“My mom comes home later and I need to get everything ready, so no, Beast, no thank you. I don’t want to go eat with you, now or ever.” And with that she snatched her wrist out from my grip and scooted her way off the sofa.
“She can’t stay here,” I growled after her.
Belle turned back. “She has nowhere else to go.”
“You want her dead? Because that’s what will happen if she’s here.” I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for her to reply. Fuck me, this woman was infuriating. Hadn’t been this annoying at the hospital or when she was at the clubhouse, but now it was all coming out. Maybe I should rethink my plan, because there was only so much of this shit I could put up with.
“Well in that case, surely I’m going to end up dead if I stay here,” she said.
I stood up and stalked toward her. “No, Belle, you’re going to be just fuckin’ fine. I won’t let anything happen to you. But that bitch mom of yours—if you can even call her that—she won’t be, because I won’t do anything to save her ass if Mateo and Carlos come here. She’s on her own.”
Her eyes widened, and I thought she was going to thank me for keeping her safe but instead she shook her head and took a step back from me.
“So it was okay for you to kill me this morning but no one else? You do the killing because you’re this big, masculine killing machine, huh? But no one else gets to do that. God, what is wrong with you?” She looked at me with such hatred that I wondered if there was any way of coming back from it. I wondered if maybe it was too late and there was nothing left in her that had anything but hate for me. I couldn’t blame her either, but I also couldn’t give up.
“And she has nowhere to go, Beast,” she continued. “She has to come here, and you have to protect her if anything happens.”
I stared down at her, feeling like a giant asshole in this piece-of-shit trailer she called a home, and she stared up at me, her eyes filled with so much hurt and anger, her body practically vibrating with it, and I felt it again—the connection we had, like a small current of electricity running between us. It was still there, but it was faint. I didn’t believe in fate or any of that shit, but if I did then I’d believe she was my fate, my destiny, or whatever the hell else you wanted to call it.
Our lives were threaded, even if she didn’t want them to be anymore.
She’d never understand why it had to be me to pull the trigger, and I wouldn’t ever try to explain it to her, but she had to know that it was all about me and nothing to do with her, and fuck me but I was trying to fix that shit.
“Promise me that you won’t let her get hurt,” she said, her tone softening and expression pleading.
“Why is this woman so important to you? You have Jenna, right? She raised you, she gave you everything you needed, so why bring this bitch that abandoned you into your life? You don’t owe her anything.” I reached for her and she didn’t pull away. I placed a hand on either bicep and she stayed fixed in place, a firm resolve in her expression. I wanted to pull her in and kiss her, then fuck her so hard the trailer would fall apart around us, turning to nothing but broken pieces and dust—which actually wouldn’t take an awful lot, given its current condition.
“She’s not important,” she said, her voice quieter and her eyes shimmering. “I hate her.”
I frowned. “If you hate her then why are you letting her come here?”
Her chin trembled and it was obvious even to a dumbass like me that she regretted her decision to let her stay and didn’t want to go through with it, but something was holding her back. Something was making her do this. Fuck me, how many secrets did she have?
Belle took a deep breath and then, as if realizing that I was touching her, she shrugged out of my grip. “Don’t touch me, Beast,” she said, turning away. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
“Belle—” But I didn’t know what to say after that. “I’ll drive you, when you’re ready to go,” I said instead of saying what I really wanted to.
She looked back at me and nodded before heading back to her room and closing the door behind her. Everything was starting to hurt: my chest my arms, my legs, even my face. I headed out to my bike to grab my painkillers and the lotion that I used to put on my burns. Every step was beginning to feel like glass was being dragged through my muscles, and I winced with every movement. I was parked at the back of the trailer where a ton of old crap had been left abandoned for who knows how long. I’d thrown some tarp over the whole pile to hide what was under it, and now it resembled a pile of junk instead of my most prized position. But it had to be done so Mateo and Carlos wouldn’t know I was there.
The club had also put Dom and one of the prospects in the trailer opposite so that we were constantly watched. I looked up at it now, watching as the blinds twitched, and I gave a subtle nod in their direction as I lifted the tarp and rooted through my saddlebags for my meds. I shook out two pills onto my tongue, swallowing them quickly and wishing for something stronger, but knowing I needed to keep a clear head. Besides, going back in there high would only further infuriate Belle and I’d already done that enough today.
Heading back inside, I clasped the tub of burn cream tightly in my hand. Belle was still in her room, no doubt pacing back and forth and figuring out ways to kill me without rousing suspicion. I shrugged out of my cut and pulled my T-shirt over my head, every movement painful, like I was back at the barn and flames were licking at my skin again.
I unscrewed the lid and dipped my hand in before smoothing the cold cream over my skin. It stung like a motherfucker at first, but the pain began to ease as it soaked in, and the tightness to my skin lessened, making it so I could move more freely. It was like my skin had shrunk and was way too small for the body it was trying to contain. The weights I’d been lifting probably didn’t help with that though, because with all traces of fat having wasted away this past year and then working out like a maniac the past couple of weeks, I was now just pure muscle. I was large before, broad shouldered, my chest hard and defined and tapering down to a thick band of muscle around my stomach and hips, but that was nothing compared to now. The only way I’d been able to control my temper and not fall apart had been to work out. I’d been lifting heavier and heavier weights, building and defining each muscle as I stared at the names of my fallen brothers on the benches outside the clubhouse. The ache and burn in my muscles from exercising took away from the pain inside my head and the need to lash out at anyone and everything that got in my way. I wasn’t a beautiful man by any means though, and I wasn’t trying to be. I was ugly as sin, both inside and out, broken, torn apart, but still breathing. No matter how much I wished I wasn’t.
I smothered the cream over my arms and chest, focusing on blocking out the pain as my calloused hands smoothed over the ridges of my muscles, but there was no way to reach my back. I glanced over at Belle’s closed door and considered knocking on it and asking her to help, but I had a feeling she’d only have two words for me, the second one of them being the word off.
I chuckled as I remembered her telling me to fuck off back at the clubhouse.
Sitting back down, I breathed a sigh of relief as the burning pain I felt daily dampened to a low throb and I got a brief respite. A lot had happened in twenty-four hours and I didn’t know what the next twenty-four held for Belle or for me, but one thing I was sure on more than anything else was that we were close to catching Echo’s killers. So close that I could practically feel their blood growing cold under my fingertips, the screams lingering in my ears as I showed them what real pain was. What real torture was.