Page 71 of Ricochet

Aubree’s gaze fell from mine, a faint blush to her cheeks, as if she was embarrassed for having asked. Perhaps she thought it was another woman. A girlfriend.

“My wife. Lena was my wife.” I couldn’t explain why or how the next few words flew from my mouth. “She and my son were … murdered.” I waited for the fury, the blackness to crash over and send me into rage. My stomach tightened as a tingle moved through my body and heat warmed my muscles.

It dissipated.

Along with it vanished the urge to thrash Aubree’s body against a wall. To pummel her with my fists for trying to pummel my shield. All I felt was sadness. Like saying the words aloud meant, somewhere inside, I’d accepted that they were gone. I didn’t. I refused, because with acceptance came contentment, and I would never dishonor them with such a passive state of mind.

“How?” she asked.

How? Telling her how might have given me a renewed dose of anger that I needed. It could also be dangerous for Aubree. God help her if she tried to convince me that my anger was irrational and unwarranted.

Could I trust her? Or, more importantly, could I trust myself?

An upward glance faced me with softened eyes that spoke of pain and understanding. They told me she knew something about holding back those demons and the uncertainty of trusting someone with those haunting secrets.

“It’s okay if you can’t, Nick.”

Like she could read my goddamn mind! I cleared my throat, the maddening rub of my thumb back and forth over my trigger finger pulling my attention away from her sad, golden eyes. I’d stolen the woman’s dark secret when I lifted her dress, discovered a very vulnerable piece of her.

I’d given her nothing in return.

Alarms blared inside my head, warning me not to peel back the armor I’d spent years casting and molding to protect the weak, soft bones beneath my skin. Bones so frail they could snap. I don’t owe her! A dark corner of my brain battled. I didn’t owe her a damn thing.

Tamping that inner voice down, I clamped my eyes shut, my mind searching for silence, preparing myself to peel back the scab of my most painful wound.

“I, uh … I had a meeting.” I didn’t recognize my own voice as I spoke, as if I’d climbed out of my skin and let the empty shell tell its story, while I watched from a safe distance. “With a game publisher who wanted to buy my design. Things were going well, so when he invited me to meet up with him for drinks, I did.” Every muscle in my body yearned to twitch and fidget, a series of alarms, warning me not to go any further. Yet, I did. “My wife, Lena, had to pick up our son from daycare and it kind of forced her to rush. I normally picked him up. She, um, called me later in the night. Jay had forgotten his rabbit.” Rubbing the back of my neck, I cleared my throat, as my muscles bunched and tension wound inside my gut. “He always slept with it, and wouldn’t go to sleep, so Lena ended up staying up late with him. I swung by the daycare to pick it up after my meeting.”

Eyes screwed tight, fingers digging into my palms, I swallowed back the unsaid confession—that if I hadn’t been so selfish, so self-absorbed, so desperate to succeed and make a better life, I would’ve been the one to pick Jay up. I’d have held my son one more time, felt the weight of him in my arms. Lena would’ve been at work, like every other night. Our fate might’ve been different.

“I’m guessing maybe they saw the lights on in the house, or something. There were six of them.” Ire pounded through my muscles, winding the tightly coiled ball of anxiety inside my gut, as I thought of all those men having their way with my wife, all at once. I stretched my fingers, uncurling my fists to keep from striking out at the wall—or worse, at Aubree. “All members of the Seven Mile Crew. When I … arrived home, I noticed the door was unlocked. Wasn’t like Lena. She never left the doors unlocked. Had OCD with that and checking burners. I heard noises coming from upstairs. Kinda muffled.”

Rolling my head against my shoulders didn’t lesson the tight pull in my neck and shoulders, and my fingers continued to stretch, my eyes twitching in one last- ditch effort to make me abort the story. To back away before shit got painful. The ball of rage burned inside my stomach, so fucking hot, my hands trembled. Poison. It pulsed through my body, leaving a black sludge in its wake that I yearned to cut out of me. I rubbed my forearm, licked my parched lips.

With tears in her eyes, Aubree stared back at me. “They hurt her, didn’t they?”

My lip twisted as my nostrils flared, coils winding tight, so tight in my stomach. “Yeah. Two … two of the men were raping her at the same time. The others held her down and … watched.” Dryness climbed my throat, as I remembered the sounds of skin smacking, the laughter over her agonizing cries. “I fought them off of her. Killed one of them. Sliced the ear off another.” I smiled at that, the pain I was able to inflict. The pain I’d inflicted again just days before when I’d sliced off his other ear before killing the cocksucker. “All I had was a fallen knife I’d grabbed from the floor.” My hand trembled as my thumb traced the inner lines of my palm. An ache throbbed inside my heart as a sharp pain struck my skull, and I tipped my head, pressing two fingers into the scar. “We never kept a gun in the house because of Jay. It’s why we got Blue.”

Her lips parted as she exhaled a breath, and the tear trapped inside her eye finally fell down her cheek.

At her silence, I kept going. I didn’t know why. Maybe I did trust Aubree. Maybe a part of me needed to share everything with her because only she could understand what it felt like to have a life destroyed by that bastard fuck, Culling. it almost felt like I was purging the poison without cutting into myself. I still yearned for the pain, but Aubree’s sad eyes, her silence and attention as I told my story, somehow kept me grounded. “They got the upper hand, knocked me out cold with the butt of a gun. I woke up hours later.” Rubbing my hand across my forehead, I rocked to hold back the tears welling in my eyes. “They were still raping her. Torturing her.” I pounded my fist into my head, then knuckled my temples, but still, tears fell. I couldn’t keep them in, not at the thought of my helpless wife and the pain she’d suffered. Pain I couldn’t stop. “My beautiful Lena.”

Keep it together. Lock it in. A new surge of anger swelled inside of me, choking back the tears. “I snuck up on them, beat the one guy’s face, and he shot me in the leg. My son woke up from the gunshot. He was …” Fuck. Fuck. I widened my eyes and sucked in a breath as I battled a frown and more tears.

Why was I doing it to myself? Why was I telling her everything?

I slapped my palms to the floor, preparing to get up, to find my knife and cut the shit out of me, but a visual of Jay collapsing to the floor with the sound of a gun had me collapsing into myself. “He was murdered in front of me.”

My throat tugged, and my elbow slammed into the wall behind me, crashing through the brittle drywall. I raised trembling hands to either side of my head, desperate for breath, but my lungs locked up and mouth open to a silent scream that I finally let go.

A string of curses bounced off the walls. I wanted to punch someone. Something. My entire body shook with rage.

My son. My beautiful boy, who’d fought to come into the world, had been violently ripped out of it.

“Sometimes … I still feel him in my arms, you know? Swaddled up. Safe. Protected.” My voice cracked, and I dug my fingers into the wound above my ear that’d forever mock me. “I failed him. Failed to protect him, like I said I always would.”

The bellows of pain that burst from my chest reverberated inside my skull.

When they quieted, the only sound that remained was the steady thud of blood beating inside my ears. Deep breaths blew back at my face as I sat with my head tucked between my knees. Sitting there, with my chest ripped open, heart exposed for the first time in years, it occurred to me how torn apart I was inside, hemorrhaging with pain. Pain that needed release. What else could explain the sudden dull ache that felt like wounds sealing themselves?