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CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

FREYA

It’s getting on towards night.

After Bittern left, nobody came again, but I can hear men moving about the house. I’m in a bedroom with the window boarded shut. Luckily, there’s a small adjoining bathroom with a toilet and a sink. Otherwise, all I can do is pace the room or sit on the bed with my arms wrapped around my legs, staring into space.

Once or twice, I touch my stomach and wonder what will happen.

I’m exhausted, my head blurry, but I can’t sleep.

Deacon will come for me, I know that. What scares me is wondering what kind of carnage he’ll cause and who will make it out alive. My heart aches, and all I can do is fantasize about getting free.

Getting home to Deacon.

The doorknob turns. My pulse spikes, and I push myself up, crawling back against the headboard. The door creaks open, and the bottom falls out of my stomach as Aiden walks in and shuts it behind him.

Our eyes lock. I wet my lips.

“Please let me go,” I whisper.

Aiden shakes his head once. He looks tired, but his eyes are alert. I can tell he’s been up for hours. He’s wearing one of his old shirts, dusty, eaten away at the collar, and he’s got a backward ball cap on his head. He only wears that inside when he hasn’t gotten a chance to shower in a while.

He kicks out a chair in the corner and sits, splayed out like Deacon.

“Please,” I whisper.

He shakes his head again. “I need Ryder to back down and give me that easement. He won’t do that for anybody but you. For once, you being a whore has paid off for me.”

He’s called me that so many times, but this time it hurts the most. Silence falls. He sits there, one leg jiggling, not taking his eyes from me.

“You look so much like her,” he says, voice low.

All at once, years of pain fill the room like a palpable ache. His throat bobs as he swallows.

“You loved her,” I whisper.

It tumbles out before I can stop it. All my life, I assumed he just wanted to own her, to take something beautiful and snuff it out. But the moment I say those words, a flicker of pain moves through his eyes.

“When she left, I ignored you for years,” he says distantly. “I don’t remember much of you from then, but after you said the Whitaker boy fucked you, I woke up and noticed you looked just like her.”

My mouth is dust-dry.

“You can say her name,” I whisper.

The corner of his mouth jerks up. “I called her Laurie. She used to get so mad because she wanted to be Laurel Rose.”

I can’t speak. Not even dead drunk has Aiden been this vulnerable before. Now, he’s sober, and his eyes are like open sores.

He runs a hand over his face. Silence falls again.

“Why did she really leave?” I whisper.

He lets out a slow sigh and reaches into his pocket to take out a pack of cigarettes. He turns it over in his hands. The corner is crushed, and he keeps worrying it with his thumb.

“We had a fight, things got heated,” he says. “I might have done some things…I didn’t mean. ”

Sickness passes over me in a wave, making my breathing come short and fast. Aiden snorts, looking toward the boarded up window.

“She overreacted,” he says. “And she did the same thing Lady did, threatened to take my kids. I told her she couldn’t leave with the boys. So, she decided to stay, but she wasn’t right after that. Started getting high, just bottomed out. She left for good six months later.”

He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

“Nobody takes my kids,” he says softly. “You call me what you want, but I was never a fucking deadbeat. I raised you all.”

Anger rises like a storm in me.

“I’m not your daughter,” I snap. “You didn’t raise me. I raised myself.”

He stands, shoving the cigarettes in his pocket. “Yeah, you’re not. You were never anything but another mouth to feed. Which is why I don’t mind to use you as bait.”

Hatred like I’ve never felt pours through me. “Is this about Deacon? Or about me?”

He gives me a long stare. “Not everything is about you.”

“But this is,” I say. “This is personal. There was no reason you had to smash my collection.”

“Jesus,” he says under his breath. “You still fixated on that shit?”

I stand up, aware there’s nothing intimidating about me. He’s over a foot taller and has a hundred pounds of muscle on me. I’m shivering in nothing but my slip, blood still caked on the split on my mouth.

“It meant everything to me,” I whisper, fists clenched.

His eyes flare. “Nobody ever fucking laid their hands on you, and all you do is bitch like they did.”

The anger I’ve pushed down for years boils over. Without thinking, I surge forward and swipe at him. Quick like a snake, he grabs my wrist, spins me, and slams my front into the wall. Pain splits through my head, a hot throbbing below my right eye.

He’s breathing hard, forearm against my lower back.

“I will break you,” he says, voice harsh .

A sob works its way up my throat. He already broke me so badly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be fully healed. And for years, he sat at his place at the head of the table and watched me try to put myself back together again and again, like a bug squirming on its back.

Aiden has left scars on me I’ll always live with. It’s how my brain formed, like a tree growing around a thick chain. I can extract him, but I’ll always have the empty places he left behind.

He lets me go. Slowly, I turn around to face him.

His eyes are so close, burning black and blue. Sweat etches down his chest, down his neck, down to the collar of the shirt I scrubbed with my bare hands. The shirt he wore out putting food on my plate.

My heart thumps in my mouth. His hand comes up, and I tense, waiting for the blow. Then, his hand stops, palm open, but relaxed, like he’s reaching.

Then, he touches me, middle finger on my jaw.

The world spins.

His chest heaves. The room is gone. We’re standing in the kitchen, and I’m telling him what Braxton Whitaker did, that he fucked, but didn’t force, me, but Aiden is livid all the same. The bottom drops out of my stomach as pieces click into place.

“You did it,” I whisper. “You’re the reason Braxton never came back. What did you do to him?”

His pale eyes flick up then go back to his finger. He’s watching it drag down my jawline, to my chin. Now I understand, like never before, the thin, thin line between hatred and desire.

“Aiden.” The word is so quiet.

His finger and thumb are on my chin. My chest heaves, straining through the thin fabric. The corner of his lips curls.

“I snorted, took pills,” he says hoarsely. “But there’s some shit I never touched. There’s shit you can’t come back from.”

“Did you abuse it too?” I whisper. “Just because you couldn’t have it?”

His fingers leave my chin and wrap around my neck. They don’t feel too different from Deacon’s hands—until they start tightening .

“Don’t,” I gasp. “Please, just leave me with this one thing you didn’t do.”

His jaw flexes. Dots appear in my vision.

“Please, Aiden,” I manage. “I’m begging you. I’m pregnant.”

All the fleeting emotion in his eyes vanishes. There’s nothing left but rage. Decades of it, boiling over. He lets me go, shoving my head back.

“You’d better pray Deacon Ryder can really fucking fight,” he spits.

He turns, boots ringing on the floor, and leaves. The door slams so hard, the room shakes. My hands are numb as I slide to the floor and drop my head to my knees. How could I have misunderstood Aiden so deeply for so long? The world has turned upside down.

The only thing I know for certain is that Deacon Ryder can fight like hell.

And not even Aiden is a match for him.