He gave me nothing when I needed everything.
I deflated. It was too late. He didn’t trust me. I just needed one breath to realize that without him I would never take another one.
Did one breath break us? Did we end in ten minutes? Could I go back in time and un-spill my soda? Un-see the contents of the dungeon? Could I go back and not fear him, not start that call to the police?
“I broke us,” I murmured in defeat as my posture deflated and my gaze fell to my feet, refilling with tears. After the silence between us began to tear at my soul, I drew in a shaky breath and turned, leaving because the choice to stay was no longer mine.
“You move in with me. If you’re in … you’re all in.”
I stopped three steps from the back door, inching my head to glance over my shoulder.
He dropped his bags to the ground. “What’s it going to be, Livy?”
My gaze shifted to the trapdoor for a few seconds before returning to his dark eyes unwavering with the gravity of his ultimatum.
“You …” I said so softly I wasn’t sure he heard me because I don’t remember meaning to say it. The word floated out on a breath, like every breath whispered his name. “It’s always going to be you, Wylder.”
“Then get over here so I can love you back.”
In spite of the urge to run into his arms, I took each step with purpose, my heart making sure my brain understood we were all in. Even when I made it to him, toe-to-toe, hands itching to touch him, we took another breath before jumping off the cliff.
Fingers in hair.
Mouths colliding, reckless and passionate.
When we touched, it felt like he had a part of me ineradicably ingrained into him, and I frantically searched for that tiny part of myself to feel whole again.
So yeah … I jumped in … all in.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Wylder
What did I do?
I didn’t need a college degree. It just looked good. Image mattered. The perception of normalcy mattered. Livy felt normal. Twenty-five-year-old men had girlfriends. Sex every night. They drank beer and surfed.
Normalcy meant nothing to me. Two parents, T-ball, and trips to Disney World weren’t part of my childhood. Abe taught me to hunt small game by ten, and I hit the perfect lung shot for a prized elk by thirteen. After I mastered my bow hunting skills, Abe put a gun in my fourteen-year-old hands. He said I was a natural, just like my dad.
I hunted my first human on my eighteenth birthday. Abe called it a rite of passage. I didn’t know his name or anything about him except he raped and killed the niece of a U.S. senator, but the DA lacked the evidence to convict him. So he walked … three days before I turned eighteen. Investigators said the assassination was clearly a hired job.
Clean.
Traceless.
Expertly executed.
I took pride in that, as did Abe.
Combat training followed, molding me into the perfect killing machine. Abe said the people who really kept citizens safe were faceless. They didn’t wear uniforms or badges. And they operated under a different chain of command.
Abe was it.
He was my chain of command.
The number one rule that I learned at a very early age, when he broke my middle finger for flipping off my mom, was don’t ever question or disrespect authority. I didn’t even know what “the bird” meant. I’d seen some other kid at school do it to a teacher when her back was to the class.
“Why is this knuckle bigger?” Livy held up my hand, tracing the lines along my palm, right up to that knuckle that never healed quite right.
I eyed the two guys taking seats in front of us that Monday morning. They eyed Livy like they had a fucking chance with her. I felt certain she got those looks a lot, but I hadn’t noticed until then.
My instructions were to protect her, but my instinct to feel possessive of her didn’t surface right away.
“Broke it when I was twelve.”
She brought my hand to her lips, kissing my knuckle. “How?”
“Flipped off the wrong person.”
Chuckling, she released my hand to pull her computer out of her bag. “Wish I would have known twelve-year-old Slade Wylder. I bet we could have stirred up a lot of trouble.”
“You were a troublemaker?”
She smirked, giving me a quick side glance as she opened her laptop. “Oh, baby, you have no idea.” Pulling a hairband off her wrist, she gathered her wavy hair and twisted it into a messy ball on her head, working the band around it in every direction. She did it at the beginning of each class, maybe waiting for her hair to dry from either the shower or early morning surfing.
Focusing on a woman felt foreign to me.
I kissed Jenny Pedersen in sixth grade because my friends said I should, not because I had that much interest in girls at the time. I screwed Erika Taylor in the back of her parents’ Chevy Malibu when I was fifteen because Abe told me I needed to be a man. In hindsight, I think he was referencing taking out the trash and helping my mom around the house.
I’d never had an actual girlfriend. It was hard to focus on honing my knife and gun skills and girls. The internet provided all I needed to get off before falling asleep each night.
By the time I started college, I had no interest in or time for dating. When the situation presented itself, I found a meaningless one-night stand to scratch the occasional itch.
“Why the look?” she whispered, leaning toward me as the professor started to speak.
I shook my head slowly, not realizing that I’d been staring at her. “Nothing.” I blinked a few times, trying to focus.
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
My attention drifted from her eyes to her lips, down her neck and chest to her perky little breasts pressed to her tight tee.
“It’s time to go.”
Her eyes widened, lips parted. “Uh … it is?”
I grabbed her laptop and shoved it in her bag. Standing, I flipped my backpack over my shoulder. With one hand, I took her bag; with my other, I took her hand and dragged her out of the auditorium.
“Wylder …” She nearly tripped as I led her down the hallway to a string of offices. “Out,” I said to the grad TA perched at his tiny desk.
“What are you—”
“How’s the oxygen, Stu?”
He scooted back in his chair. “Good. W-why?”
“Get the fuck out. You can come back in thirty minutes.” I only needed ten, but I didn’t want to make Livy too nervous about his eminent return.
“O-okay.” He grabbed his bag as I gave him a gentle shove out the door.
Jericho parked himself by the door as soon as I shut it and locked it.
“Wylder—”
I turned and crashed my mouth to hers, holding her face in my hands to reach as deep as my tongue would go. Her butt hit the metal-legged desk, her hands grabbing my arms to steady herself.
My mouth ripped from hers, and I devoured her neck, working my lips to her ear. “I need this so fucking bad.”
She didn’t question me. Her hands pulled my shirt up my torso. Mine pawed at her bra, yanking it down in the front to release her breasts.
“Ahhh!” Her head fell back as I pinched her nipple, possibly too hard.
I lifted her onto the desk, guiding her to lie back, pushing the computer monitor dangerously close to the edge, the keyboard crashing to the floor. Shoving her shirt up her chest, I sucked her breasts—biting and tugging her nipples as she arched her back off the desk.