Unchain My Heart(58)

With a motherfucker of a headache, I remembered my last thought just before I passed out cold: way too deep. It repeated in my brain, over and fucking over, like a broken record on speed.

I was so screwed.

It has to fucking stop.

Spearing my fingers into my hair, it dawned on me. It was too goddamn late.

I was already addicted to her.

Fuck, I was lost in this woman who was tormenting my mind and body.

But she was off-limits. She was related to my archenemy, the one man I was bent on destroying. I couldn’t let my dick decide how this played out. Fuck no. I had to get a grip.

Guilt ate at me. Even though I despised Ryder Knox, even more so for knocking up my sweet sister, I had never meant to take an innocent life, even if indirectly. Through the haze of the drinking, Amy had come to me in delirious visions, chastising me for becoming a monster. Her words were a refrain in my head: “A life for a life doesn’t fix anything. Revenge and hatred are not the answer. Love is.”

It was as if she were standing in my apartment, talking to me. Only the fifth bottle of liquor made her go away. For years I’d wanted her to come to me in my dreams, and now she had, but not in the way I expected or wanted. She was sad, and I made her so. It was like a knife in the gut.

Yet I could taste the sweetness of revenge. I'd dreamed for years of vengeance, and finally it was within my grasp to settle the score. I had to clear my fucking head—if only it wasn’t pounding like this. I sat as still as I could, contemplating my next move. Even the slightest movement of my fucking eyeballs was like someone had stabbed a direct line from there to my skull.

This was the third day in a row where another virtually sleepless night was messing with my sense of logical thinking and rational decision-making. Amongst other things, I'd drunk a full bottle of vodka, grimacing as I swallowed the fiery liquid into my belly.

As much as I hated the thought, I had to stop myself from going back to Eva’s place. Why was it that in her arms I felt whole, and as if the peace that had evaded me for more than a decade could finally be mine?

She pulled me like a magnet. I couldn’t resist on my own. But after several bottles of hard liquor, I'd passed out on my sofa. Waking up with my head fuzzy and looking bedraggled, I cursed the empty bottles lying on the carpet. How had I come to this? Resorting to fucking drinking myself into a stupor to stop myself from doing what I really wanted?

To go back to Eva’s place.

To break all my own rules.

I wanted more than one time.

My mouth felt as if ten monkeys had shat in it. Empty Chinese takeout cartons sat on the coffee table and the TV was blaring. The noise hurt my fucking head. I clicked it off with the remote and hung my head in shame.

I’m a lame sack of shit.

A coward.

I couldn’t even face up to a woman, for fuck’s sake. Because she had me by the balls.

A knock at the door made me jump. Did it have to be so loud? I stumbled to the front entrance. Who the fuck was here this early in the morning?

I pulled the door open with a jerk. Savage.

I worked out every day, yet I was small in comparison to Sav. At six-foot nine-inches, Lucas Hunter Savage—known to most people by his surname only—was not a man anyone wanted to be enemies with. He had no family left, nobody to care about. His brother had gone down that day, and his mother died a month later from a broken heart, leaving my best friend an orphan. As the only survivors of the shooting that had killed all our mutual friends, we had joined the special ops cop squad together to avenge what had happened.

Savage was ruthless. He pushed himself beyond most human limits. The man was a fucking machine. In the army, I'd seen him kill men with his bare hands, usually dangling in the air as he strangled his enemy to death. I knew better than to cross him and was glad he was my friend and partner. I trusted him with my life. But today, I'd gladly fucking kill him if he didn’t go away.

“Dipshit. What the fuck happened to you? Has somebody died?” His cleanly-shaven face contrasted sharply with my three-day-old stubble.

“What do you want?” I grunted, holding my stomach to stop the nausea from taking over.

Uninvited, he pushed past me into the living room. “Christ. What happened to your place? It's fucking trashed. You’re the neatest bachelor I know. Somebody did die?”

I shook my head. Fuck, that hurt. Shaking my brain around wasn’t a good idea. “Nobody died. Everything is just fine. Now go the fuck away.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, squinting at me. “Not until you tell me why you haven’t been in to the office for two days. I call bullshit. Normally you live at the fucking office, now you don’t show? And just before our biggest showdown? Nah, you can’t fool me.”