Mine: Black Sparks MC (8 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

Liana turned her back on Nick and went into to the living room. He didn’t blame her, figuring she knew that at least there, she could collapse on the sofa and be comfortable and not feel like she was sitting in an interrogation room, waiting to be accused.

He tried to avert his eyes, to not follow her, to not hungrily memorize the way she moved in the gentle incandescent light from the overhead dimmer light Kirrily had left on.

But, to his surprise, she stopped directly in front of his chair. He wondered what she was seeing, or what she thought she saw--the gangly, broad-shouldered boy who had made her smile, then made her cry. At times he'd been convinced he'd never see her again. He hadn't been convinced that the moment in the garage yesterday hadn't been delirium, a hallucination caused by his injury.

Her chest heaved, her golden décolletage, her golden-brown eyes afraid but resolute. She was no hallucination. "I'm sorry."

"Liana." Nick leaped up out of his chair, pressed his lips up against hers, seizing her arms in his hands as if to hold her in place, to anchor her, ensure she couldn't flee, like so many dreams he had of her, days and nights when he'd been alone and lost. He'd expected her to struggle, to pull away, but she didn't.

She stood stiffly, hesitant, as if it had been too long since she held a man's body against hers that didn't want to do her harm, as if she wasn’t even sure what to do. This thought tore him apart even as his cock shifted inside his jeans; in all their years apart, had no one touched her right? He was afraid to acknowledge what that meant, not that he could have ever denied what Liana had done to him. Even in the garage yesterday, he'd felt it; he'd chased her away just in time to avoid doing something he regretted.

But now it was different. He didn't want to fight with her, didn't want to recuse her, or hear her apology, or watch her fall to her knees and beg. All he wanted was to feel her under him, to use his height and strength to keep her there. He wanted to, for the first time with her, feel like a man should feel, to love her freely, in the open, without worrying that it was forbidden, that he was considered beneath her. He wanted everything he had missed out on the first time around.

Her mouth hung open, her pupils dilated; she was almost frozen in an emotion that looked like fear, but could pass for anything.

"I dreamed about doing this for so long. You have no idea," he murmured.

No reply. She stood, still as a statue. His hand slid up under her shirt, igniting goosebumps over her smooth skin; he could feel them all one by one, coming alive like Christmas lights. He ripped open her button-down shirt underneath her sweater, fumbling for her panties. Still she did not flee. She was still. This was the body of a woman who had been abused.

Jesus Christ. He dropped his grip, turned away, ran both hands through his long hair, damp with exertion, horrified at what he'd been about to do.

"Nick," she murmured, barely able to make herself heard.

He came back down to earth, dropped out of heaven like a fallen angel. "I'm sorry, Liana. I’m so sorry. I didn't mean to do that. Not to you." He held up his hands and moved quickly toward the door, doubtful about whether he could get out of here without Kirrily noticing, as if his nightmare had never happened, as if he had never held Liana again--because knowing she had been in his arms, that her plump, rose-colored mouth had been on his--was something he'd never been able to forget, knowing he could never have it again.

"Wait." Her eyes flew open, as if she were seeing him again for the first time in years. She crossed the room in one long stride, crashing her mouth into his.

He wrenched himself away.

"'We can't do this."

She stepped back, breathing heavily, blinking, as if she'd been under as much of a spell as he had. She turned away, closing her eyes, covering her mouth with her hands. "You're still mad."

"It's not that."

"You are," she said, her expression scrunching up, growing harder. "You didn't wait for a second yesterday before you brought up Circleville."

"Well, not all of us are lucky enough to be able to move on with our lives so completely. Besides, I don't even know why you're back. You won't tell anybody."

She sunk silently to the sofa, hugging her knees. "Because people like you and Tryg will just use it against me."

"So you lie instead?”

"I'm not lying. I'm ashamed. I was terrified. There was someone in New York who...who hurt me."

"Who?" Nick wasn't expecting that. He thought back to what Tryg had said, about the Vipers dominating parts of New York.

"You want to know why I'm ashamed? Because I did it wrong. I did every single thing wrong. And even after I should have learned my lesson,
I kept doing things wrong.”

“Liana--”

“Wait,” she cut him off. “Nick, I'm as fucked up as a person can be. I keep trusting and being used and abused by people, and I can't seem to ever stop. You want to know why I never explained what I did to you? Because I couldn't explain. How could I explain this?"

"What do you mean?"Hiccupping now, she pulled down her shirt. Nick drew in a sharp breath. What he saw made him physically ill. Long, thin silver marks on her back, like the claws of some giant animal, marring what once had been smooth and perfect angelic.

“Are those--” He couldn’t bring himself to finish. He’d been ill, then, thinking of what Noel was capable of doing to his stepdaughter. He was even more ill now, knowing that he’d done it. And that Nick hadn’t been there to stop it. The one thing he’d promised, the one job he’d given himself. He wanted to scream.

"Nick, he beat me after you were arrested – that same night. He beat me until I couldn’t get out of bed. I had to call in sick to school the next day. Nothing I did stopped him," she said. “It was all a waste. I threw your life away for mine, and it didn't help anything. And I never learned my lesson. And now I don’t have anything. Not even..." she sucked in her tears, the words on the tip of her tongue as if she'd wanted to blurt them out ever since she'd seen him in the garage, leaning over the sink.
Not even you
.

Nick tipped his head up, stared at the ceiling, as if trying to reconcile what she was telling him with what he'd believed for so long. "But you moved away the next year," he said blankly. "When I got out, you were gone. I heard you went to college. I thought--"

"I didn't. I got in, but I had to withdraw my acceptance. I couldn't afford it anymore. Noel couldn't stand the fact that I'd defied him. He took back the money he was going to use to pay my tuition. He took everything, and there was nothing Mom could do. He locked me in my room. He wouldn't let me see my friends.  I had to drop out of high school to get away from him. I borrowed some money from a friend and moved with her to Cincinnati, and then to New York. I thought it would be a new start. I figured I would be a few months at most, of waiting tables until I got that big break on Broadway, or on TV."

"I thought that if anybody could make it in New York, it would be you," said Nick, knowing he sounded dumb, but hoping she realized he meant every word. He may have been too busy being a badass to see her play Sandy, but that didn't mean he didn't believe in her.

"Yeah. Me and every girl like me from every other high school graduating class in America from the last twenty years. You wouldn't believe it, Nick, the kind of shit you have to put it up with to make it." The sobs had vanished a bit from her voice now, as if talking was therapeutic.

Nick sat down on the other end of the sofa, not quite able to comprehend all that he was hearing. She was telling him about a world he knew nothing about. It made him feel strangely young, and a little naïve. The farthest he'd ever been was a few miles over the Ohio-Kentucky border--not like he wouldn't have loved to get out of here, given the money or the opportunity.

"One time a girl before me at an audition actually came out and lied to me that the director was making girls taking their tops off just so I'd get disgusted and leave. I only found out later she was lying. And another time--" she gulped.

"I don't want to hear it," Nick cut her off, closing his eyes briefly, the pain of even imagining what she'd been about to say, for him, was almost physical. He'd seen Liana hurt before--only once, since Noel was careful to do it out of public view--but once was enough. Her pained gasps for her air and pleas for mercy were as seared into his cerebrum as if the pain had been his.

She sighed, as if recalling all of this had exhausted her. He stared down at his hands, not quite knowing where to look. He wanted to touch her, but he didn’t dare to, now.

"For six years, I barely scraped by. I barely covered my rent most months. But it was never the same. And the worst part was, I couldn't put it behind me. I was always thinking about--I was thinking about you, Nick. All the time. You haunted me. I couldn't sleep at night. My doctor in New York put me on antidepressants, but, without health insurance, I couldn't afford them anymore. My therapist tried to help, but I didn't want to talk it out. I didn't want to practice my breathing techniques. All I wanted was to see you – to apologize, to promise to be better." Liana crossed her legs, head bowed so low, as if she found the carpet in front of her fascinating, two fingers working on a pill on the sofa cushion, as if she wanted to pull the whole thing up. Her honey-blonde hair swung forward over her face. “But what would I say?"

"Jesus, Liana," Nick burst out, turning away from her, clutching his head, unable to believe what he was hearing. "Say anything. Say you bought a new vacuum cleaner, or that you found a quarter lying in the street. I would have found it fascinating. It's not like anybody else was writing to me, or coming to visit. I had all the time in the world to read it, at least when I wasn't working in the laundry room and trying not to get stabbed in the liver by my batshit crazy cellmate."

"Bullshit, Nick. The only thing you wanted to hear from me was an apology. And that was the one thing I couldn't give. What would I say? Sorry for lying? Sorry for being a stone cold bitch? Sorry you're sitting in a prison cell while I'm lying on a beach towel in the Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park? I could have written you five letters a day, telling you how sorry I was. I could have tried to explain that my life wasn't as peachy as you thought, but would you even have believed me, Nick? Would you even have opened the envelopes?"

Nick stared at the floor. "I probably would have ripped it up and tossed it down the laundry chute," he said, then clarified. "But just because I was angry, doesn't mean I didn't, deep down, want to hear from you. That I didn't--" he swallowed. He couldn't say it. That would make him vulnerable, and wasn't vulnerability the one thing he had learned, first in foster care, then in prison, then in the Black Sparks, to never, ever show? Vulnerability was what got you killed. It was what made you weak. Everybody knew that.

"That you weren't thinking about it. About me," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She was speaking quickly, the words pouring out of her mouth shakily as if some outside force were compelling them. She clutched her stomach.

Suddenly, she swung her head up, and Nick was momentarily transfixed.

It was as if the lively, golden girl who had so fascinated him in high school had aged, grown pale and wan, over years of sleepless nights, a shell of her former self. Even her posture was different, slumped forward as if the world were too much to bear on her back alone, like a torture victim. Here he was nursing a grudge over a lost year of his life, and this poor girl, the girl he had once cared about, despite all logic, had been in a prison of her own making for much longer than that. And he hadn't even offered the one thing that might serve to break it open--his forgiveness. Forgiveness, unlike just about everything else fine in life, didn't cost a dime. It was something he could afford--maybe the only thing. And still, he had withheld it.

"Liana."  His tone was still sharp.

She looked up, her lower lip shaking. She was afraid still, he realized, and he curled his lip into the kind of sly smirk he knew she'd recognize from all those years ago. 

"Get over here."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

She paused, sure she misinterpreted what he was asking. He beckoned toward her, a casual gesture that was nevertheless fraught with meaning – almost as if he didn't want to make too much of a commitment. It was different from the moment before, when she'd been immobilized, too much in shock to either fight back or embrace him.

Now, she edged closer, inch-by-inch, into his arms, as vulnerable as a china doll that might break. Those shoulders were so strong--and they were stronger even now than when she first felt her body pressed against his, and he told her he'd protect her from her stepfather, from the girls at school, from anyone who threatened her. And she'd believed him, because nobody had ever told her that before--not since her father, and she’d been too young to remember that.

He spoke into her ear. "How could you think I wouldn't forgive you? That would be just plain spiteful, and I'm not a monster. I just--"

"Play one on TV?" she whispered, and that was enough to break the tension a little, though he was still braced--she could feel his heart beating against his ribcage from where her fingers rested against his chest, partially hidden underneath the leather jacket.

Tense, like, even now, he was waiting to be sneaked up on, to be stabbed, to be jumped from behind. That alone was sorrowful and, once again, her fault. He didn't deserve to still have to watch his back every second.

"But you were angry. I know you were and it's okay," she whispered and, before she knew it, she reached up to touch a lock of copper hair that had fallen forward. He didn’t shy away. “It's okay to be angry. It's okay to hate me. You can hate me if you want. I don't mind." She felt herself speaking the words as if she had rehearsed them, which, in a way, she had, though not with the hopes that she would ever get the opportunity to say them other than whispering to herself when she slept at night, trying to assuage herself, to soothe her shame for the millionth time.

In fact, they were what she wished she could have whispered to him in the courtroom before they led him away. But she hadn't been there. And though he might forgive her--she hoped he might someday forgive her--she would never forgive herself.

"I don't hate you, Liana," he said.

She tipped her head up, too afraid to let the words in yet. Because this was what she had ultimately feared for all those years, more than anything – that there was someone in the world who genuinely, truly hated her. And not only that, but that the one person who hated her was the person she cared for most in the world. And now he was telling her that wasn't true, and it was as if the sun had burst from behind the wall of clouds that had been keeping it from view. 

“I was angry. More than you could possibly know. Angry enough to punch things, to hurt people."

"Are you still?"

He hesitated. But they both knew it couldn’t hurt to tell the truth now. "Yes. But I don't hate you. I never did, and I never could. How could you ever even think that?"

"Because--because--"

"If anything, I hate myself."

"What? Why?"

"All I ever wanted was to protect you from Noel. And I couldn't."

She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Wait, let me get this straight. You're feeling guilty because you weren't there to protect
me?"

"I promised you. I don't have much, Liana," he said. "But I have my word."

"But I'm the one who lied."

"I should never have gotten involved with you back then. I should have known it would only lead to you getting hurt. The idea that he hurt you--after I promised I wouldn't let him. I knew what he was capable of--I saw it, and I fucked up so bad. That's nobody's fault but mine."

"But don’t you see, Nick? Yes, it was hard, it was awful, but I never would have made it out of that house if it weren't for you. You taught me to rebel. You taught me that I had worth as person, not just the perfect princess Noel wanted to make me into. You taught me I deserved better."

"You didn't need me to teach you that. You
do
deserve better," he said with a sigh, leaning his head back on the couch, his hands falling away from her. "Better than this." He reminded himself of earlier, the way he'd tried to take Liana by force while she stood like a doll, with no will of her own. There was that side of him that wanted to dominate her, even to punish her; he feared that it hadn't been killed, was only sleeping.

And that he could be responsible for hurting her when all he'd ever wanted was to take away her pain--he couldn't live with himself. And if that meant keeping hands off--and his cock away from--Liana for as long as it took, he was prepared to make that sacrifice.

The doorbell rang. Liana glanced at the clock on the oven, the back of her neck suddenly feeling damp, its tiny hairs on high alert. She scolded herself. She was being paranoid.

"Liana?" called Kirrily from outside the door.

In a split-second, the two had separated from opposite sides of the couch. Nick had removed himself from Liana completely, as if he realized the dangerous position they'd been in. Force of habit, she supposed. She didn't know what it was like to be with Nick in peace, in freedom, without fear of punishment--and he didn't know how to be with her that way, either. But he glanced back at her now, as confused as she was. His eyes had changed, no longer open, a look of resolve, of taking charge.

That was another side of him Liana had known and loved, but it was also, she knew, a safer one for Nick. He'd let it fall, briefly. She wondered if he'd ever be so careless as to do it again.

"Expecting someone?" He raised his eyebrows pointedly as she slid off the couch, adrenaline still swirling around in her blood, tearing her gaze away from the gorgeous young man she had just realized was sitting next to her, who had recently been close enough to leave his warmth, his scent of the outdoors, on her skin.

She suspected Kirrily would be able to tell what had just happened. Liana knew Nick was watching her as she accepted the plain brown package, whose return address she didn't recognize. It wasn't from New York, which made her breathe at least a temporary sigh of relief.

"Aren't you going to open it?"

"I--" she didn't want Kirrily or Nick to think it was a sex toy or something equally embarrassing. But over the past few months, unexpected packages had never contained anything she wanted to see. "It's...it's nothing – just something from a friend in New York," she said. Immediately, she regretted the explanation she'd given.

"Open it," said Nick. He sounded serious.

"I--I don't know if I can."

But he wasn’t backing down. For whatever reason, he’d decided this was something he needed to see. Maybe because Tryg had told him to keep an eye on her, maybe out of his own curiosity. But Liana suspected it would be something he’d wish he hadn’t.

Gingerly, she pried the tape off the ends and tore apart the rest of the envelope. A clump of withered rose petals fluttered out, along with a note on a sheet of stationery, one that looked like the type they gave out for free in hotel rooms.
"I'm getting tired of waiting. -Jack."
She dropped the package as if it were electrified.

"It's...it's fine," said Liana, though she was having trouble keeping her voice steady.

"It's him, isn't it?" Nick said. There it was – that silence, that helplessness. "The guy from New York. The one you were talking about." That was another side of Nick that surfaced in his eyes. That fire, rage, so intense it scared her. She'd seen it when he used to look at Noel sometimes, and she saw it now. It made him dangerous.

"His name is Jack Camus," she said. "He’s a cop."

Nick was already on the move. "Go up and get your stuff. We're getting out of here."

But Liana didn't move. "I don’t understand," she protested. "I was so careful, Nick. I didn't even tell my roommate where I was going. I bought my ticket in cash. Hell, I was even careful not to walk in front of the security cameras. I didn't leave a trace. How could he have known?"

"It doesn’t matter. You can't stay here tonight," said Nick.

"It's fine,” she insisted. “You don't need to protect me. We'll lock the doors. We'll--"

"He's right, Liana," said Kirrily, entering from behind. She must have put Kizzy to bed, and Liana cursed herself for bringing an innocent child within the sphere of this madness. Liana had had to grow up with Noel; Kizzy didn’t need to know what it was like to feel unsafe in her own home. "Much as I hoped we'd be able to protect you here, our cover's blown. You've got to get out of here, at least until Tryg gets back to town and we can rally the Sparks to protect you in case something goes wrong." She looked at Nick. “Do you know any place she can stay that nobody would think to look?” Nick opened his mouth, but Kirrily interrupted his train of thought. “Nothing associated with the Black Sparks. Chances are he's already made the connection.”

Liana swallowed. "Alone?"

Nick  felt his hand slide down into his pocket. Of all the numbers in his phone, he could think of only one that might allow Liana some protection. He pressed a button and placed the phone against his ear. "Helena?"