My heart thunders in my chest, but I squeeze my mouth shut, sucking in breaths of heavy air through my nose.
"I do so like it when they scream," he says, his accented voice dripping with malice. I bite hard on my lips, refusing to give him what he wants. He grins wider, his hand comes up, and the cold, naked metal of his knife drags lightly over my cheek.
This time, I do scream.
Chapter Thirty
Connor
The Charger throbs around me as I take the car roaring down the back beach roads, skidding over gravel and sand. I've got the windows down, letting the briny sea air blast over my face. I spin the wheel, taking the car roaring around a sandy turn and gunning the engine, blasting down the access road to the old Chatham light-house point.
This has gone from a bad decision, to a worse mistake, to a goddamn disaster. I fucked up when I ignored my own rules and my own instincts that first night. There was one right move that night, and I didn't take it. The part where I zigged when I should have zagged.
The part where I took her instead of putting a bullet in her.
The very idea of that now - after everything that's happened, and after opening myself up in a way I literally never have - makes my skin crawl and my jaw clench tight with fury, but it doesn't change where we are now.
Running out of road, and holding onto just enough rope to fucking hang ourselves with.
The car skids to a stop in the sandy lot next to the old lighthouse. The coast guard built a new one twenty miles east of here about thirty years ago, but I used to come to this one when the Gallagher's brought us out here when we were kids. The parking lot's barely a parking lot at this point - more sand than cement, and the old wood posts fence that used to line it and lead to the lighthouse are gnarled, weathered stumps - looking like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.
I kick my boots off and roll my jeans up by the car - me shedding my city-boy armor - before I trudge through the dunes towards the old rusted fence that's supposed to keep people like me out of the general vicinity of the lighthouse.
Except people like me are pretty fucking bad at following the rules.
Clearly.
I'm desperately wishing that I'd had the foresight to bring a bottle of something with me when I stormed out of the house as I slump against the side of the building. My eyes narrow out on the dark crashing of the surf, my feet digging into the sand and my knees bent.
Hell, jeans, a t-shirt, camped out on the dunes next to this old place - this is basically the same image you'd have seen if you'd spotted me here twenty years ago. Fewer tattoos maybe - fewer scars. Less weight hanging off my shoulders.
I've been solving problems and fixing shit since even back then, but it's only gotten harder and more real as I've gotten older.
Guess that's how life is.
Except here I am the professional problem solver - the guy they call the fix-it man, and I can't fix this. Because somehow, Sierra Hammond's become an unfixable problem. She's become a puzzle with no solution, and as I close my eyes and drop my head back against the lighthouse, I know damn well why.
… Because I don't want to solve her. I don't want to "fix" her, because the fucked-up truth is, deep down, she might not be a problem at all.
She might be the damn solution.
She might be the missing part of me that I cut out a long, long time ago. When I got hard, and cold, and calculating, because I had to, that part of me went away. When it was up to me to steal, borrow, and fight for food and money for my brothers and me after both our parents dipped out, something inside of me held up its fists. When I had to fight tooth and nail to keep our heads above the waters, I took the punches life had to give and spit back in its face.
When Sheila started to drift away and shut down - never telling me about the abuse and turning instead to the needle, I started to bruise and bleed.
The day when everything fell apart, I broke. The day they came to take my brother Gray to jail, and the same day Sheila died broken and alone on a flophouse mattress with a needle in her arm, a part of me scared over completely, and I've been a cold, calculating, machine-version of myself ever since.
Until about five days ago.
Until the too good, too innocent, too pure, too young, too nothing-I-should-have-a-single-thing-to-do with girl walked right up to me and kissed me.
Lips like whiskey and sin.
Eyes like the very ocean I'm looking at right now.
A touch that soothed the scars I've kept covered and hidden for fucking years.
I growl, squeezing my eyes shut and shaking my head.
This has to end. Kissing her that night was foolish. Taking her was a mistake. Keeping her was a disaster.
Falling for her was fatal, or at least very well could be.
And this ends right now. No more fucking around with this - no more bullshit, no more secrets and the lies. It's time to own up to this. Hell, it's time to get my head out of my ass and start to figure out how I'm going to fix this. And that starts with calling my brother, because family is nothing without openness, especially this one.
I take a deep breath, still wishing for that damn drink as I pull my cell phone out of my pocket.
"How's the house?"
"Good."
Liam ignores my sullen tone, or maybe he's just used to it at this point and doesn't immediately think something's wrong when he hears it.
"Damn I miss that place," he whistles.
"You should take Aela here sometime. She's been here, what, once? When you two were like eleven?"
He chuckles. "Something like that. Probably when you were going through that fucking basketball jersey craze of yours."
I grin wryly. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Liam bellows a laugh. "Bro, you fucking lived in that Larry Bird jersey."
"It's called hometown pride, douche. And I looked tough in that thing."
"Dude, you were a pimple-faced fifteen-year-old pasty white Irish kid."
"Hey, least I wasn't walking around town wearing a fucking Superman cape."
It's true. My brother actually did walk around Southie for an entire summer like that when he was ten or so, with Colleen Gallagher's full approval. It's a miracle he didn't get his ass beat for it.
We crack some more jokes, we reminisce on past line-ups and head coaches for the Celtics. And this is another thing that's just not me.
Small talk.
Hiding behind banter and somehow scared to speak my mind, which is something I never have a problem with. But this is the lead-in, I guess, building up to something I know might fuck some shit up between us.
"Dude, remember when Damien painted his fucking face with-"
"Liam."
He stops. "What's up?"
"I need to tell you something."
"You've always felt you were trapped in a man's body, and you're going to get some dicey surgery in Thailand in order to finally become the strong, confident woman you've always-"
"Shut up."
I can almost hear him smile, but there's a coldness in my voice that stops him.
"What's going on, Con?"
"There's a girl."
"Interesting," my brother says slowly before chuckling. "Well, that's a good thing, man."
"Not this one."
"You all right? Dude, I'm hardly the guy for relationship advice, but if you need to, like, I don't know, talk about shit or whate-"
"There's a girl, and she saw me that night."
There's a pause. "What do you mean?"
"I mean there's a girl who saw me. That night, in the back room at the Rusty Duck, with Mikhail and the Ukrainians."
And then I tell him everything. I tell him about Sierra barging drunk into the room, and about her watching me cap Anton's cousin. I close my eyes and sink my head back against the lighthouse as I tell him about grabbing her, and taking her - bound and gagged - back to my place. I tell him how she was my hostage, but how she helped us both escape from the ambush back at the loft, and how we're both on the run now from this, and about the shit with Marlow and how I've just walked out on her. I tell him everything, in fact, except the part where I've been screwing her left and right.
I tell him everything except the part where there's a chance I've fallen for the very last girl in the fucking world I should have.
And then we're quiet, the only sound the waves crashing against the rocky shore.
Finally, Liam whistles lowly.
"Fuck, man. This is a big deal."
"I know," I growl through clenched teeth. "Look, I made a mistake, man, and I will fix this."
"No, Connor," he sighs. "I mean it's a big deal to hear you talk about a girl like this."
"Does it sound like I'm in the mood to fuck around about this right now?"
"No, and I'm not," Liam spits back. "I mean, shit man, you know who you sound like? You know what pussy you sound like talking about this girl like this?"
I narrow my eyes. "Enlighten me."
"Me, talking about Aela."
I crack a quarter smile. "Liam, there is a world of difference between this situation and what you and Aela are."
"Is there?"
"Goddamn right there is. You and Aela are both Southie born and raised. You've both got the Saints in your damn blood."
"And?"
I spit into the sand. "Could we maybe talk about the bigger issue here? She had a fucking phone from Marlow."
"You've said that already."
"And you don't exactly seem as concerned about that as I feel like you should be."