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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

FREYA

I hear the truck before I see the headlights. My stomach aches, the way it always does before something bad happens. In just my night slip with my dressing gown tied tightly over it, I creep down the stairs on bare feet.

Doors slam. Angry boots crunch on gravel. The doorknob turns, but it’s locked. I was here all alone, so I locked it. Aiden curses on the other side of the door, his keys jingling, and then the door is kicked open hard enough that it slams open and hits the wall.

My jaw goes slack as they burst through.

Aiden’s all beat up, a black eye and blood on his chin. His shirt is torn, stained red. Behind him comes Ryland, bruises on his face and blood on his knuckles. Bittern is the last one through, but I don’t think he was part of the fight, because he looks fine. Just sweaty, a little drunk.

I shrink back against the wall. Aiden hits me with a piercing glance as he goes to the kitchen and takes the whiskey from the top cabinet. He slams it on the counter, and Ryland slides over three shot glasses. I shiver, trying to make myself small.

“I’m gonna kill that motherfucker,” Ryland spits .

I whirl to run, so scared, I can’t see straight. This isn’t their normal drunk and angry. This is the gray area where I might get hurt. I need to get out of here now.

“Freya,” Aiden barks. “Get your ass in here.”

My heart drops. They used to get drunk more back home, but it’s been so much better the last few months. The timbre of his voice activates my flight instincts that have saved me time and time again. But I don’t have a choice. I have to obey or risk escalation.

I slip into the doorway, hands behind my back.

“Yes, sir,” I say, voice shaking.

Aiden’s jaw works as he swallows his next shot. I glance at Ryland leaning against the sink with his bloody shirt crumpled in his hand. Bittern sits at the table, eyes down, neck flushed.

I’m sick to my stomach. Aiden’s got a couple different kinds of rage, and this is the worst one. Somebody humiliated him.

“You know people in Knifley,” Aiden says. He takes another shot. “You know them up at Ryder Ranch too?”

I shake my head hard. “No, sir, I don’t.”

He lifts a hand, pointing. “Why do you look like you’re lying, girl?”

“I swear,” I say, voice shaking. “I swear, I don’t know anybody from up there.”

He slams the glass down on the table. “You come here and sit down.”

This isn’t the first time he’s made me sit while he rages. I take a step, but Bittern stands abruptly, head down. He shoves his chair back and circles the table before he grabs me by the elbow. My feet barely touch the ground as he drags me down the hall and out onto the front porch.

“Bittern—”

“They got all fucked up by Deacon Ryder,” he says, voice low. “You go on and get out of here, Frey. Go on, run to Tracy’s house.”

With my free hand, I pull my dressing gown around my body. “I can’t run to Tracy’s. It’s ten miles through the fields. It’s dark. ”

He drags his gaze up. It’s haunted by whatever was burned into his head in the mines. It’s times like this when I wonder if they dug right down into hell and he looked the devil himself in the eyes.

“Don’t stay,” he says. “They’re gonna get fucked up. Aiden’s angry, and he’ll take it out on you. Go to Tracy’s. Take my truck.”

“I can barely drive,” I whisper.

He reaches out and grabs my arm clumsily, looking me earnestly in the eyes. “I seen things, Frey, when they get angry. You take my truck and drive to Tracy’s tonight, and I’ll call you when it’s safe to come home.”

My mouth is dust dry. I wonder what he’s seen Aiden do.

“Okay,” I whisper.

He takes his keys out, pulls the one for his truck off the ring, and puts it in my hand. I close my fingers around it.

“Will you be okay?” I ask.

He nods. “I’m fine. I know how to fight.”

That’s not true. Bittern doesn’t hit back—he just takes it. Without another word, he turns on his heel and goes into the house. The lock clicks, and I’m standing in the darkness, my feet bare. I have a bra and panties on, but nothing over it except my slip and thin dressing gown.

I wrap my arms around myself, and my fingers graze something hard at my hip.

My phone—it’s in my pocket.

Something smashes inside the house. I whirl and run down the stairs, across the frosty lawn in my bare feet. I don’t go to Bittern’s truck—I run down the strip of grass between the fence and the driveway all the way to the road, to the little rise over the mailbox where my flip phone has signal.

My hands shake. I go to Deacon’s number—the one he must have put in there before he gave it to me, but I’ve never used before—and hit the call button. My heart thumps, off beat.

Please pick up.

Please .

My silent prayer pounds in my veins like a drum. The phone crackles. I think it goes dead for a second, but then I hear him.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he rumbles.

“Deacon,” I gasp, hot tears erupting. “Please come get me. Aiden’s all messed up. Bittern told me to run because I wasn’t safe at home. Please come get me. I don’t even have shoes.”

“I’m coming, sweetheart,” he says. “I’m already on my way.”

There’s something calming in the way he says it, like there was never any world where he wasn’t coming for me. I hiccup, taking a deep breath. Overhead, the stars hang heavy and bright white. It’s chilly, but I’m so scared, I barely feel it.

“How—how far are you?” I whisper.

“About a mile out,” he says. “You stay on the line. You just keep talking to me, okay?”

I gulp hard, wiping my face. “Okay, I’m fine. I’m just scared. Bittern dragged me out of the house, said it wasn’t safe. Aiden’s so angry. Bittern said you beat him up.”

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he rasps. “I got on the road as soon as I put two and two together.”

“Why’d you beat him up?” I whisper.

He gives a short laugh. “Because I’m a fucking asshole.”

Lights glimmer far off, where the road curves up.

“I think I see you,” I say.

“I’m almost there,” he says. “But don’t hang up.”

Warmth steals into my veins. I stay on the line, not speaking, until he pulls over in front of me and opens the door. I take his outstretched hand, and he draws me into the truck without a word. His foot hits the gas, he backs up, and then we’re heading back to Ryder Ranch.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

He’s just a shadow. I can’t see his face, but I can tell he’s upset.

“It’s okay.”

“I’ve been in enough homes where men beat their women to know better,” he says, voice like steel. “I should have realized they’d take it out on you. ”

“They didn’t,” I say. “Bittern got me out.”

He clears his throat, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on my thigh. “I’ll take him off my shit list.”

I look down at his hands, bloody but not cut up as badly as Aiden’s. His knuckles are smashed in, the messy ink scraped back from the center finger. My stomach turns. The blood is caked, dried dark on his skin.

“You’re hurt,” I whisper.

He flexes his hand, tearing it open enough that a drop of red trickles out. “Not much,” he says. “I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about getting you home safe.”

Home—he says the word like it’s my home too, like he can somehow take his big, empty house and make it the place my heart aches for. I didn’t believe it, but here in the truck, with his warm presence beside me, I wonder if it’s possible. Someday, somehow.

I don’t know if that’s what I want.

He grips my thigh so hard, his knuckles start bleeding in earnest. I watch the crimson drip down my skin, so raw inside, but I don’t have it in me to move.

We’re parked in his driveway when he notices he’s dripping blood onto my bare thigh. He pulls his hand back and gets out of the truck. I see his body move in the dark, circling to open my door. He picks me up, lifting me.

My stomach swoops. My numb toes curl.

He carries me up the stairs and into the warm house. A wave of relief washes over me. A low whine comes from the living room as he sets me down. It’s Stu—I’d named him something simple. He’s loose, and he comes toddling down the hall and sniffs my foot.

“Sweetheart.”

I turn. Deacon has his coat off, bloodstains stark on his shirt. He’s got a bruise on his cheekbone, a trace of red on his chin, but otherwise, he’s unharmed. The beating his knuckles took is a testament to who won that fight.

I underestimated him. He went up against Aiden and Ryland and came out on top .

“I’m going to run a bath,” he says. “Did anybody put their hands on you?”

I shake my head, wrapping my arms around myself. Something is shifting in me now that he’s in the light. His broad shoulders tower over me. His jaw is set so hard that it’s square. I can’t tell if his nose is broken like usual, or if it has a new break in it.

It probably doesn’t matter to him at this point.

Coils of heat spark in my limbs. They reach the cold ends of my fingers and toes. I’ve lived for years under Aiden’s tyrannical thumb. He was always the biggest, baddest man in the room with the meanest punch—until now.

Until Deacon walked in.

Maybe I misjudged Deacon. Maybe I misjudged myself. I don’t know—I’m too messed up inside right now to know. Tonight, I hurt, and there’s one man who can take that away.

“Deacon,” I whisper.

He turns his head, inches from me. His body gives off so much heat and, God, I’m chilled to the bone. I reach up and grip his shirt. His mouth parts as he bends, and his nose brushes mine.

“Fuck,” he says, eyes flicking up and down. “I got…I got a lot of adrenaline pumping through me.”

“Fuck me,” I whisper, nipping his broken bottom lip. He tastes like he’s wounded, not just plain blood.

He shakes his head. “No, sweetheart. Not now.”

“Deacon—”

His simmering, coal black eyes flash. “Not now.”

Since that day he took me home in the storm, he’s been open and gentle. But tonight, drenched in red, I can feel steel bars scraping up like gates, like a barrier between something dark that I tasted in the blacksmith shop but haven’t sunk my teeth into yet.

I think he might be different, deep down.

“Please,” I whisper. “Don’t leave me alone.”

He shakes his head—he keeps doing that, like he can shake off the frost creeping over his dark eyes. He turns on his heel, scooping up Stu, and disappears into the living room .

Unsure, I follow him. He sets the puppy in its pen and turns on me. I stumble back, but he scoops me up, holding me in both arms the way he carried me inside. He goes up the stairs, down the hall, and into his bedroom before I can react.

He kicks the door shut with his boot. I expect him to set me down, but he brings me into the bathroom and puts me on the sink. When he draws back, his brows are lowered.

“I don’t want to hurt you, sweetheart,” he says. “No fucking tonight.”

I wet my dry lips. “You won’t hurt me.”

“You don’t know me.”

The words come out forcefully. This time, I get the message.

He touches me like I’m breakable, like it matters if he hurts me. But he’s also violent, rough—I was so afraid he might be. He knows that all I know is violence, and he’s standing between me and himself right now so I don’t have to see what that side of him is like.

It’s heartbreaking.

I was foolish to think he was gentle with everyone the way he is with me. He’s a man, and he walks like one with all that confidence I’ll never have. Boots on his feet, gun on his belt, shoved up under his shirt. The hitch in his step is more a swagger, and there’s something else that’s been there all along but I haven’t noticed until tonight—he takes on the world like he doesn’t have backup.

Just him and his fists.

I don’t think people end up like that by accident. He’s carrying a lot of violence and darkness inside.

I stare up at him. For years, I looked out into my small world and I understood it. I sorted men into neat categories to keep them from hurting me.

Like Aiden.

Not like Aiden.

Deacon doesn’t fit into either category, and that hurts my head and heart. He can be violent the way Aiden can, but I’d never have called him, scared and freezing in the driveway, if I didn’t know he would protect me. My body knows something my head hasn’t realized yet.

It’s all too much. I’m scared. I don’t know where the train of me and him, which is now firmly hitched together, is headed.

“What is this?” I blurt out.

He sobers. He puts his hand on my cheek, holding it. His lids are low, and he’s got a faraway expression. “This is just me making sure you’re alright.”

“I’m alright,” I whisper.

“I want you to get some sleep,” he says. “I have to clean up.”

There’s no use arguing. There’s a little warning in his eyes, like he can be gentle if he wants, but he’s got enough edge to make me sit up and listen this time.

He turns the shower on, and I think he’s limping but I can’t tell. He might just be tired. Then, he comes back to the sink and kisses me. Soft, sweet. A tremor goes through my body.

He pulls back. There’s a second where I think he’s going to say something. His jaw works. His forehead creases. Then, he taps my chin and walks out.