“No more tears, Merlee-girl, this ain’t your fault. I’ll be there in a few hours, you hold out till then?”
“But if he dies, Luc…”
“No, darlin’, he’ll be okay. You still trust me to make this right, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good, that’s good. I’ll see y’all soon…and Merlee, don’t go back out to the farm. If you see those bastards on the street, in town, you move in the opposite direction, yeah?”
Big Country dropped the phone when she disconnected the call and closed his eyes, shaking from the effort to contain his rage. This was his fault. All the damage his folks caused, all the pain and suffering people endured because of them…
He balled his hands into fists. He’d lived with their shit, knew what they were, and his only response in all these years was to pretend that time would somehow nullify their evil. But they were still hurting people—and choosing to ignore their existence as long as they stayed out of his world wasn’t working, not when they’d crossed the only line his grands had drawn in the sand. That line? They stay away from him and stay away from Merlee.
All this was on him. He killed bad people for a living, but he never put those motherfuckers down, and that was on him.
He roared in fury but unleashing the emotion didn’t lessen it, only brought Stormy running into the room as coldness swiftly crept over his body, numbing him, shutting down pathways that kept him connected to this world.
The blue flame sparked to life just outside the periphery of his consciousness, doing to his mind what the cold did to his body, destroyed all the fail-safes that kept his beast caged, and when that flame landed, he’d be gone.
“Stay with me, Lucas, in this moment. Feel me. I’m here, I’ll fight for you, I’ll protect you…but you have to stay.”
He didn’t want to hurt his sienna-red woman, but the cold and flame had protected him so long,so long, before he even understood why he needed them to.
“I’m not asking you to silence the rage, Lucas. I’m not asking you to stop acknowledging the pain, it was real, and it was wrong, and you didn’t deserve it. All I’m asking is for you to stay here now, for you to be in the driver’s seat, put that other part in the seat beside you so it can see you handling what comes without him. And me, I’ll be sitting in the back seat, along for the ride, but just chilling.”
He opened one eye, frowned at her.
“Hey.” She smiled up at him. “I’m here. Know that. Know that it’s me holding you, it’s my voice filling your ears. It’s me reminding you to breathe. Breathe, Lucas.”
He breathed, and her scent invaded him, pushed back against the cold, triggered images of her in laughter, of her loving on him, of her cursing him out, of her at peace in a raging storm.
Another image sprang to life, one of her in her yoga outfit dead at his feet.
With no one here to stop it, the thing inside him would leave her beaten and bloody, and it would be at his own hands. If he hurt someone he cared for, he’d be as bad as his folks. And he’d already hurt Stormy on the road coming here, betrayed her with his words just as certainly as her ex had back at her house.
He couldn’t betray Stormy again; he couldn’t.
“Trust me just one more time, Lucas, trust me like I trust you and we’ll get through this together. I promise.”
Together.
All his life he’d fought this battle alone, fought the ugliness and shame alone, and here she was promising that he didn’t have to anymore, that she would have his back, and he believed her…at least, he wanted to believe her.
“I got you, big man. When you need me, I’ll always have you.”
He shook harder than he had when the flame and cold first came into his life, shook harder than when his ol’ man and older brothers had beaten him near-senseless, harder than that moment Mama had jumped out of her still-moving car, brandished her guns when she saw him on the ground and started firing, harder than when she took him and Merlee away forever.
Part of him died that day, but that dead part always resurrected itself, always fought to live, raging over the truth; his family had tried to destroy him when no one was looking. They would’ve killed him to protect their secrets. And after a lifetime of shutting it all down, he felt it, all of it, and Stormy held onto him as emotions that were never allowed to be, flowed free.
He lifted Stormy off her feet and held on to her; let her comfort him when for so long he believed that he didn’t deserve comfort, believed that in some way, shape, or form, it was his fault that the ones who were supposed to love him, didn’t, that he was to blame for everything they’d done, even when Mama, Terry, his rational mind, tried to help him see none of it was true.
Stormy held him until the beast inside was lulled back to the depths.
“I warned her…I should’ve prepared her better. She wasn’t raised with them, the grands wouldn’t allow her to even talk to them, so she didn’t know… I should’ve prepared her better.”
“Is Merlee okay?”
He nodded.
