Beyond Shame

“It doesn’t have anything to do with what I want,” he whispered. “It has to do with what’s true. What’s right.”

The front door clicked open. She turned in time to see Trix duck outside with Zan, leaving the bar as empty of distractions as it was witnesses. No one would save her from this moment, from the words she didn’t want to hear.

Still staring at the front door, she cleared her throat. “Is Dallas getting rid of me because I got Lex shot?”

“No.” Jasper lifted her arm, sweeping his thumb over her wrist. “He wouldn’t do that.”

The ink. The promise. Dark laughter spilled free of her as she shook her head. “Yes, he would. Because it’s Lex.”

“Because it’s Lex.” Jasper released her with a sigh. “Everything is dangerous out here. That’s just life in the sectors.”

“Then why?” Noelle asked, rubbing at her wrist to banish the tingles from his touch. It wasn’t fair that he could stir her body now, when his words chilled her. “If Dallas isn’t trying to get rid of me, why are you?”

He took a step back. Away. “We tracked down the guy who shot you. Alistair Martel. Bren’s friend brought him back last night. You knew that, right?”

She nodded.

“Dallas killed him. Not fast, just so he wouldn’t be a danger. Slow.” Jasper swallowed hard. “He beat him to death with a pair of brass knuckles. Caved the motherfucker’s face in. I don’t know how many busted bones he had, but he felt like a bag full of broken glass when Bren and I went to move him.”

Her stomach lurched. Not only at the mental image, which was unsettling enough, but at the dizzy vertigo of trying to reconcile that brutality with the man who’d collapsed into bed with them last night and stroked Lex’s hair until she slept.

Swallowing, she fixed her gaze on the table. “You already said it—that’s life in the sectors. I’ll get used to it.”

“Except that you’re not like everyone else, Noelle. You’re not stuck here. You don’t have to get used to it.”

She forced herself to meet his eyes. “You’re here.” The admission stripped her raw. He wasn’t fighting for her, so she couldn’t add the rest. You’re worth it.

It was the wrong thing to say. His eyes shuttered, and he shook his head. “This shit with Trent… We’re going to war, sweetheart. I’ve never left a woman alone at home, wondering if she’d ever see me in one piece again, and I can’t start now. Not with you.”

“Not with me,” she echoed. Soft words to let her down easy. You’re special, they lied, blunting the truth. The heartbreaking, horrifying truth.

You’re special…but not enough.

Her eyes burned, but she knew how to hide tears, how to swallow around the lump in her throat until her voice came out smooth and even, empty like Eden. “All right.”

“All right.” His voice was as dark as hers was light. As full and heavy as hers was blank. “You’ll be safer this way. When you stop thinking I’m an asshole, you’ll see. You’ll—” He broke off with another step back. “You’ll see.”

Then he turned and stomped through the back exit.

A scream built in Noelle’s chest, the need to give voice to her pain so intense that she dug her nails into her wrist until the prick of broken skin dispersed some of the pressure.

He’d walked away. He’d made his choice.

Noelle dropped both hands to the table and stared at the crescent-shaped cuts on her wrist. Blood and ink, black and red. She’d bisected one of the swooping vines encircling the O’Kane logo, and it seemed fitting somehow.

Maybe ink wasn’t permanent after all.

Lex

She watched, almost shaking with rage, as Noelle shoved another stack of shirts into a cardboard box. “Tell me you know Jasper’s an idiot,” she demanded. “I mean, you’re not actually packing your shit, are you?”

“Jasper’s not an idiot.” Noelle picked up a pair of jeans and smoothed out the wrinkles. “He’s an asshole.”

“Exactly. That’s why you can’t listen to a damn word he says.”

“I know.” She wet her lips and finally met Lex’s eyes. “I don’t know how to say this. I don’t want you to take it the wrong way, because I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. You’ve helped me so much.”

Oh Christ, she was leaving. “Uh-uh. You are too strong to puss out on me now, baby girl.”

“I’m not.” Once the jeans were folded and placed in the box, Noelle smiled. “I told Dallas that if I’m a full member and not just Jasper’s stray pet, I deserve my own quarters. He agreed.”

“Oh.” Lex wrapped an arm around one bedpost and sank to the mattress. “Why would that offend me?”

Noelle’s smile twitched wider. “If I stay here, I’ll feel like your stray pet. I need to be on my own for a little while, I think. I need to know what it’s like.”

“I get that.” Crawling into Lex’s bed every night was the last thing that would help Noelle stand on her own feet. “I’m bossy, but you don’t have to let me be. You can go your own way.”

“I like it when you’re bossy. I think that’s the hard part.” Noelle returned to the closet for two of the leather skirts Lex had helped her choose at the market. “You were right. I have to get better at saying no before yes means anything. Maybe if I’d tried it out on Jasper earlier…” She shrugged and looked back to the closet. “It probably wouldn’t have mattered.”

The pain was a tangible thing, stabbing at Lex until she wanted to stab it back. She stepped up behind Noelle and slipped her arms around her. “It doesn’t always work out the way we thought, but the fact that we’re able to fuck up in the first place… You’re free. It’s not nothing.”

“I’m free.” The words sounded thick, but the ones that followed were tiny and hurt, a vulnerable whisper from a heartbroken woman. “He didn’t fight for me. Not even a little.”

Lex was pissed as hell at Jasper, and the last thing she wanted to do was defend his sorry ass. And yet. “Maybe he thought he was,” she ventured quietly.

Noelle stiffened. “By sending me back there?”

“Come on, honey. We got shot. I know Dallas lost his shit, and he’s not even—” Lex sucked in a breath and turned Noelle to face her. “That kind of situation can make people crazy. It doesn’t mean Jasper was right, or that his dumbass behavior isn’t beyond-the-pale stupid. But it does mean you have to try to look at it from his point of view, if only to understand.”

“We got shot,” Noelle agreed, her voice as numb as her eyes. “You got shot, and it was my fault. That’s why I almost went back.”

“That’s ridiculous, and if you say it again, I’ll spank your ass,” Lex told her fiercely. “Someone could be gunning for me every time I walk out that door. Why do you think Dallas wants to lock me up all the time? It’s a fucking jungle wasteland out there—and I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”

Noelle blew out a breath, and some of the chilling emptiness in her eyes filled in with wry, sad humor. “That’s what Dallas said. Mostly.”

“Which part? The locking me up or the danger?”

“Both.” She wrinkled her nose. “I told him I was worried about putting you in danger again. He said you’d never forgive either of us if I made that my reason, and he wasn’t going to let me hurt you like that.”

“Score one for Dallas.” And for the tentative peace they’d forged.

“He was…blunt.” Noelle tossed the skirts she was holding onto the bed and shrugged one shoulder. “Edwin