It was too late now. I’d started, and for some reason I couldn’t stop. The words came out of their own volition, drawn from my chest and fed straight into his hands.
“It took me years, but I tracked her down. She was running her own squad by then. I was seventeen when I finally found them.” I smiled, but it felt raw, vicious. More a baring of teeth than anything joyful. “I took her entire group out one by one. I took my time, picking them off in the rain, tearing them apart while the rest of them hid from the storm. By the time it had cleared, she was the only one left.” I lifted my gaze, half expecting to see horror. Maybe anger. But no.
Aubrey’s eyes were full of pity. Sorrow. Something chasing behind those two emotions that I’d seen when he’d looked at me the day I’d woken without paint on my face. He was looking at me like he could see something more than who I was, maybe who I could have been if I hadn’t been left there on that street.
I shook away the sensation that pulsed through me at that expression. I didn’t do vulnerable. I wasn’t going to bedifferent. I needed to tell him this so he could see the sum of what made me whole—the kind of man I was.
The kind who was a monster that could fuck away his pain.
“I thought about killing her outright, but it wasn’t enough for what she’d done. I found her holed up in an old gas station, surrounded by rabids. They were ripping the entire place to shreds—shewas getting ripped to shreds.”
When I’d found her there, I’d had a brief flash of how things could be—I’d saved her, I’d shown up like some hero out of the shadows of the night and slaughtered the entire pack of rabid that were banging down the door. She never had to know I was the beast that had hunted her entire squad; maybe taking them away from her would be enough retribution. It would be her penance for leaving me, and I could forgive her.
She only needed to know that I was there now, the son she’d abandoned. Maybe because she’d been scared. Maybe because she wanted the strength the Order could provide.
She’d been young. I could forgive it because she’d bethankful.
Maybe things could change for me. Lynna had died a year earlier, and fuck…
I’d been so alone. That was before I’d found Blythe and Zero, before I’d found my real family. I’d learned that night that family wasn’t blood.
“I’ve never seen someone look at me with so much hate.” I laughed, and the sound was sharp, something angry clawing out of my throat. Bitter. This didn’t feel like I thought it would, talking about it. Not with the way Aubrey was looking at me. “She told me I was supposed to be dead, that she’d left me to suffer on the streets because it was what I deserved... then she took a knife to my throat.” His eyes widened, his gaze flicking to the scars again. His hand was still pressed there, and his fingers trembled when he traced them. He stayed silent, though, caught up in the cadence of my voice as I finished my story.
“I squeezed the fucking life out of her and lefther for whatever came to scavenge the meat off her goddamn bones. Though…” My hand drifted to the tags around my throat, Order issued. A last name I didn’t claim. I’d pulled them from around her neck with blood-soaked fingers. “I did take a souvenir, at least.”
“Phoenix…” Aubrey’s voice was so soft, softer than I’d ever heard when he said my name. I wasn’t sure that I wanted his sympathy. It made something in my chest twist, eliciting a memory of the hurt that I’d felt that day, looking at my mother as she spat her venom and tried to kill me. It was the first time that I’d let myself be vulnerable.
It was the last time.
It was why I couldn’tchangefor him now.
“I had to crawl my way to the nearest shelter I could find and have some half-assed doctor patch me up. He didn’t do a very good job, though, did he? They aren’t the prettiest scars.” The grin I forced on my face felt hollow, and it couldn’t quell the warmth that was pooling in my chest at Aubrey’s expression.
He stretched up slowly, his eyes cautious and his touch careful as he did. I swallowed hard, but stood still as he pressed a kiss to the scars along my throat. The warmth of his mouth started just below my ear, fluttering a ghost of a touch along the line of it, brushing softly against the tattoo bisected on my neck.
His mouth lingered there, and I knew he could taste that my pulse was thumping just a little faster than it had any reason to. When he kissed my jawline, it was so gentle. So full of… emotion.
My insides jolted again, that warmth in my chestspreading to the point where his lips made contact with my skin.
I didn’t want to feel this.
I grunted in derision as irritation poured through me. This wasn’t about opening me up and finding out what was on my insides. The only reason I’d told him the fucking story was so Aubrey would open up for me.
I was supposed to find out how he worked. I was supposed to show him that I was brutal and demanding.
I wasn’t supposed to be the one feeling vulnerable.
I seized him around the waist and threw him across the room, and he bounced roughly on the bed when he landed.
It didn’t seem to matter, though. His head instantly snapped up, and I knew he could see it—the confusion tearing and warring in my chest, the pain. Aubrey shoved himself to his feet, and I thought he was going to try to run again. I was ready to chase him, ready to pin him down and fuck him. I needed to give him all the brutal parts of me that he seemed to crave.
I could bethatraider.
I couldn’t be the boy who’d cried as his mother slit his throat.
And I was neither as Aubrey ran across the room and threw himself at my chest.
It was almost like we were fighting; it felt like we were going to tear each other apart. At that moment, I didn’t know what was going to happen. Maybe he wanted to kill me for taking out a squad of his former crew? Maybe he saw what a monster I really was?
