Page 41 of Roped

I shouldn’t let it get to me. I shouldn’t. His twisted morals; his crazy honor. I shouldn’t let my heart flutter or my belly clench at the most insane things he does and says. But I can’t help it. I can’t help my breathy words as I whisper, “I scared you too.”

His nostrils flare with a breath and his grip tightens. “Well then, I reckon we’re even. For tonight.”

I’m silent for a few seconds. Then, “It was you.”

He frowns in question.

“You’re the reason I went snooping,” I confess, only now realizing it myself, and his eyes widen slightly. “I told myself I was doing it to find leverage or whatever, and I was. But mostly, I just wanted to find something on you. I wanted to know your secrets like you know mine. You’re a bigger threat to me than the Graysons, the biggest threat at Rawhide, aren’t you? And for good reason.”

He shakes his head once and his grip tightens. “I’m the biggest threat to you anywhere.”

I agree with him. Only I’m beginning to realize my definition of a threat is different from his. To him, I may be the girl whose father destroyed his family and his sanity. But to me, no matter how hard I try to think otherwise, he’s the man who makes me feel alive. Even when he’s scaring me to death.

“Wouldn’t have stopped,” he says cryptically, bringing me out of my thoughts.

“What?”

He inches closer to me then. As if trying to make sure every breath I take comes from him. Every beat of my heart goes through his chest. Well, he shouldn’t have bothered because it already does. In this moment, in this darkened corner of the world where only he and I exist, my very soul seems connected to him.

“Like Arsen did,” he continues.

My lips part as I begin to understand what he’s saying. “Back at the cabin?”

His eyes flick down to my mouth and his thumb digs into the side of it. “Yeah. Nothing could’ve stopped me from beatin’ that low-life scum into a pulpy fuckin’ mess for doin’ what he did.”

My heart has slowed down in my chest, as if in preparation for what he’s telling me. “You mean, for what he did. To get put away?”

“And tonight.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t believe in givin’ second chances,” he says then, nailing me with his gaze. “If it were up to me, some of these scums of the earth that pass through the gates of Rawhide would never leave. They’d never see light of the day. They’d be buried six feet under. Some people don’t deserve redemption no matter how hard they repent. Do you understand what I’m sayin’ to you? There’s a reason, Princess, why they call me a monster. They don’t know what I’ve done. All they see is my scar, but they can sense it. They’re wary of me. They move away from me, hardly look me in the eye. They think it’s because of my face, but it ain’t. It’s because of what’s inside me that scares ’em. They just don’t know it.”

I look at him with suspended breaths, study his sharp features. They’re still laced with pain, the lines hard and spiked, but there’s a gravity to them too. A different intensity than before. And I do realize what he’s saying. More than that, I realize what he’s doing. He’s telling me his secret.

“You have,” I say, my fingers wrapped around his wrist so tightly that he would have a hard time getting free of me even if he tried, “killed… people. Haven’t you?”

He stays silent, but the answer is plain to see on his face.

“H-how many?”

“Why?”

“More than one?”

Again, it’s plain to see on his face that the answer is more than one.

“Five?”

He keeps silent and watching.

“It’s more than five”—I swallow with difficulty—“isn’t it?”

His eyes sweep over my features and something passes through them. I’m not sure what it is, but I’d like to know what he sees on my face right now. Can he see how ruined I am? All tattered and destroyed and so completely hooked on him. Then, in a low, gravelly voice, he asks, “You plannin’ on goin’ to the cops?”

Immediately, I shake my head because that hadn’t even occurred to me. Which is undeniably crazy because that should have been my first thought.

Before I can verbally protest, though, he goes on, “Well, you can tell them some I killed with my bare hands. Beat them up so bad ’cause what they did fucked with my head so much that I broke every bone in their body. And some, I dumped down this cliff because my wolves needed to eat. Told everyone they didn’t make it, but the truth is I didn’t let ’em. Either way, I did what I had to do because some people fuck up so bad that no system will ever reform them. Not the one that puts them behind bars and not the one at Rawhide. They don’t deserve to sleep at night, free of their crimes, when people they’ve ruined are still plagued by nightmares. They don’t get to pick up the pieces of their lives when the people they’ve hurt haven’t picked up theirs. When every time those people look in the mirror, they’re reminded of their godforsaken life, of what was taken from them. Snatched away just like that. So yeah, you can tell the cops, the world, I did it. I killed them because those people, those victims, deserved justice and vengeance more than these pissants deserved their time behind bars.” Then he adds, “There you go. Now you know a secret of mine too.”