To understand he was exactly what I’d been missing, the same as I would proclaim that I was what he was missing.
“You want to know who I am, Daisy? You really want to know who I am?” He clutched his left hand in a fist. The tattoo on the back with the stacked Ss and the dagger running through flexed and seemed to sharpen. That eye seeing too much, his secrets peeking through the flames that licked up his wrist and forearm from the torch.
All while I felt completely left in the dark.
“Yes.” I basically implored it.
Cash shot to his feet and crossed the room. He roughed both hands over the top of his head. Agony poured from his being.
A riptide that threatened to knock him from his feet.
“I’m a monster, Daisy. Keep trying to explain that to you, but you refuse to see it.” A war went down inside him, every intrinsic part at odds, and he looked to the floor before he returned his attention to me and ground out, “After I left West Virginia…”
My chest clutched in old misery as the horrors of that night stole the oxygen from the room.
“Told you I met the guys when I landed in LA. That they became family. We were all fucked, Daisy. All messed up inthe heads and hearts. We joined this brutal MC as a means of survival. But I think we were drawn to it. Needed it.”
His jaw hardened, and his hands curled into fists. “We were depraved. Full of greed and wickedness. We stole and we maimed and we killed.”
Sickness fisted my stomach. It felt almost impossible to picture Cash involved in any of those things. It felt like a vague delusion. Something not quite real, even though he was standing there peeling away the layers to show me who he had become.
And maybe I had completely changed, too. Maybe my trials and traumas had reshaped me so much that it didn’t matter. There was nothing he could say that would make me truly fear him.
“But you said that was in the past.”
His laughter was hollow. “The MC? Yeah. But not who I became while I was involved. I thrive on the violence. It’s always right there, simmering below the surface. Festering. Compounding. Waiting on the next time I can release it. I thirst for it. Bringing destruction. Draining the life out of someone who doesn’t deserve to breathe.”
Nausea toppled my stomach.
He was a killer.
In the truest sense of the word.
I shifted so I was on my knees on the bed. Basically kneeling before him. Begging him not to be as terrible as the picture of corruption he painted. “But you said…you said that you never hurt innocents.”
I could almost see the self-hatred boiling on his flesh. The tattoos crawling like a verdict written on his skin.
He turned away. “Only my family, Daisy. The only innocents I hurt were my family.”
Grief pinched my brow. “No, Cash. It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. How could you blame yourself?”
“How can I blame myself?” He gripped at his heart like it caused him physical pain. Like he didn’t deserve for it to beat. “I was the one who caused the whole thing. Matthew told me what I had to do, and I disregarded it. Was selfish because I wanted the win. The achievement. The chance of being great when the only thing I was doing was damning all of them.”
Confusion curled through me, and my pulse throbbed erratically. “What are you talking about?”
His strong jaw trembled. “Matthew was in trouble. Messed up with these really bad guys. He asked for my help, and I ignored it. Ignored it because I was too selfish to give.”
Confusion whipped and stirred.
“I should have known it was going to come back on us.” Every word was full of spite. “On me. On my family. If I hadn’t…”
Grief gushed out of him, and his face contorted in agony.
“When I realized they were in trouble, when I realized what I caused, I went running home. But then…I saw the light on upstairs in my room. And I knew you were there. I had to get to you.”
Horrified shock nearly blew me back into the wall.
He didn’t need to say the last aloud. I heard it as plain as if he shouted it into the vacuum that had stolen the last years from us.
