“And it was no different than they would have done to me. Although if I’d given them what they would have probably done for me, I would have found a way to keep them alive, drive them to some remote location so I could take the money while someone else took over and tortured me mercilessly, sadistically for hours, even days before I was finally given the mercy of death,” he said coldly. “What I did to them was tame in comparison. Because those men were working on a bounty putout by Los Muertos, and I will kill myself before I ever let them take me, and I would do the same to you.”
“You’d kill me?” I asked, taken by surprise.
He took a deep, measured breath before speaking. “If my options were to let you be taken away by them, or someone I knew would deliver you to Los Muertos, or putting a bullet between your eyes, I would choose the bullet every time. You think you know what these people are capable of, but you do not. Monsters would look under their bed looking for Los Muertos. Their brutality is outmatched only by their sadism. I do what I do because it’s business, because this is the life I chose years ago, and that is just how I live now. But to them? Most of them live for the day when they can get their hands on someone long enough to play with them. I’ve seen the unedited reports of what they do when they get their hands on people, and that’s just people who happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. But for people like you and me? Me, who has been actively thwarting their attempts to take over the city with an efficiency and success that surprises even me? Or you, who is obviously the one weak point I have right now? What they would do to us would make their normal cruelty look like a child’s game.”
A chill slipped down my spine, which was probably the reaction he was trying to get, but I didn’t mind, because I knew he was being honest with me. There was no reason for him to exaggerate, not unless it was real. He could have easily made his point without feeling the need to drive home just how awful these people were. Plus, he had never been dramatic or exaggerated, so I was already naturally inclined to believe him.
“So, yes,” he said, deflating slightly. “I’m seriously considering just how much of my life I should allow you into, if any. My life isn’t going to get any easier or safer, and you...I mean, God, Dom. You were ready to have an existential crisis over the idea that you might haveaccidentallykilled a man inself-defense. What could that mean if you were faced with the same situation in the future? A moment of hesitation, doubting if you could do it or if you should, in a situation where you needed to risk orintentionallytake someone’s life, could cost you. And there is a lot in this life I have learned I can live with, but the idea that being close to me could get you killed is the first time I’ve ever seriously considered whether or not I could live with myself.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d made me fall silent, leaving me to stare at him because...what could I say? In his shoes, I’d be worried about the same thing, and honestly, there was no way I could handle the stress of just the idea of being the reason he got killed. But it was something he had been living with from the moment I’d seen him on the street weeks ago, and...I had been dismissing it from the start.
Now I was sitting here, knife wound in my gut, and I finally understood what I had been seeing from the moment we’d gotten in the car and driven here. He hadn’t been cold and businesslike because that was who he was as a person; that had been him falling back into old habits to keep himself in control. If I were to guess, he had been in a constant state of panic and fighting it off the entire time. While I had been fussing and bitching about how badly I’d been hurt and how everyone was getting on my nerves, he had been facing down the reality that his life was as much responsible for what happened to me as those three guys.
I took a deep breath and sighed. “Look...I’ll admit, I’ve been...ignoring your worries about all this, alright? I really have, and in your shoes, I would be just as worried and pissed off. I guess I wasn’t paying that much attention. I knew, but I didn’t understand. I guess it took me almost getting gutted for me to get it.”
The corner of his lips twitched. “Only you could be so incredibly stubborn that it would take a brush with death for you to understand something.”
“What can I say? I’ve got a hard head,” I said, and then, realizing how stupid we were being, I reached out, gesturing for him to come closer.
There was only a slight hesitation on his part that I didn’t take offense to. I understood him enough to know he wasn’t balking at the idea of me touching him, but because he was still wound tight, and he had always been an isolator when he was stressed or hurt. What I paid attention to was the moment his shoulders slumped in defeat, and he uncurled himself from the tightly bound knot he’d tied himself in to get up from the chair and come over to me. I directed him to the open spot beside me and brought him closer, on the side furthest from the wound.
“I haven’t changed my mind,” I told him, letting us enjoy the feel of the other. He fit neatly against my side, and it was strange to think of how, not that long ago, he had been this born and bred killer who was able to gun down two men without batting an eye, and care nothing about the third man he’d killed in self-defense. “I don’t plan on going anywhere. Even though I understand what you’ve been worried about a lot better, and I’ll admit it is pretty dangerous and maybe a little stupid, but...in the car, you were right.”
“About what?” he asked, sounding tired as he continued to lean against me.
“You are someone I love,” I said, knowing the only way to get it out in a believable way was to just...say it.
I felt him stiffen then relax with a weary sigh. “I was afraid that comment was going to come back and bite me in the ass. I said it because I was worried you were about to freak out, and I was trying to ground you.”
“Well, it worked, but it also pointed out to me that you were right, I do love you. It’s hard to say how much of that love is because of who we are or because of who we were, but it’s love all the same,” I told him softly, laying my head atop his. “And I plan on trying to figure out which one it is.”
“Stubborn,” he muttered, laying his hand on my lap and sighing. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, I really don’t.”
“I suspect you’re going to bitch and complain about how stubborn I am, then you’re going to argue with me repeatedly, and give in because you want this as much as I do, even though you still think it’s a bad idea. And then it’s going to keep repeating itself until we either die or you finally give up. And when you do give up, you won’t announce it, because then you’d have to admit you gave up, and Lord knows that’s not allowed to happen. So you’ll keep it to yourself, and if I’m ever stupid enough to bring it up, you’ll bring the argument back just to make it seem like you never gave up in the first place.”
“Wow,” he said, turning his head so one eye was peering up at me. “That was an exhaustive...and exhausting summary of events. I’m not sure how to feel about that.”
“Probably irritated that I called you out, but you’re willing to let it go because it’s me.”
“Your credit line is beginning to run dry.”
“I doubt it.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
I smirked and then softened. “I’m...sorry, I was ready to freak out over killing those guys. You were right, they were going to kill us, or worse. And what you did was exactly...well, I don’t blame you.”
“You were going to say it needed to be done, but then you realized I killed one man without hesitation, and executed another with an equal lack of hesitation,” he said. I could hear inhis voice that he was sorry, but I suspected he was sorry I’d seen it, not that he’d done it. “You were horrified by what you saw of me.”
It was true, and I wasn’t going to insult him by pretending he wasn’t smart enough to have figured that out. I had witnessed the killer that lived inside him, the one he’d needed to find at some point. Maybe the killer had shown itself when he had first killed the bastard responsible for his mother’s death, or maybe it had come later, when it was necessary to find it to live...or maybe when he had needed it to get ahead. There were a bunch of reasons he might have become the sort of person willing to kill, and I wouldn’t know which one it was. And perhaps it was better if I never really found out the truth.
“We’re stuck,” he said in a low voice. “Both of us. Stuck together. Even though I tried so hard to keep us separate, we’re stuck, aren’t we?”
“Not sure if ‘stuck’ is the word I’d use,” I said with a snort. “But...yeah, I guess we kind of are.”
“I’m not a believer in fate, just so you know before you start getting ideas.”
I laughed softly. “I don’t either. But I think there might be some weight to the idea that sometimes two people...have a hard time quitting. I mean, there was no really good reason for Augustine to keep coming around when you were a kid, but he did, didn’t he? Maybe for his own reasons. And even though you left Cresson Point and tried to end the bond we had, then tried to avoid me and push me away while you were here, it still didn’t work the way you planned.”
