“Youalwayshave a choice.”
She steps back, and when I grab for her, she slaps my hands away. “Don’t give me that. You know better than anyone that sometimes choices are madeforus. They threatened you, Linc.You.They said if I didn’t give myself up, they’d kill you.”
“Then you should have let them!” I yell, my voice echoing off the side of the garage. “There are a hell of a lot of bodies in the ground because of me, Grace. And you sure as fuck are not gonna be one of them. If it comes down to me or you, you better choose yourself every damn time. You don’t get to die. You don’t get to sacrifice yourself for me. You don’t get to make that call.”
As the rain falls harder, she pokes my chest, anger sliding over her features like the droplets rolling down her cheeks. “This ismylife, Decker. I get to decide who I make sacrifices for.”
“Notjustyour life. Mine too. And this family you say you care about? We’d all have to live with yoursacrifice.”
“I’ve barely been back in their lives a month. They’d have survived. If giving myself over means keeping war out of South Bay, keeping them safe,yousafe, then yeah. I’d have done it a hundred times over. I won’t apologize for that.”
“Yeah? And what about me?”
She rears back a little, brow furrowed. “What about you?”
“What the hell was I supposed to do with that fucking note?”
“You were supposed to think the worst of me. Then you were supposed to move on. This is… this is getting complicated. You and I… we’re not supposed to be this. Whatever this is.”
The adrenaline leaches from my body quickly, my anger the only thing keeping me upright. “Right. And leave me with this mess. That damn note. It’s that easy for you, huh?”
“Noneof this is easy!” she shouts back, sounding as furious as I am. “You think I wanted to leave? You think I wanted any of this? To feel this way about you?”
Pain lances my chest. “If you feltanythingfor me, you’d have never done what you did tonight.”
The rain beats down, and she steps closer. We’re doing that thing we do. Chest to chest. Waiting for the other to back down.
“Bullshit!” she yells. “That’s such fucking bullshit, Linc. You keep saying that you’re not a good man, and maybe you aren’t, but you aredesperateto play the fucking hero. You don’t get to be the only one who makes sacrifices. Who draws blood for the people you love. And you sure as hell don’t get to martyr yourself when shit goes south.Youdon’t get to dieformeeither.”
“Then you don’t get to cut yourself out of my life without a fucking explanation,” I grit out. “You don’t get to walk away. That isn’t how this ends.”
She shivers, but she doesn’t back down. “I don’t even know what this is!”
“So? It’s something, isn’t it? So yeah. You don’t get to leave.”
“Fine,” she yells.
“Fine.”
Grace’s fists are clenched, scowl cemented on her face, stance staggered, like she’s on the verge of throwing that fist forward and taking her frustrations out on my jaw.
Beautifully fucking ruthless.
I yank her into my chest and slam my lips to hers, taking her in a hard, punishing kiss. When she whimpers, I pull back, easing the pressure on her bruised, broken skin, loosening my grip at her throat.
In response, she fists my jacket, tugging me closer.
“Don’t do that. Don’t hold back because of what happened to me,” she says. “I don’t need gentle. I’ve never needed that.”
I skim my knuckle down her jaw. “Then what do you need, Gracie?”
“I need your hands on me, the bruises you leave on my thighs, the marks on my throat. I need that special kind of hurt that only you can give me.” She takes a breath, fear simmering behind her eyes. Adrenaline still coursing through her veins. “I need… I need to forget the hands on me that weren’t yours. What they threatened to do. Make me forget, Linc. Please. I don’t want nice. I don’t want the boy scout. I want you. Therealyou.”
The real me. It’s not always easy to remember who that is. Somewhere between the cop who lives by the badge, who protects his town at any cost, and the man with a gun at his back and blood on his hands, who will selfishly betray that same badge to protecthimself.
Theboy scoutor the outlaw.
It’s not as simple as being one or the other. Some days, I try to do right by the badge, by my father. William Decker. The man who raised a boy who wasn’t his. Who engrained in me the same set of values he took to the grave. Other days, I couldn’t give two shits about the uniform, so long as I feel something, anything. Grace makes me feel something.
