Nostrils flaring in panic, he swallows down his anger.
“She wants me,” I mumble. “Sarah Rein. She wants me,” I tell him. “I need this to end. She can’t come for my fuckin’ kids.”
He pulls in a thick breath, his chest expanding heavily before he blinks in acceptance. “You’re gonna come and stay with me and my wife until I know you’re safe.” He doesn’t look at the kids when he speaks to them, his eyes set solely on mine, a grief in understanding tipping his lips downward.
Blake pushes forward, even as Jesse attempts to pull her back.
“No!” she yells, pushing Archer’s chest. “You’re his friend, tell him no!”
He says nothing, letting her small fists hit against him.
“He’s our dad,” she shrieks. “We just got him. Not even back, because we’ve never even had him. We’ve lived our whole shitty lives without a dad. We just fucking got him. Help us. Please,” she begs, her hands moving from their fists into prayer. “Help us keep him.”
“Blake.” Jesse steps up beside her, arm sliding over her shoulders to pull her into a hug.
“If you go” —she looks over his shoulder at me, thick sobs shaking her body— “I’ll hate you forever.”
My throat closes over, her words piercing my heart like a knife never could. “If that’s the way it has to be. But at least I know I protected you. Even just in the end. I kept you safe and I’m okay with you hatin’ me for doin’ that.”
Archer’s hand grabs at my wrist. “Are you protected?”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “I don’t know what good it’ll do me, but I ain’t goin’ in unarmed.”
Walking forward, I grip the back of her neck. She fights me, trying to pull away, but I pull harder, Jesse between us. The moment my lips touch her forehead, the fight leaves her, her body convulsing with savage sobs that break away a part of my soul that will always be hers.
I kiss Jesse’s temple, stepping back before I change my mind.
One last nod and I move toward the door.
“Dad.” Jesse’s voice hits my back and my knees nearly give out.
Dad.
Glancing over my shoulder, I take in my two kids, holding hands, watching me leave. “I love you. We love you. You were everythin’ you were supposed to be,” he sniffs. “Everything we wanted.”
I turn away before I cry in front of them, forcing my feet through the door and slamming it in violent rage, wanting to kill something.
I just hope I get the chance to rip Sarah Rein’s blackened heart from her chest before she puts me down.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Camryn
“I suggest you take your hands off my girl before I sever your head from your body.” His voice sounds ready to burst into a million and one fatal shards. Fragments of grief and panic, fear and fury cutting through the space like my very own barbarian.
I could swear I was dreaming. His voice the one coming to me in my final hour. The darkness creeping in. The light of my love trying to make these last few minutes bearable.
I fought and I fought fucking hard. My battle wounds are a testament to that.
I’m pretty certain my ribs aren’t exactly broken. Bruised like a motherfucker though. A gift from Jonathan when I fell to the floor after a nasty punch to the face. His foot powered against my mid-section, over and over again until I was coughing up blood.
I can’t see out of my left eye, it having swollen itself shut after a particularly violent jab. The entire left side of my face is numb, closed off from the excruciating pain I’m certain is about to hit me at any moment.
Random scrapes and cuts decorate my weakened body. Blood smeared along my skin in a potent reminder of failure.
Jonathan doesn’t look that fabulous either. Better than me, but still, no fucking oil painting. From what I can see out of my right eye anyway.
That’s the thing about fighting for your life. Everything else falls away. Nothing mattered to me in that volcano of violence. We erupted. I knew if I stopped, if I paused, if I gave up… I was as good as dead. I may have been ready to die. But I wasn’t going without a fight. I wasn’t going willingly to his idea of hell.
I took everything Rocco taught me and threw the power into my fists. Freedom. I kept reminding myself. I was fighting for freedom.
The knife that Jonathan was holding at the breast of my shirt—ready to rid me of my clothing and the last glimmer of hope I held for my soul—pauses.
Body weak and ready to collapse, I’m no better than a puppet. Threads of control held at Jonathan’s will, manipulated for his enjoyment. Twisting me easily, he slams my back against his chest.
I grunt out in pain.
“Beauty,” Rocco’s voice sounds as broken as it did only moments prior. His restraint is hanging on by the thinnest of threads.
“Safe.” I try to smile, working to reassure him that I’m okay.
“Safe,” Rocco echoes, trying to tell me that’s now where I stand.
I want to reach out and tell him that he doesn’t need to look so sad. That I did this so he could be happy. Sarah is dead. I won. I fucking won. I fought and because I did, he can have his happily ever after.
It would’ve all been fine, if he had stayed away. If he let me offer him this sacrifice for him to find his peace.
Jonathan’s laugh startles me and the heaviness in my head passes enough for me to lift it.
I let myself become lost in the man before me. Standing only a few feet in front of me, I could reach him in six, maybe seven steps. Big and formidable and affectionately deranged.
He looks ready to kill. Only, we’re at the disadvantage.
“I’m so fucking glad you could join us, Shay. You’re just in time,” Jonathan laughs maniacally, the sound shooting goosebumps over my cut and bruised skin.
Rocco doesn’t speak, his chest heaving in a fury that makes his eyes look black.
“You touched what was mine, asshole,” the man holding me as a shield bites out, the disgust in his words palatable.
“How you holdin’ up, Cami?” He speaks to me as though Jonathan doesn’t exist. He’s a nobody. He’s insignificant.
I’d believe it a little more if there wasn’t a knife pressed against my abdomen.
“You look real,” I whisper, liking that he keeps moving closer. Hoping with everything that he’s not a figment of my imagination.
“I am real, beauty. Reinforcements, remember?”
My eyes attempt to close, but a hand in my hair pulls my head back, forcing my eyes open on an anguished whimper.
“Put the fucking gun down.”
“I ain’t carrying.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me,” Jonathan bellows, specks of his spit flying past my face, stinging the open cuts.
The sharp bite of his knife catches my neck and I stand still, afraid to even breathe for fear it’ll cut me.
Rocco concedes, hands lifting in surrender before he pulls a gun from the waist of his pants, bending to place it on the ground.
“Kick it away.”
He does as he’s told.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I tell him.
“You shouldn’t have gone.”