor, the sofa, the wall by the fireplace—a cacophony of color I try blinking away, but each time it gets louder and louder. The room is positively destroyed, glass shards from an overturned end table sprinkling through the kitchen, and all I can do is stare.
Confusion worms its way through me, and I step farther into the room, scanning with widened eyes.
As I reach the sofa, I freeze in place, immediately recognizing the waves of golden-brown hair spilling down a slender back. The ponytail she left earlier in is no more, the strands having been pulled out and yanked on, creating a frizzy texture.
My heart stutters inside my chest as I take her in, and my throat grows impossibly tight. Is it possible the crimson stains aren’t actually paint at all?
For a split second, there’s no movement, and all I can see is her, but then her head whips around and those green eyes meet mine. A disturbingly powerful wave of relief washes through me, and I slump slightly against the sofa back.
“Bloody fucking hell, love.” I breathe out a chuckle, running a shaky hand through my hair. “I thought you were in—”
She shifts again, confirming my previous immediate fear: she’s not alone. With her knees outstretched, Lenny straddles the narrow hips of a dark-haired woman, and as she sits back, I see she’s got one of her broken paintbrushes held to the base of the woman’s neck.
Sucking in a deep, steadying breath, I take a moment to appreciate her lithe form in action; just like the night we met weeks ago, she looks terribly comfortable holding a weapon to someone’s throat, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t stir arousal hot and fiery in my gut.
As I continue my perusal of her, simultaneously cataloging her triumph and seeking signs of harm, my chest feels like it caves in.
There are bright-pink scratches decorating Lenny’s bare arms, and blood collects at the corner of her mouth, but it’s not any of that I’m paying attention to anymore.
Not when I reach the other woman’s face.
My chest burns, like some omnipotent being has reached in, stolen the air directly from my lungs, and then set them on fire. I can scarcely catch my breath, my gaze boring into the wide, teardrop-shaped eyes I haven’t seen in over twenty years.
“Mum?”
35
I forgot how old I was when my mum left us.
Purposely put it out of my mind in order to avoid the grief.
Loss is difficult enough, and it becomes a thousand times more insufferable when it’s the kind that could have been avoided. The kind that could be remedied, if only someone cared enough to return.
Mine didn’t. So, I spent a lifetime pretending she didn’t exist at all.
Aside from the beach house itself, I’ve kept no connection to her—not a single photograph, or article of clothing, or note scribbled and stuffed into my lunch pail before school every morning.
Even my memories now are hazy at best. Try hard enough to convince yourself that something never happened, and eventually in your mind, it didn’t.
In order to get over my mum’s abandonment, I forced myself into the belief that she had never been around in the first place.
A tactic I found infallible, given the years that passed without a single point of contact.
Until now, apparently.
Her black hair is shorter than when I last saw her, cropped to her chin and fanning out beneath her head. Everything else looks the same, from her bronzed skin to the bright, yet hollow look in her dark eyes.
Lenny’s eyes bulge comically when I question the identity of the woman she has pinned to the floor. The hand wrapped around her brush wavers, but doesn’t move away, the sharpened end still pointing right at my mum’s neck.
“This woman broke in and claims she’s your mom,” Lenny explains as if I haven’t just outed the other woman. “But I know that can’t be true, because you told me your parents are dead.”
“Oh, sirts.” My mum has the audacity to sound pained, using my childhood nickname as if it might endear me to her.