Silence falls as Marcus’s words die out. His parents both look slightly stunned. After another long beat, Gideon opens his mouth to speak, but Marcus cuts him off again.
“I don’t want to hear it. Whatever it is, I don’t care.” His gaze flicks to Ryland and then to Theo, his shoulders squaring. “I’ll finish this thing. We’ll finish it. There’s no other way now that we’re in this deep.” He looks back down at his parents. “But when I do, and when we win, don’t expect any of that power to trickle down to you. Don’t expect anything.”
“Marcus—” His mother softens her voice, obviously about to play ‘good cop’ to his father’s ‘bad cop.’
But she never gets a chance.
“Get out.”
There’s such heavy finality in Marcus’s voice that it seems to suck all the oxygen out of the room. The two words fall like anvils, and I know he’s not just talking about this house.
He’s talking about his life.
There’s another drawn out moment of silence as his parents process his words, clearly trying to figure out how to respond. When I glance at Marcus again, his face is set in a mask. He might as well be made of stone.
His dad sputters for a second, looking like he’s about to speak. But in the end, he just grabs Norah by the elbow and pulls her to her feet as he stands beside her. She shoots me a piercing glare, and for the first time, I see behind the mask of cultured civility she wears to the predator beneath.
Then she and Gideon storm out of the room.
None of the men move to show them out. In fact, we all stay perfectly still until we hear the front door shut behind them.
As soon as the sound echoes through the house, my shoulders relax, tension I didn’t even realize I was carrying draining away. My fingers uncurl, the joints stiff from being clenched so tightly. I can feel little spots of pain along my palm where my fingernails dug deeply into the skin.
I turn to face Marcus fully, finally meeting his gaze for the first time since I burst into the room.
There’s something on his face that breaks my heart, and I realize with a horrible ache in my chest that he just lost what was left of his family.
He still has me, Theo, and Ryland. But that connection to his past, to his childhood, to his sister, is gone.
Fuck. Maybe I shouldn’t have come in here. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.
Before that thought can take root too deeply, Marcus steps toward me. Palming the back of my neck, he brings my face toward his, resting his forehead against mine just like he did yesterday.
“Thank you, angel,” he murmurs softly. “For loving me.”
When he draws back, I want to grab him and pull him toward me again. I want to hold him close and not let go. But I can see in his eyes that he needs time, needs to be alone, and the least I can do is give him that.
“Always,” I whisper, holding his gaze for a heartbeat.
A smile twitches at the corner of his lips, and even though it doesn’t fully form, it’s something. Then he steps around the couch and leaves the room, his footsteps heading down the hallway and up the stairs.
Theo blows out a breath. “Fucking hell.” Then he grins. “Remind me never to get on your bad side, Rose.”
I can tell he’s trying to lighten the mood, and I appreciate it. But my heart is still aching for Marcus, and adrenaline and anger are still whipping through my veins so fast I feel like my skin is buzzing.
Ryland pushes off the wall, rubbing one hand over the inked skin of his forearm as he takes a step toward me.
“Hey. You want to start our training session early today?”
My hand clenches into a fist again, and I nod viciously, my mind already filling with images of Norah and Gideon’s faces.
“Fuck, yes.”
Chapter 4
Theo presses a quick kiss to my lips before Ryland and I leave the room.
I follow close behind Ryland as we head toward the back of the house, where Theo has set up a large room as a home gym. There are some free weights and machines that we’ve mostly ignored so far, concentrating instead on the heavy bag in one corner and the empty area in the middle of the room. It gives us enough space to work on fighting technique and practice footwork, blocks, and attacks.
My future as an MMA fighter is pretty fucking bleak, but that’s not the point of any of this. The point is that I’ll hopefully be a little less likely to die if I find myself in a position where I’m being physically threatened.
Ryland glances over his shoulder as we walk into the room. “I know you just wanna hit shit today, so we’ll do a little of that first. Then I’m gonna teach you some disarming techniques.”
I nod, stretching my fingers wide before clenching them into a fist. He’s not fucking wrong about that. I don’t think I’ll be able to focus on anything else until I get some of this rage out of my system.
His hazel eyes gleam as he looks at me, and I can’t quite tell what the emotion is behind them.
Before I can decipher it, he turns and crosses toward the far wall where a stereo system is set up. He turns on music that matches my mood perfectly—loud, harsh, and angry. Then he grabs a hand wrap from a small cubby along the same wall and walks back to me.
I hold up my hand as he nears, and he gets to work wrapping my knuckles.
He glances up at me as he winds the long piece of cloth between my fingers. “I’m glad you said something back there. They needed to hear it. Marcus needed to hear it.”
I grimace. “I hope it wasn’t the wrong thing. Marcus looked pretty fucked up after they left.”
“Yeah.” Ryland shrugs, returning his attention to his task as he wraps the cloth around my hand and down my wrist. “He will be for a while. But he’ll be all right.”
He curls my fingers into a fist, testing his handiwork, then catches my gaze. “Good?”
I nod, rotating my wrist a little. “Yup.”
He grabs two target mitts from the cubby and slips them on as he steps into the middle of the room. “Don’t worry about technique right now. Just let it out.”
Then he slaps the mitts together and holds them up at face-height.
I don’t need him to tell me twice. I do exactly what he said, letting rage pour out of me as my fist flies out over and over. He moves around the room a bit, and I stalk him like a fucking predator, my knees bent as I drive power from my legs like he taught me. The sharp sound of my fist hitting the mitts fills the room, punctuating the heavy beat of the music.
I’m not sure how much time passes. My world narrows down to the black circles in the middle of the red mitts, to the feel of breath passing in and out of my lungs, to the satisfying burn in my muscles.
I picture Gideon Constantine.
I picture his wife.
I picture Natalie.
And I don’t hold back a single fucking bit.
Finally, when I pause between hits, Ryland steps back out of range, dropping his hands down by his sides. “Feel better?”
Sweat drips down my temple, and I can feel it trickling down my spine too. I’m breathing harder than I realized, my heartbeat thundering in my chest. I wipe my forehead with the back of my arm, sucking in a deep drag of air. When I blow it out, I realize that I do feel a little lighter.