Page 87 of Ballistic

A tight fist of panic gripped my lungs, and I took a step back, as he took a step toward me. “You couldn’t have. It was taken down a while back.”

The ridges in his forehead deepened, his eyes twice as troubled as before. “I know someone who tracked it down for me. It was you I saw at the end.”

The alarms blared. My body turned cold. Paralyzed. “No. Nope. No, you didn’t.” Fuck. Fuck! Everything inside of me told me to run. To grab his keys and get the fuck out. Abort whatever plan had me considering staying with him. “That wasn’t me.”

“It was. It was you, Nic. And I understand why you lied about it.”

“I didn’t lie!” I hissed, my body poised to flee, or attack. Like an animal backed into a corner, I curled my fists, anticipating the fight, as he inched closer to me. “I didn’t lie to you.”

“Had I known it was you all along, I’d have killed them both with my own bare hands.”

Bastard. More tears slipped down my cheek, which I quickly wiped away. “So, you needed proof. Did you get off on it, Dax? Did it satisfy your curiosity?”

“It gave me reason to go after Kenny myself.” Snarling, he bunched his shoulders. “To kill him with such brutality, my soul is probably more damned than his.”

“My fucking hero.” My voice was devoid of emotion. Devoid of life. I was dying inside, couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t he see the shame and humiliation bleeding out of me?

“It doesn’t change how I feel about you, Nicoleta. It doesn’t change anything. I still want you. You’re still my girl.”

“It changes everything! You should’ve left it alone, Dax.” I shook my head, frantically pacing in the corner. Feeling stuck. Trapped. Like the lid of a small box had closed me inside, shutting the world to darkness. Emptiness. “You should’ve left me to die in that fucking storage room! I’d take that any day, over what you’re doing now.”

“Don’t say that again. Don’t you ever say that shit again.” He gripped my arm, but I yanked away from his grasp.

I pushed at his chest, kicking him back a step. “Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t ever fucking touch me again!” Hands balled to fists, I slammed my temples, pacing faster, back and forth, pausing only for a second, to see he’d advanced toward me again. “Why, Dax? Why would you watch something like that? Why would you watch her die?”

With his hand stretched toward me, he looked like a man trying not to set off a dangerous animal. “I wanted to know your pain. I wanted to understand it. I do now. I understand everything.”

“You don’t understand a damn thing about me. I’m not that girl. I’m not her!”

“You’re not. That girl is dead. She’s dead, and you rose up from her ashes. You survived. I don’t know how, but you did.”

“You want to know how I survived?” I let out a mirthless laugh and blinked away the fresh tears. “I made a vow to myself that, someday, I’d be strong again. After what they did to me, I’d learn to forget. That I would avenge the girl they killed.” I stared off beyond him, while the memories of that night filtered into my mind, clouding my present. “A large chunk of the liquor bottle they broke had gotten stuck in my foot when I fell backward into the water. So I used it to cut myself loose from the rope that tethered me. I crawled back onto that dock, and I left that girl tied to the anchor at the bottom. And what kept me alive after that? The promise that I would stare into their eyes as they died at my hands. My hands. Not yours!”

Eyes still watering with tears, he diverted his gaze from mine, his scowl still etched across his face. “I won’t apologize for what I did to him. But I’m sorry I robbed you of that. I lost my mind after I saw what they did to you. I couldn’t think. I just moved.”

“You had no right. No right!”

“I didn’t. I’m sorry.” He stepped toward me again, and as I backed myself to the wall, he nabbed my arm, yanking me into him.

I slammed my fist into his chest. Twice. Three times.

He didn’t fight me. His grip tightened around my body, but he didn’t fight me. “Don’t hate me. You can hit me all you want. Take that shit out on me, but don’t hate me, baby.”

I pummeled his chest until my arms turned weak and my muscles sagged.

He pulled me tighter, and I let him.

I let him lift me into his arms and carry me to the bed, where he sat on the edge, holding me like a small child.

“Don’t hate me. I need you, Nic. You don’t know how bad I need you.” Arms banded around me, he buried his face in my hair, his warm breath heating my head. “You know why I keep that fentanyl in the cupboard? In case I lost you. It was you who kept me off that shit. Who kept me from doing something stupid.”

What a fucked up, twisted cycle we’d fallen into, of needing and surviving. A turbulent black sea with no land in sight, and no idea where it bottomed out. And yet, somehow we drifted together. We remained lost in the unknown side by side, as if fate had swept both of us out, just to see if we’d make it back alive.

“I love you, Nicoleta.”

I stared up at him, at those brown eyes filled with so much despair and pain. Kindred pain. Empathy for what I’d suffered, and yet, I didn’t know how to respond. Did I love him? How could I feel what I didn’t understand? What I’d never felt before in my life? Perhaps it was instinct. A default setting in all human beings. We were born to love, until someone gave us reason to fear and hate.

I turned into him, pushed him back onto the bed, and crawled over top of him, threading both of my hands through his hair. Reaching between us, I unzipped his jeans, lifting up just enough for him to shove them down his thighs, springing his cock free. Hooking a finger into the crotch of my panties, I slid the fabric to the side and impaled myself on his erection. A slow roll of my hips seated him deep inside of me—deeper than he’d ever been before, it seemed. Through a blur of tears, I stared down at him, circling and grinding my hips, with my baggy shirt falling off my shoulder and his half yanked jeans scratching against my legs. Disheveled, messy, and far too hasty to care.