That, I couldn’t accept. “What were you up against?”
“Four men. My father had stiffed a gangster named Johnston over a deal. He owed a debt of barely a few hundred pounds. They demanded payment so came to where we lived in Glasgow. My father carried a knife.” He took a deep breath, gaze roving to the pitch-black night as if he could see the scene playing out. “I was across the road at a friend’s place. I saw them at the door of our flat and rolled my fucking eyes at what he’d brought down on us.”
He breathed through his nose.
My toes curled against the wood.
“I’d hoped they’d lay into him and teach him a lesson, because it was far from the first time. Instead, one grabbed mynine-year-old sister. My mother struck out at him. Johnston pulled a gun and executed them all. Three gunshots and my family was dead, downed to the concrete walkway. The men ran. It all took maybe forty seconds. Long enough for me to have got there. Maybe directed their fire onto me. Yet I hadn’t moved.”
Oh God.
I’d known this was going to be bad. I could feel it in the gravity between us. I saw it in his actions towards me.
“I’m so sorry.”
“So am I.”
He couldn’t have prevented it. He didn’t need me to tell him that.
“What happened to you? After, I mean.”
He flinched, a tiny movement, but I didn’t miss it. “An uncle took me in. Jonas. Worse than my dad in many ways but alive, at least.”
“Then you became a vigilante.” Using up his pain on taking down bad guys. “Until you came for me.”
The distance left Tyler’s eyes, and his heavy gaze came back to me. “Ye were none of my business. But you’d already been attacked once and had long taken over my thoughts. This beautiful woman whose smile made my whole night better. Every evening, I checked ye were staying in the warehouse and not going home. Then ye left, in danger again with the murders starting, and I snapped.”
I’d seen him so many times on the corridor of the cam girls’ floor. “That wasn’t a momentary loss of control. It lasted until you found me. You cared about me already?”
“Bye, don’t die.”
Those were the words I’d said to him earlier. Also in the past. “That meant something to you.”
The corner of his mouth curved in a rueful smile. “Pathetic, no? I’d try to bump into ye before missions in the hope ofhearing that, then I’d hold those words in my mind. A hope to cling to. A reason to come back.”
My heart swelled with a rush of something dangerous. The problem was, I’d meant it the way he’d taken it. I’d wanted that little connection. A promise between us.
I still did.
Being on the run had done so much harm. I’d pulled so far back into myself that I didn’t know left from right. Here, with him, I felt the difference. I had everything I wanted. Conditions I’d set. Truths I’d demanded. Whatever darkness there was in him, it faced outwards. Not at me. Understanding it made it not safe but…predictable, and that knowledge wrapped around me as a blanket.
Tyler took in a deep breath and climbed to his feet, blinking back the raw emotion of his story. “What I’ve described is messed up, I know that. If I’d been in control, I could’ve left ye to Lovelyn and Kane, but they were so loud. They could’ve led a killer straight to ye. It was a risk I wasn’t prepared to take.” He tightened his jaw. “There’s no justification. If ye want to leave, I’ll unlock everything and take ye anywhere ye say. If you’d prefer me gone, I go.”
“And if I want neither of those things?”
“Then I’ve fucked ye up.”
“Are you mad about it?”
Slowly, he shook his head.
I got the deepest, cheapest thrill.
“If ye stay, we plan together.”
I put out a hand so he could help me up. His fingers held mine. A pulse-skipping moment of physical intimacy to map onto the emotional one.
“Then we’d better get on with dinner.”
