“Poisoning my soul? It’s a little late for that. It’s a black well in there.”
“No,” I whisper.
“There are boys out there being kept like animals. Worse than animals, and what you know could help me find them. Do you not give a shit about that?”
“Of course I do! I want those boys to be rescued. I want justice for them, and for what happened to you. That’s why I forwarded my information about Innkeeper to the police.”
He straightens. “You did what?”
“It’s what the police are there for.” I’m pleading with him, praying he’ll understand even though I know he won’t. “They have resources you don’t. Resources to find the boys, and to help them recover once they do.”
“You think the police aren’t in on it? God! That’ll just tip them all off.” He scrubs his face. He seems angry. But tired, too. So tired.
“Not everybody is corrupt. Detective Rivera—”
“Is one of the good guys? Really? You sure about that?”
“I am.”
“Fuck.” Frustration radiates from his broad shoulders. “You don’t know. You can’t know that for sure.”
“You have to trust somebody sometime.” The words come softly, but they land like bombs. Obvious, because I mean me. I want him to trust me, even though he won’t. Maybe he can’t.
Green eyes blaze under inky lashes just inches from my face. My skin tingles, as if his gaze has weight. Mass. Force. “I have to trust somebody? That’s what you think? Who should I trust? Who?”
My belly twists. It was a stupid thing to say—to Stone, anyway. He was thrown to predators when he was most vulnerable. Failed by every system imaginable. Forgotten. Left for dead. The ultimate lost boy, leading his band of lost boys out of hell.
But he never really escaped. He’s still trapped in hell, or more like the hell’s inside him now. He seems almost to vibrate with it, a furious dark-haired god, tormented and torn.
He trusts nobody. Why should he?
“You need to tell me who Keeper is before they all get tipped off and move those poor kids somewhere we can’t find them—now,” he gusts out, breath warm on my forehead. His hand slides up from my waist in a deliberate threat. Higher, higher. To my throat, his hand hot against my skin.
“You’re scaring me,” I whisper.
“About time.” Soft, heavy fingers bracket my chin. His touch is achingly gentle, even as it threatens. “Don’t make me choose.”
I close my eyes, bracing for the worst. He won’t choose me.
Heavy fingertips tremble along my jaw, tracing a path toward my ear, shifting my hair in a way that tickles.
I steel my spine, replaying Madsen’s grunts like a tape loop in my mind. Is that what he’s going to do to me? It hurt Stone to do that; I know that now. He isn’t some cold-blooded psychopath, even though he probably wishes he were. It hurt him to do that to a bad man; what will it cost him to hurt me?
“Tell me,” he mutters, almost an incantation. “Fucking tell me.”
I want to tell him, to spare him the pain, but I have my own broken heart. Doesn’t he understand that it would kill me? It would kill me to see my father tortured and killed, knowing I could have stopped it. Maybe Stone does know what it would do to me. Maybe it’s worth the sacrifice. I’m collateral damage. “Swear you won’t kill him. Swear you won’t hurt him.”
A laugh, cruel and sharp. “I’m going to rip his balls off his body and feed them to him.”
I shake my head. “Then I won’t tell you who he is.”
A knuckle brushes my neck. Will he choke me? Lock me up? Pretend to drown me? “Do you really want to play this game?”
“This isn’t a game,” I say.
“No,” he growls. “This is a basement of boys, somewhere in this city.”
“Then let Detective Rivera find them. He’ll save them. He’ll bring Keeper to justice. If you only care about saving them, you’ll take the deal. I’ll tell you as long as you promise not to kill him, not to hurt him. This is how you save those boys, Stone.”
He studies me, his eyelids low. It’s a line in the sand. I’m offering him justice. He wants vengeance. Maybe that’s always what would have broken us. The single and brutally important fracture point.
Stone’s hand settles around my throat. He doesn’t squeeze, but it’s clear he could. There’s enough strength in that hand to cut off my air. To break my neck. My breath comes shorter. “No deal,” he says finally, and it sounds like regret. Maybe he does regret what he’s going to do to me. How he’ll hurt me. Torture me. Kill me?
There’s a hitch in my chest. A crack in a foundation that should never have formed.
“Because you have to choose those boys,” I say in a burst of clarity. “Because it’s who you are.”
“Yes.”
“Except you’re wrong. You think you have to give up your humanity to save them, but you don’t.”
“Give up my humanity? You know who you’re talking to here? Other men, they might dream about that soft cunt you let me have. They might want to fuck your pretty little mouth again, but all I want is blood. My humanity is long gone, baby.”
“You’re wrong. It’s too late—I’ve seen you. You’re a good person. You have a good heart.”
He snorts, jaw set, gaze distant.
“I saw it in the river the first night,” I continue. “Every time we were together, I saw it. In the tiny bird you carved.”
“A broken piece of shit.”
“Not to me. I love it.” There’s pain in his gaze, but I don’t shut up. I won’t shut up. “I love you.”
“Stop it.”
I reach up for his hand, still snug and warm around my neck. Instead of pulling it away, I squeeze harder. First with one hand, then with two. I press his hand so tight around my throat that I see black spots behind my eyelids. He’s right; this isn’t a game. Lives are at stake. And I’ll give up mine before I give up my father’s.
Darkness closes around the edges of my vision.
“Fuck,” I hear him say. “Fuck.”
I suck in breath without thinking, my body reacting on its own, air like fire in my lungs, the pressure on my neck gone.
“Fuck, baby.” Gentle fingertips alight on my face. Soft, warm lips come down on my cheeks, my chin, my forehead. He’s raining kisses on me. “Fuck,” he says between kisses. “Fuck.” Then he takes my lips, devouring my mouth like a starving man.
My body ignites. I grab fistfuls of his soft flannel shirt, knuckles against the hard planes of his chest. Pulling myself against him even as I push him away. I’m clinging to him on a stormy sea, wanting his comfort even as I know I’m going to drown.
The tears don’t go away, even when he’s holding me, kissing me. They come faster. A flood. They spill onto my lips, and when his tongue touches mine, I can taste them. Salt. Fear. Grief tastes like the ocean.
“I never could’ve hurt you,” he mutters, moving his lips over my eyelids, sipping my grief. “Not for anything. I would have ripped off my own arm, but you knew that, didn’t you, little bird?”