“Then why did you let me put it on the burn?” Tatum demanded as she whipped out her phone and googled it.
“Because I figure if you’re aching to hurt me then I probably deserve at least some of what you want to dish out.”
“You do,” she agreed fiercely. “But, I don’t want to hurt you. I just feel like I have to. Because of everything you’ve all done to me.”
“Liar,” I growled and she looked up at me sharply.
“I wasn’t like this before I met you assholes.”
“That’s called growth, baby,” I said in a low voice. “Just because you hadn’t explored this part of yourself before doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. You can’t tell me you don’t like it. I’ve seen the way your eyes light up in a fight. You’ve got the bloodlust in you, just like me.”
“I’m nothing like you,” she denied, but her voice was a whisper and there wasn’t much conviction in her eyes.
“You’ve had a taste of the devil now,” I countered, reaching out to wrap my hands around her waist and pull her closer to me. She didn’t resist and her hands curled around my biceps as she looked into my eyes. “And you like the way he feels inside you.”
“Why do you always have to make everything sound dirty?” she complained, but her grip on my arms said she didn’t mind it so much.
“Because life is dirty. I’m dirty. I couldn’t change it if I wanted to and I see no point in denying it.”
“You want the world to think you’re so tough, Kyan Roscoe, but I think it’s just armour. So many layers of it that you don’t even know how to take it off anymore. But deep down inside, you’re not so dirty. Right where it counts, you’re not so broken.”
“Do you wanna save me, baby?” I teased, drawing her in as my gaze lingered on her lips for too long.
“Do you want me to save you, Kyan?” she breathed in return.
“It’s too late for that,” I replied slowly. “Even if some deluded part of me hungers for it, I know in my heart that there’s no redemption for me. I wasn’t born broken, but I’ve lived enough to get fucked up every which way until there’s so little light left in me it’s a wonder I can even see through the dark.”
“I don’t believe that. I think we all get a choice in the people we want to be and you’re making yours by choosing not to be that man too.”
“What a pretty little world you must have grown up in, baby. Your daddy really did love you, didn’t he?”
“Don’t do that,” she said, frowning at me like I was disappointing her.
“Do what?”
“Push your issues onto me. You don’t have to bullshit me all the damn time.”
I barked a laugh and stood up suddenly so that my chest brushed against hers.
“You already called it - I’m so broken I’m un-fucking-lovable. So the least I can do if I’m gonna be living alone my whole life is fight until I can’t fight no more and fuck until I can’t feel all of that pain which festers inside of me and take as much pleasure as I can get in whatever way I derive it until I end up dead and forgotten.”
I pushed past her as I hunted for some Jack to take the edge off of my pain, physical or otherwise.
“Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on with you today?” she asked, stalking after me with a tube of burn cream grasped in her hand like a weapon.
Fucking Saint had stashed all of the booze away down in the crypt again and I knocked the cupboard closed as I headed to the door which led down to the gym without answering her question.
The worst thing was some stupid, aching little part of me wanted to do as she’d asked. To turn to her and tell her about my family, about the shitty life they’d planned out for me and the fucked up things they’d subjected me to in their attempts to mould me into the perfect pawn as I grew up. I was tempted to try and explain myself and make her understand why I was the way I was and convince her that despite all that, I was still my own man. At least in part. At least with her.
But I couldn’t. And I wouldn’t. She might have told me once that I belonged to her, but no one deserved the burden of taking on responsibility for me. And no one in their right mind would want to anyway. Certainly not someone like her.
I jogged down into the crypt, passing through the gym and into the old prayer room we used for storage now. Just as I’d thought, my whiskey was waiting for me there and I snatched it quickly, ripping the top off and drinking down way more than a healthy measure.
“What would it take to get you to tell me the truth?” Tatum asked as she came to stand behind me.
“The truth?” I scoffed, looking at her as I drank more whiskey, enjoying a different kind of burn as it rolled down my throat. “There’s so much truth in me that I wouldn’t even know where to begin. And once I started telling it, you’d wish I never had anyway. There are some things that you’re better off never knowing about me. Some secrets which would cut too deep.”
I made a move to walk past her, but her palm landed on my chest, carefully avoiding the cigarette burn,
