Page 32 of Burning Demons (Burning Torments #1)

Chapter 32

Wren

Sam lowered his phone. “Tate’s on his way back.”

I jumped from the table where we’d all been sitting, waiting, wondering, and, for me, dreading. “What? From where? Let’s go get him.”

“Joey ran into him over at the Dollar General on Lee Street. He’s bringin’ him home.”

“Well, thank heavens.” Momma got up and grabbed all our empty mugs. “I dunno about y’all, but I’m dead on my feet.” She placed them in the sink. “I’m headin’ to bed.”

“With ya on that,” Sam said as he stood from the table and followed Momma.

Sam didn’t know the full story, or he wouldn’t have let Tate walk out, but he wasn’t okay with it either. A deep furrow had grown between his brows while we waited, unknowing if Tate would be back tonight or not. The great sigh that left him told just how deep that worry had been.

I didn’t seek my own bed. No way. I paced the kitchen once I was alone, fuming, waiting.

And the longer it took, the madder I got.

How the fuck could he do this? He just walked right out the front door with that monster as if he belonged with him. Tate belonged with me. Me. That blazing path of anger only got me so far, and then I was mad at myself.

All of this had tilted off the rails when I let him go. When he’d clung to me with our parents on the opposite side of our disastrous coming out, I should’ve held on. I should’ve melded us together. I didn’t blame Sam for walking Tate out of my room; I blamed myself for not reaching for him, for not pulling him back, making sure then and there that he knew I loved him. That I was with him always.

Instead, like a fucking idiot, I let him go without a word and let the hole erode.

Never again . I’ll never let go again .

I’d just slumped onto my chair again when brakes squeaked outside. The noise hadn’t even stopped, and I was running for the front door.

I ignored the cold. I ignored Joey waving from inside his truck as he pulled away and charged across the front lawn, my socks getting soaked in the dewy grass.

Tate blinked, even stumbled a bit as if he really hadn’t expected me to come out as soon as he got here.

“The fuck, Tate,” I said as soon as I stopped a few feet from him. We were alone in the yard, alone on the street, with light spilling around us from the Christmas decorations.

“I’m sorry.” He wrapped his arms around himself.

“Sorry for what?” I growled. My voice seemed too loud in the night, but there was no hope of holding it back. “What did you do? Why did you leave?”

“I had to.”

My pulse roared in my ears as it tried to keep up with my breathing. “Why? No explanation whatsofuckin’ever.”

Tate shook, and his breath puffed around him in the cold. “I’m sorry,” Tate whispered.

Was that all he could say? “Shut up. Don’t fuckin’ say that without telling me why?”

Tate cringed as I yelled, but I couldn’t hold back. It was more than fury taking me over. I was hurt and ashamed of how I was acting, but I couldn’t rein myself in.

Tate slammed his eyes shut, and tears poured from them. “Just give me a second—”

“You’ve had hours.” I scrubbed my nails through my hair. “Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? You left with that sick fuck, and now all you got is ‘I’m sorry.’ Sorry for what, Tate? For coming here? For turning my world upside down? For showing me the life I wanted, then leaving me alone in it?” Hot bile rose in my throat, and I couldn’t take a big enough breath around it. Why couldn’t I shut up?

I turned and headed for the house, mumbling, “How could you do this?”

I was halfway there, yanking at my own hair, when a strong hand grabbed me and spun me.

Tate. He’d followed, of course.

I growled, backing him up with my anger. I had needed him here, but now that he was, it probably wasn’t a good idea for me to be around anyone. I needed to think, to calm down, but all I could picture was a younger version of Tate being abused by that man. All I could see was Tate, the man I loved, cringing at the manipulation and the humiliation of begging for someone to care about him and still walking away with that motherfucker.

“Wren.”

“Explain it. Please. Explain how you could stand to be around that man.” I got in his face. “He used you, Tate. That monster didn’t care about you.”

“I know,” he said and curled in on himself.

“He stole from you. He hurt you.”

“I know.”

“Then why? Why?” My voice broke, which pissed me off even more. “I stood right there in our home and had to watch you walk away with him. You chose him over me without a fuckin’ fight.” I shook my head and hardened my jaw. “With one word from him, you went right back to Daddy.”

“No,” he said softly. Too softly when all I saw was pain and red.

“Did you let him fuck you?” Jesus, I couldn’t stop this runaway train. “He held you right there”—I aimlessly pointed at the house—“as if he had every right to, and you fuckin’ let him, Tate.”

Tate blinked, and just like that, his frightened demeanor flipped. He charged me and shoved my shoulders. Anger rode high, and I didn’t even think. He’d caught me off guard with the surprise move, and I backed up a step. For one second, we stopped, huffed in air, and then I charged back to him. What I’d planned to do, I’d never know because Tate used my own momentum against me and punched the shit out of me.

My cheek and eye throbbed after a split second of shock. Tate stood in front of me, chest heaving, as angry as I was.

“Fuck you, Country Boy! Fuck you. How could I go with him? How could I swallow years of confusion boiling inside me and go with him? You think that was easy? Fuck you, man, if you don’t fucking know.”

“Know what?” I shot back. “Th-that Franklin is the one who gave you the nightmares? That I don’t know how afraid of him you are, even when you won’t admit it? That somewhere along the way, that fucker made you believe you couldn’t function without him?”

Tate shook his head, but the shock on his face said he didn’t believe his own denial. “No. I’m fixing my shit,” he mumbled.

“No, you’re not! You’re not fixin’ anything.”

He didn’t need this. Tate didn’t need me yelling at him, but I couldn’t stop. The pain I’d been carrying around since I found out what he’d gone through from the people who should’ve kept him safe had finally gushed over.

“Sam doesn’t even know, for fuck’s sake. How can you fix anything if you can’t even be honest about what happened? You’re not even honest with yourself, goddammit!”

Tate clamped his jaw tight, but it didn’t stop the shiver in his chin. “Maybe I didn’t do it the right way, but it was my way. My choice.” He hung his head, and the next words came out so low I barely heard them. “I’m not afraid of him, Wren, not anymore, because of you.”

For too long, we stood there, my breaths coming in white puffs between us. Finally, Tate straightened. He gritted his jaw as determination flared bright enough to sparkle in his pain-filled eyes. As if in those few seconds, he dug deep for the courage to continue.

“I did it for you, you stupid country fuck,” he barked. “I did it for me, for us. I didn’t go to him or follow him.” He heaved in air. “He tried to get me to, you know? He wanted me to go to New York with him. He played his stupid games, but I shouted. I demanded. I said everything I could think of to make him see how he’d fucked up and fucked me up in the process.” Tate lunged again and shoved me.

This time, I didn’t fight back. I took it.

“I’m here, jackass. And why do you think that is?”

“I—”

“For you, Wren, because I love you. With every cell in my body, I love you.” His voice cracked. “I faced that fear, for you. I would do anything for you. You’ve changed my life. You’ve changed the meaning to life. Every bad thing I’ve ever known, you made better. And he was the last of it. I had to prove to myself that I could be who I wanted to be.” He inhaled deeply and dropped his head back. “I left with him because I had to do it alone. I had to stand up for myself, to know that I could, and I did, Wren.”

Words held no meaning except the ones he was saying to me. He loved me. I loved him, but my lungs were frozen, and I couldn’t say it. I could only stare at this beautifully scarred man in front of me. This man who had only known pain and twisted versions of love but had somehow found himself among all of that ordeal and found me too.

“I’m not perfect.” He snorted. “So far from it, but I want to be perfect for you. I came down here to run away, to hide, and did a shitty job of it. I know that, and I’m going to fix that. It took one step, the biggest step, but I did it, and I’ll do more because I deserve it. And I’m going to show you and myself that I deserve us. I deserve this family. I deserve to be happy.” He screamed the last at the sky as if he needed the world to know it too.

Tate swallowed hard. His energy drained from him with the fog of his breath on a long exhale. And as his shoulders slumped, I felt the exhaustion of it in my own. My heart pounded painfully, my throat raw from holding back, not wanting him to see me cry.

“I love you,” he said softly. “I didn’t leave to be with him. I just wanted him gone, away from you.” He shrugged and held his arms out wide for me to see all of him. “You’ve filled in all my gaps, Wren.” A sob choked him as more tears tumbled free. “He was the last stain on my life, and it’s gone. You’re the only thing inside me now.”

I lunged in his direction again, which startled him, but I dropped to my knees and hugged him around the waist. “Oh my God.”

Tate collapsed as well. Together, kneeling on the ground, we hugged and cried, right in the middle of our front yard. It was dark and cold, and I didn’t give a shit. I just needed him, needed to hold him, needed to believe this amazing man was real and all mine.

I wasn’t sure how long we were like that. The damp grass soaked into my jeans, and still I held him, both of us shaking until we stopped crying with our faces buried in each other’s necks.

“I don’t deserve you.”

“Shut up,” Tate mumbled into my skin.

“Tate. Tate.” I couldn’t think of anything else as I molded my hands over his hair, and shoulders, and chest, and then I crushed him to me again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you.” I kissed his cheeks, jaw, eyelids, nose, and then his lips. “I love you. I’m so sorry. I just couldn’t stand the thought of you going with him, for any reason.”

“I would do anything for you, Wren,” Tate repeated. “I’d die a thousand times for you. I’d live my pathetic life over and over as long as you were always in it.”

“Jesus. Jesus, fuck, Tate. I’m sorry I said all that. I was just so mad.”

“I know. I’m sorry I punched you. I was mad too.”

I coughed out a laugh. “Good thing you hit like a girl.”

He laughed with me, both of us waterlogged from tears, so the sounds were raspy and garbled.

“That was really brave, Tate. I still wish you would’ve given me a heads-up or somethin’, but it was very brave of you.”

“It didn’t work like I’d hoped.”

“Huh?”

“Until the very end, even as I walked away from him, he never saw anything wrong with what he did. He expected me to go home with him, to New York.”

“I sure as shit hope you told him to fuck right off.”

“I sure as shit did,” he said with an imitation of my country twang and grinned. “I said those exact words and a few others.”

Silence spanned for three seconds, and then we both cracked up laughing.

“Tate?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna marry you one day. I’m not asking now. I’m not ready. I’m not the man I wanna be for you yet. But one day, I’ll ask, and you better say yes.”

Tate hit me with the brilliant smile that made my gut clench hotly. He cupped my jaw and pressed his forehead into mine.

“I’ll say yes, Wren. I’ll always say yes.”

With our hearts laid open and the ragged edges mending together, I thought it would be the end of the roughest parts of the night.

I was wrong.

Tate and I picked ourselves off the ground and held each other close as we made our way back to the porch. If he wasn’t nuzzling my ear, I was kissing his. We stumbled through the front door, giggling like little girls, just as Momma came out of the kitchen with a small plate of cookies.

“Tate.” She brightened when she saw him. “Did you know your stepdad was in town? We could’ve planned a dinner or—” Momma cocked her head and rushed closer with brows knitted, setting her plate on a table in the hallway as she passed it.

“Honey,” she said as she reached for Tate’s chin.

He stiffened beside me.

“What on earth?” Momma mumbled, then yelled over her shoulder. “Sam, get in here.”

I turned to face Tate, whose face had drained of all color in spite of being flushed from cold not seconds ago. But it wasn’t his cheeks that held my attention. No, it was the ring of bruised skin around his fucking throat and the fresh tears in his eyes.