Page 21 of After the Chase

“Is that what you want? Hmm? To tussle with me? Threatening me like that is a risk, baby. I might be tempted to see if you can take the baseball bat in the ass as good as you can take a candle.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Are you questioning me?”

I feel a twitch under his pants from his dick and I chuckle to myself. I think those two dead guys were a divine intervention in Chase’s journey to the dark side.

"Have you done that before? Killed someone with a bat?"

"Yes, it’s my favorite way. I like the results it gives, how it smashes someone to pieces."

He's quiet for another mile. Then: "You looked..."

"What?"

"Beautiful. You looked beautiful."

I was not expecting that.

CHAPTER FIVE

CHASE

I'm sitting at the desk in our hotel room, my journal open in front of me, pen in hand. Noah is in the shower and I can hear the water running.

I didn’t really speak much on the journey here to the hotel as my brain is in overdrive. As I sit here, my hand is shaking and I press it flat against the open page in my journal, willing it to stop. It doesn't.

Today, I watched my husband kill two men with a baseball bat.

I write the sentence slowly, unable to comprehend that the sentence isn’t fiction. The words look surreal on the page, like something from a crime novel, not my actual life.

They tried to carjack us. One had a gun. Noah disarmed him in seconds and broke his wrist, he took control of the situation with the kind of efficiency that suggests he has had a lot of practice. Then he retrieved a baseball bat from the trunk.

How did I not know that we had a bat in the trunk? Why did we have it?

I pause, staring at the words. How many other things don't I know? How many other preparations has Noah made that I've been oblivious to?

The whole scene was so violent, and the sounds, I have never heard sounds of breaking bones before. I’ve never heard grown men scream like that, it was so shrill it sent a shiver through me. All of the blood and gore, it was horrific. I stood there in shock, unable to move as I watched Noah become this void. Knowing a psychopath and seeing them in their darkness are two very different things.

Noah, of course, doesn’t understand the problem, but why would he? I thought I was going to vomit, but it’s not for the reasons Noah may think. It makes me sick to even write this, but I felt sick because of the disgust I have for myself. Because in that moment of brutality, all I could think was how stunning Noah looked. Powerful. I felt safe, which is ridiculous.

My hand is steadier now that the words are flowing.

His face was what I would describe as serene, at peace. There was no anger or signs of exertion, he just looked like he was performing surgery, methodical in his manner. And when it was over, when both men were dead at his feet, he turned to look at me. He was checking my reaction, and when he did I was holding myself back from jumping into his arms. Those deadly, powerful arms.

I’m sick in the head.

I flip back through my journal, scanning previous entries. I've been enabling him, because I knew what he did from the beginning and I’m sitting here acting like because I’ve seen it in person, it’s something bad. Which of course it is, but I’m too consumed with the action and how my man looked. And again, it’s the safety. I feel safe with a psycho killer.

The water shuts off and I hear Noah moving around in the bathroom, the sound of his footsteps, the medicine cabinet opening and closing.

When Noah emerges, he's wearing only a towel around his waist. His hair is damp, water droplets still clinging to his shoulders. He looks at me, then at the open journal.

"Writing about today?" he asks.

"Yes."

He crosses to me, standing behind my chair. His hand settles on my shoulder, and I feel the warmth of his skin through my shirt.