Ten(18)

The room out back will be transformed for Six, and if he wants in with the other side of my business then I’ll give it to him. I trust him implicitly, but I also want him to have the chance to go as legit as possible. He spent fifteen years behind bars for avenging someone he loved. He deserves this chance and I’m happy I’m in a position to provide it for him.

I shake Matthew’s hand and take him through to the back.

“We got your designs via email and I’ve looked them over and have a team coming in this afternoon to check the structure to see if anything needs amending, but I don’t foresee a problem. What time scale are you looking for?” he asks, looking around the space.

“As soon as you can get it started and finished,” I tell him. “I don’t want it disrupting business, so the faster you can get it done the better.”

He nods while continuing to assess the room. “Okay. I’ll get everything finalized and a plan in place and let you know from there.”

“Sounds good. Just call Jude if you need entry.”

I shake his outstretched hand and show him to the door as Six walks in.

“I like her,” he blurts out, confusing the shit out of me.

“Who?” Has he met someone already?

“Alex.” My stomach flips. “I know she fucked you up, and I’ll always be loyal to you, but I didn’t know who she was at first.”

What the fuck is he talking about? I hold my hand up to stop his tirade. “Six, you’re confusing the shit out of me here. How the fuck do you know Alex?” I don’t know if I want the answer, or if I’m stable enough to hear it. He’s not talking. He’s staring at me, making my nerves ricochet through my system. “Six? Have you fucked her?” It comes out so aggressively he squints at me in warning, but fuck that. I don’t like the emotion swirling inside me right now.

“No, it’s not like that.”

“What’s not like that?” I need to pace but I’m too fucking tense to move.

“She seems like a good person and I don’t like what’s happening to her. It’s weak, Ten. If you need to settle a score then do it. Don’t toy with her.”

“You know what she did to me.”

He begins pacing and rubbing his hands over the tattoos on the side of his head. “I know, I know. Fuck. She just got under my skin. I can see how much pain she’s in.”

“How do you know her?”

“She helped me once. She lives across the street. Well, squats would be a better word. That place is empty.”

“What do you mean ‘toying with her’?” I’m pissed at him. This is the last thing I ever expected out of his mouth. He fucking gave me the nickname Ten to remind myself of the vengeance I deserve, and now what? Pretty Alex bats those fucking lashes at him and he’s pussy whipped too? Does he want her? I can’t take this.

I don’t wait for his answer. I need a drink.

My feet come to a stop as I enter the bar and see a rumpled-looking Alex. Her eyes are rimmed red from tears. She’s pointing at Jude.

I really need to lock the door when the bar isn’t open.

“Don’t you come near me.” She’s covered in dirt and her shirt is done up wrong. Jude moves and she flinches, grabbing at the purse on her shoulder. “I have a gun and I will fucking shoot you,” she warns him, causing him to halt.

“Jude, get out of here,” I tell him. He glares at me but doesn’t move.“Fuck off, Jude. Now!”

Jude jumps over the bar and shakes his head at me as he passes.

I move towards her but she steps back, shaking her head.

“I need space to breathe. I need you to let me talk and not be this awful version of you, and try to remember the old Dalton. The one who claimed to love me.”

Fuck. She’s making this hard for me. Anger and betrayal swirl inside me, trying to chase away any hold she once had on me, but my resolve is failing and I’m transported back to the eighteen-year-old boy whose heart is fucking breaking.

I can’t look at her. I can’t let her back in. I turn but she shouts, “No, you look at me! You see the damage you’ve created! You don’t even care how much you’re killing me, do you? You’re killing me, Dalton, and for what? I didn’t know. I didn’t know!”

My heart is beating so fast I think it might rip straight out of my chest. “You told me to help him.” I point right at her. She’s lying. She knew. She had to know. She asked me to help him.

“I meant getting off the drugs! I thought that was what he wanted. I didn’t know,” she sobs. “I didn’t know how bad things were, or that he was dealing. Oh God.” She covers her face for a few seconds and then sniffs, swiping at the tears falling on to her cheeks. “How could you ever think I would ask that of you? You were everything to me. Every damn thing. I loved you from the minute I could breathe, I just didn’t know it then. When I first saw you, that was it. I knew I belonged to you. You belonged to me too and I would never have hurt you on purpose. I would never have let you take that kind of hit for Jonah, or for anyone. I loved you more! I would have always chosen you.”

“Your whole family fucked me over and ruined my entire life.”

“I didn’t know! I thought your uncle got to you. I didn’t know.”

I don’t know what to believe or what to feel. I thought I’d found something untouchable, something special and rare in such a forlorn, empty time in my life, and then it was ripped away and I don’t think I will ever recover from it. I can’t risk trusting her again, loving her again. You never stopped loving her.

I want to scream. I want the ground to shake and the reality to be a different one.

I have to maintain this persona, and in some ways it is who I am now, but what would my family do if they knew that when I’m alone in the dark, I fade back into that boy who learned the hard way that the ones we love betray us, and that the darkness taunts me? The fear instilled inside me from all that time ago still plagues me in the darkness.

What if it’s true and she didn’t know? What if all that pain was worthless? Can I ever get rid of this hate I’ve manifested towards her?

“If you’re telling the truth then tell me where your brother is.” If she says she would have always picked me, now’s the time she can prove it.

Her body deflates and she shrugs. “I honestly don’t know. I haven’t seen him since that day.” She swallows and her eyes drop to the floor.

“Why? How is that possible? He would never spend all that time away from you.”





“Why? How is that possible? He would never spend all that time away from you.”

He doesn’t believe me, and telling him what happened that day is something I never wanted to do.

You’re not a fucking Moore, you’re a Murphy! You want to act like a whore? I’ll treat you like one.

“Remember when I came to your house that day?”

“Of course I fucking remember that day, Alex. My whole life blew up.”

He storms over to the bar and pours some liquor into a shot glass then shoots it back, slamming the glass back down and making me flinch. His hand rests on the bar and his head drops.

“You made me change. Do you remember why?”

His head turns to look over his shoulder at me, searching. “You were all messed up. You looked like you’d been pulled through a bush.” He straightens and his jaw tics as he pins me to the spot. “What really happened?” His voice is deadly low.

A warm tear seeps from my eye, and before I speak he begins shaking his head. “He didn’t,” he says, barely above a whisper.

“He attacked me in my room.”

His eyes widen and he grabs the glass from the bar and launches it into the bottles lining a shelf. They shatter in a chorus of breaking glass, and fluids spill free.

“He was so high,” I murmur, stepping back when his anger turns to me.

“Don’t you make excuses for him.”

“I’m not,” I say, my body trembling. “I’ve never forgiven him and don’t speak to him.” He doubles over and pulls at strands of his hair. “He didn’t do what you’re thinking, Dalton.” He looks up at me and his eyes are full of so much pain I almost collapse from the force of it. “He stopped.”

“I saw the bruises,” he chokes out. “On your thighs. I saw the red marks.”

“He stopped, Dalton.” I go to him and he grabs me to him. His strong arms wrap around me, pulling my body against the hard, warm planes of his own. He completely absorbs me; I melt into him like hot rain in fresh snow. The boy from my youth holds me and it’s like sucking in clean air after choking on dirt for all this time.

I’m searching for a way back to the place we were before all this happened. Is it possible to get back there, to get back what we lost? Probably not, so I’ll just live in these few moments of his embrace.

“This is all fucking messed up. I don’t know how we ended up here. I never saw this for us,” he says, breaking away from me, and I mourn the loss. He begins pacing the floor. “All this.” He gestures around himself. “Was to get even with everyone who wronged me. It was supposed to help me forget you.”