I grabbed a loose-fitting pair of navy sweats and pulled them on once I was dry, leaving my chest bare. She deserved to see the ink I’d gotten for her, even if it was going to raise some questions I might not have been comfortable answering.
I returned to the bedroom just as Brooklyn placed her empty bowl down on the nightstand, a contented sigh escaping her as she smiled to herself and leaned back into the pillows on my bed. But as she turned those big, electric blue eyes on me, her smile fell away and the silence in the room deepened until it felt like it was pressing in on us from all around and I would suffocate on it if something wasn’t done to end it.
“I was an arsehole,” I admitted, leaning my shoulder against the wall as I watched her, my inked fingers curling and unlocking again like I didn’t know what to be doing with them. “The things I said to you before you left-”
“Before you kicked me out like an owl in a storm,” she interrupted and I heaved out a deep breath.
“I’m bad, Brooklyn. All the worst kinds of it. Toxic. Poison. Whatever you wanna call me, I’m it. Ava…” The screams of the past rose up inside me until all of my muscles were locked in place and I wanted nothing more than to just turn and leave, to never speak of this again, but I couldn’t. She deserved to hear this, even if I had to cut myself open to say it. “Ava was sweet, innocent, blind to this world of mine through ignorance or a stubborn refusal to see the truth of it. When I was with her, I was a different man to the bloodstained one you see before you. Not because my grief and guilt didn’t hang on me then but because I was just Niall. Just this fella with a normal job who earned an abnormal amount of money for it. I could be different when I was with her. It was like…living this whole other life.”
“But wasn’t that life a lie?” Brooklyn asked, a frown pinching her brow which made me still.
I wanted to bite back at that accusation, but I couldn’t really. She’d gotten to the truth of it.
“Yeah. A pretty lie that I let myself believe in whenever I walked through our front door. That I left behind whenever I went to work for my pa and listened to my victims scream their last screams. I was two men but both of them wanted that lie to be true at least some of the time.” Her screams echoed on inside me and I swallowed thickly. “And that selfish desire was the lie that cost her her life.”
“Hellfire, I don’t understand what this has to do with me,” Brooklyn said slowly.
I swiped a hand down my face and looked away from her. “I’m just trying to explain what happens to people who get close to me.” I needed to warn her away, but I wasn’t sure I could keep hiding how I felt about her, so maybe if she understood the cost of loving me, she’d keep herself from me all on her own.
“But…she wasn’t close to you, was she? Not like I am? She didn’t see you like I get to. All bloody and broken and beautiful in your destruction. So I’m not like her in that way. I can fight, I can kill, I can-”
I stepped forward and cupped her cheek in my palm, looking down at her where she still sat on the bed and shaking my head.
“You’re still too close,” I said. “That’s why I wanted you to run. You have no idea how many people want me dead, little psycho. How many of them want to strike at me and hurt me in any way they can. Even most members of my own family want to see my head roll. I can’t always be there to protect you from that. I couldn’t protect her.”
Brooklyn’s lips parted and I forced myself to withdraw my hand, making a move to step back, but she caught my forearm, her fingers seeming to burn where they pressed against the tattoo of my dead wife’s name.
“Sit with me,” she said, her voice firm but not demanding, more of a plea which I couldn’t refuse.
I moved onto the bed beside her, my entire body aware of her as I made myself comfortable leaning against the pillows to her right, her bright eyes keeping me captive the entire time.
“You lied to me,” she said just as I thought the worst of this conversation had passed and I winced as I remembered there were other issues to discuss. “About your big tits fiancée. If you can’t have people close to you then why are you marrying some big titted, big boob woman?”
I cleared my throat, looking away from her at the stark reminder of my own bleak reality and shrugging.
“My pa arranged it. I don’t want it. I even told her I don’t want it. But this world I live in doesn’t make way for wants and dreams. It’s all about power and transactions.”
“You’ve been sold?” she gasped. “Just like me?”
I looked at her again, my eyes moving to the thin straps of her cami and the way the silky material barely kept the swell of her breasts hidden from me. My mouth dried out. I wanted things from her which I hadn’t wanted from any woman in ten long years. She was tempting me in ways I didn’t even think I was capable of being tempted in anymore, and I was finding it damn hard to fight those wants away. More and more often they came to me while I slept or whenever my mind wandered and now, with her sitting right here before me, I found I could hardly think of anything aside from how soft her skin had felt when I’d touched her before or how sweet her kisses had tasted against my lips.
“Do you wish I’d never bought ya?” I asked her, unsure what I even wanted to hear to that.
“No,” she replied instantly. “Anyone else could have just used me any way they liked. But you…”
“I used you too,” I grunted, not wanting to accept that grateful look in her eyes because I didn’t deserve it. “Don’t go thinking I rescued you outa the kindness of my black heart, Spider. I don’t have any of that left in me. I was just a lonely man sick of living in a lonely world and you…”
“Yes?” she breathed, drinking in my words and forcing me to finish them.
“You helped me to focus,” I admitted. “I get lost in the dark sometimes. A lot of times, actually. There are probably some pills I could take for that or some shit, but I figure I’m owed my misery for what I cost that woman I married. But since you, I haven’t gone into the dark nearly as often as I used to, and I find…I find that I have more reason to return from it when I do.”
“So you…like me?”
“No,” I barked and she flinched, making me feel like a royal arsehole, so I huffed out a breath. “Like isn’t what it is,” I went on, taking her hand and moving it to my side, placing her fingers on the fresh ink I had there and embracing the slight tingle of pain which came from her touch.
Her lips parted as she moved her fingers over my skin, the spider on her thumb brushing against the one I’d gotten for her as she licked her lips and my breathing grew shallower. She had to see it for what it was, had to know my reason for getting this particular tattoo. There was no other motivation for it beyond wanting this reminder of her permanently branded onto my flesh.
I cursed as my cock stiffened, the blinding pain reminding me of myself and making me draw back before I could do anything stupid like try to kiss her again.
“What is it?” Brooklyn asked in alarm.
“Nothin’，” I ground out, cupping my dick and trying not to buckle in on myself as I gritted my teeth against the pain.