Fractured (The Deep in Your Veins Series Book 5) (16 page)

While Butch was distracted, I went to leave. I didn’t get far. Four steps later, he appeared in front of me. I hissed, “
Move
.”

His hands cupped my neck. “I fucked up again, I know. I’m sorry.”

By his tone, he seriously thought that was good enough. “Out of my way.”

“Imani.”

“When you’re ready to make a real apology, I’ll listen. Until then…” I hurried to my apartment in vampire speed. I’d just unlocked the door when I sensed Butch behind me. I whirled on him. “Did you not hear me just now?”

He backed me inside the apartment. “You know I have no respect for boundaries, and we clearly need to talk.”

I put my hands on my hips. “You’d better have something
real
good to say, Richardson, because the last thing I want to do tonight is punch you in the dick…but it
is
on my schedule.”

“Like I said, I fucked up. I can’t apologise for freaking out about you going into battle. It would be a lie, and that would insult both of us. But I am sorry that you’re hurting right now. I didn’t want that.”

As apologies went, it wasn’t the best I’d ever heard. But it was honest. “I’m a member of the legion, Butch. That means I’m going to be in dangerous situations again and again. You accepted that before. Why can’t you accept it now?” I might be partly human, but I was as strong and fast as a Sventé. Both Jude and Ava were Sventés.

For a moment, he said nothing. Just stood there, his expression almost tortured. “I didn’t keep you safe.” His words made me blink. “I’m a living shield, Imani, but I didn’t keep you safe. You got hurt
right in front of me
.”

I mentally kicked myself. I should have known that, protective as he was, he’d find some way to blame himself. “It all happened so fast, there was nothing you could have done.”

“The reason I didn’t freak out about you being on assignments in the past was that I was there with you; I was confident I could protect you.” A cynical, self-mocking smile surfaced on his face. “At the castle, I didn’t. Intellectually, I know it’s not my fault that you were hurt, and I know it’s pointless to feel guilty about it. I also know that I can’t lock you away where you’ll be safe, and that you’d be miserable if I tried.”

“So why get so wound up about this?”

“You don’t get it, Imani. A year. I was without you for almost a year. Just when I thought I had you back, I felt you slipping away. You don’t know how many times your heartrate slowed down during the transition. You don’t know how many times you passed out, so weak I didn’t think you’d wake up.”

His eyes glittered with an emotion I would never have associated with Butch. Fear. “It scared you.”

“Hell yes, it scared me.”

While that softened the blow of what he’d done, it didn’t make it okay. He had to understand that or he’d do it over and over. “That isn’t an excuse. I don’t expect you to always agree with my choices, but I expect you to respect my right to make them. Dictating to me, talking down to me like I don’t know myself, was not at all cool, Butch. If I had behaved that way toward you, if I’d showed you that kind of disrespect, you’d be just as pissed as I am now.”

He raked a hand through his hair. “I’m not good at this.” He looked so lost.

“Yeah, I already figured that out.” Although I was still mad, I knew I’d have to back down a little. Sam had told me he’d need the room to make mistakes; she’d warned me he’d be a difficult partner. I’d taken the risk, and that meant I had to make some allowances. “I understand that you want me safe. I’m glad that you care. But that doesn’t mean I’ll always bow to your wishes. That’s not how it works.”

He moved to me and brushed his thumb along my cheekbone. “I do respect you. I’m sorry if I made you feel like I didn’t.”

I gave a curt nod. “Okay.”

“I hate it when we argue.”

We’d only had two very minor arguments before now. “It’s going to happen sometimes. You’re an alpha, which makes you pushy and domineering. Neither of those things are much fun for me, even though I know you interfere because you’re trying to smooth the way for me and make my life better. I’m stubborn and independent, which means I’ll keep pushing back.”

He rubbed his nose against mine. “I warned you that I’m not good for people.”

Not liking that comment at all, I said, “That’s bullshit. We both have strong personalities so we’ll clash from time to time. That doesn’t mean you’re not good for me, or vice versa. Being dominant and decisive isn’t bad. You’re also very protective and supportive, which I appreciate. Tonight, though, you were
too
protective and
too
big, bad alpha.”

He sighed. “Okay. I’ll work on it. But we’re good now?”

“We’re good.”

His arms locked around me and he pressed a gentle, apologetic kiss on my mouth. “Seeing those bruises on your face makes me want to punch something. Sam wouldn’t have hit you that hard if she’d known you’d bruise. Baby, about what you did to her—”

“Let’s not talk about it. It doesn’t matter.”

“Imani, you called blood to you. That kind of matters.”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

He rubbed my back. “Can’t say I blame you for being freaked out.” He pressed a gentle kiss to my temple. “Okay, I’ll drop it.”

I released a heavy breath. “I need a shower.”

“Come on.” He led me to the bathroom.

“I can shower myself.”

“Of course you can. But I want to take care of you. Don’t fight me on it. I need it.”

Sighing, I allowed him to take care of me—massaging my head, shoulders, and arms until all my tension had left me and I was close to boneless.

As he dabbed me dry with a towel, I asked, “What were your other two relationships like?”

He paused. “You sure you want to hear about my past?”

“I want to understand what makes you think you’re not good for people.” That dumb idea had to have come from somewhere.

His hands resumed drying me off. “There was a girl I dated in high school. Back then, I was thinking with my dick more than anything else, so I didn’t see that she was trying to lead me around by it. Kylie didn’t want me to enlist, but I’d made up my mind. She said she’d wait for me. She wrote to me a lot while I was away, always included all kinds of soppy declarations. When I got back, it was to find that she’d moved in with another guy.”

I gaped. “She was living with someone else?”

“In the letters, she hadn’t given me even a hint of this. She’d been seeing him since a month after I left. She hadn’t told me, because she’d wanted to enjoy my shock; she’d wanted to punish me for leaving her.”

I rubbed his chest. “Butch, that wasn’t your fault or—”

“This is just the background, baby. That wasn’t one of the relationships I was talking about.” He sighed. “I didn’t like that she’d played me or that she’d cheated, but after being in a fucking war zone…the whole thing just seemed trivial. And considering she was a little wacked, I was glad to see the back of her. So instead of losing my shit, I walked away. I wasn’t interested in a girl who played games. But Kylie didn’t like that.”

I’d bet she didn’t.

“Maybe she’d expected me to fight for her or something. I know her parents were divorced and they spent most of her life in and out of court, fighting for custody and changes to the court agreement. Maybe that had messed her up. All I know is, she then decided to make my life hell.”

“I hate her already.” I kissed his chest. “Tell me the rest.”

“Any time I was with a girl for more than a night, Kylie would try to chase them away. Most of the time, it worked. If it didn’t, Kylie would step up her game.”

Following him into the bedroom, I asked, “Chase them away how?”

Dropping his towel, he pulled on a pair of pants. “She’d start with telling them lies about me; she’d say things like I was a drug addict or a serial cheater. Other times she’d claim I was actually
her
boyfriend, and even the father of her unborn—and of course fictional—child.”

“Oh. My. God.” I slipped on a vest and shorts as I added, “What a total bitch.”

“It didn’t even matter to her that she was still living with that guy, who either didn’t know what she was doing or just didn’t care. It didn’t matter that she was also sleeping with other guys. No, she’d decided my life was gonna be hell because I left her.”

“Sounds like this wasn’t about you at all. You said her parents were divorced, so one of them must have left home. That had to have hurt. Then they’d spent all those years fighting over her. Maybe she liked that kind of attention and thought that was what love was. But when you left her just like one of her parents did, you didn’t fight for her. I mean, she told lies about you—I’ll bet that was one of the court tactics her parents used.”

He shrugged. “Only Kylie knows why she behaved that way.”

“You said she stepped up her game if the lies didn’t work. What did she do to the girls?”

“Sometimes she’d spread false rumours about them to piss them off. Other times she’d turn up at their houses with bruises and claim I hurt her, trying to scare them.”

Grimacing, I said, “That’s…there aren’t words.”

“Sooner or later, even the ones who were wise to her games would leave because they’d had enough of her shit and just wanted it all to end.” And he didn’t sound in the least bit judgemental. “One girl, Tori, she was different. She saw right through Kylie, she said she knew it wasn’t my fault and she’d stick by me and make Kylie realise she was wasting her time.”

This was obviously one of the relationships he’d mentioned. “Kylie didn’t stop with her games, did she?”

He shook his head. “I tried to protect Tori from her as best I could; tried to shield her from Kylie’s shit—even got the police involved, which didn’t help because Kylie’s dad was a cop; they tend to stick together. I went to her parents, told them what was happening. They were no help. They coddled her. No one could convince them that their only child was anything but perfect. It was hard, and it sucked. But Tori swore she wasn’t going anywhere; that she wouldn’t let Kylie drive her away.”

“But she left,” I said softly.

“She said she would have stayed if I’d just opened up to her more; if I paid her more attention and—”

“Bullshit,” I snapped. “She was blaming you for her leaving, because she didn’t want to lose face and admit she couldn’t take it.”

He didn’t seem convinced of that. “After my second deployment, I moved to the next town over. I met someone. It got serious. All was good. Helena wanted me to put a ring on her finger. I wasn’t ready for that, but I took her to meet my parents.”

“Kylie saw you.”

He nodded and then pulled on a T-shirt. “She flipped out. Totally lost it. It wasn’t jealousy or a show of possessiveness. She didn’t want me. She just didn’t want me to be happy.”

“What did she do?”

“My parents chased her off that night. She started showing up at my house and Helena’s place of work, ranting the same old shit she’d said to all the girls that came before Helena. Helena was no lightweight, and she saw Kylie for what she was. Each time Kylie did something, she made Helena more determined to stick it out as a ‘fuck you.’”

“But she didn’t stay, did she?” The bitch.

“No. Like I said, she wanted a ring. She felt it was the least she deserved, considering the shit that she had to put up with from Kylie. Maybe she was right. But the thing is, baby, every girl that came before her had walked away. Every one of them. Hell, even my own mother had left me. To me, marriage is forever. I wasn’t going to bind myself to someone unless I was certain they weren’t going anywhere.”

“Helena walked out because you didn’t propose?”

“She left me for a guy she worked with who had been her ‘confidante’ throughout all the trouble with Kylie.” Butch snorted. “She said he was sensitive, made her smile, and cared enough to be open with her. The oh-so-perfect guy dumped her a month later. She came back, but I sent her away. The next time I was in a war zone, I was Turned into a vampire. I never looked back.”

I moved to him. “Now I get it. All of it.” I grazed his jaw with my nails, knowing he liked it. “Butch, they didn’t walk away because you weren’t good enough for them to want to stick around or because you couldn’t make them happy. They blamed you because they didn’t want to admit to you or themselves that they were letting Kylie win after swearing that they wouldn’t.” He had to see that…but he was shaking his head.

“With you, I’m happy. No one could do anything to make me walk away.” His hands settled on my hips. “If they had been this happy, they’d have stuck it out with me.”

Oh, he was too adorable…in his own weird way. “If they weren’t this happy, you aren’t at fault for that. And to be fair, Kylie made things nearly impossible for you.”

“I’m not going to lay the blame at Kylie’s feet. I was never good at relationships. You know me, baby. I’m not a master of communication. I’m not patient or gentle. I don’t have a great sense of humour, and I’m probably the least compassionate person you’ll ever meet. Hell, I find it easier to kill than I do to talk about what I’m feeling. I don’t blame them for leaving.”