Page 19

CHAPTER 18

" V -Victoria said I could use this kitchen for baking." My pulse quickened as he drew closer. His presence swallowed the room, leaving no air to breathe. I retreated until the counter edge pressed hard against my spine, the scent of whiskey and cigarettes reaching me first.

“This is Mari’s kitchen.”

"M-Mari?"

The next step brought him close enough that I could see burst capillaries scattered across his weathered face. Dark, bruise-purple half-moons hung beneath bloodshot eyes that refused to blink. Lips pulled back in something between a grimace and a snarl, revealing teeth ground down asymmetrically. Around his neck hung a chain with a wedding ring, the precious metal secured directly over his heart with a safety pin that pierced through his shirt. The constant pressure had worn a permanent callus into his chest.

"Marilyn is my wife." His gaze shifted beyond me. "This is her kitchen."

"I-I assumed since it was clean and stocked, Victoria used it."

Wrong answer. The wrongest possible answer. His jaw locked with an audible click, and a muscle jumped in his temple like something trying to escape through his skull. The tic throbbed with relentless rhythm, each spasm a desperate affirmation that would not stop.

"I clean and stock it every week." His voice lowered as his steady hand traced the countertop. "Every. Single. Week. Just in case we finally find her." His jaw clenched tightly. "She'll have her safe place to come back to."

"F-Find her?" The question was both stupid and cruel, but I couldn't stop it.

"She went missing three years ago." The words emerged scraped and raw. His hand moved to the chain at his neck, fingers clutching the ring not with reverence but with the desperation of a drowning man grasping his last breath. "One thousand, one hundred and forty-six days." His voice hardened, each number precisely measured with obsessive accuracy. His eyes, hard and haunted, refused to blink as if afraid she might vanish in that split second his vision faltered. "Sixteen hours. Twenty-two minutes."

The kitchen suddenly felt like a preserved shrine to a vanished woman.

"Oh, I'm so?—"

His hand shot up abruptly. I flinched, a strangled yelp escaping my throat. His sleeve rode up with the motion, revealing what at first looked like scars on his inner wrist. Looking closer, I saw rows of hash marks etched into his skin, hundreds of tally marks, meticulously grouped in sets of five. Some were old and silvery, others pink and healing, the most recent still scabbed over and angry red.

"Don't want your goddamn apologies." His jaw clenched tightly. "I just want you to get the fuck out of here."

I looked down at my half-finished work and the mess on the floor. The batter spread between the tiles. "I–um." My throat closed completely, my eyes watering. "C-Could I just finish my orders that I've already baked? Then I'll clean up and leave."

He stared at my hands for a long moment. His shoulders dropped slightly, the tension in his body shifting. "Fine."

"T-Thank you." Relief bloomed briefly before withering under his continued scrutiny. He leaned against the wall, a deliberate casualness belied by how his thumbs dug into his own biceps, leaving crescent-moon indentations that whitened then flushed with trapped blood. I recognized it as a grounding technique—pain anchoring him to the present when the past threatened to drag him under.

The piping bag trembled between my fingers. Jagged lines of frosting zigzagged where they should have curved smoothly. I knocked over a bottle of vanilla extract, fumbled measuring cups, and added salt instead of sugar to a batch of icing. My fingers, usually so precise and confident with pastry, kept betraying me as I felt his gaze fixed on my back.

"Calm the fuck down."

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. The piping bag nearly slipped from my grip. "I-I can't." My knees trembled beneath me. "I-I don't do well a-around people."

His tone was flat. "You own a baking business."

I didn't respond. What could I say? That baking was predictable? Something I could control? That people were chaotic and dangerous?

I turned away from his scrutiny and tried to lose myself in the familiar routine of baking. My fingers still trembled as I sifted flour, but the repetitive motion gradually steadied my breathing. With each measured ingredient, each precise fold of batter, I felt myself reclaiming a small piece of control.

I piped another rosette, then another, finding my rhythm. The act of baking, of creating order from chaos, grounded me. Without realizing it, I began to hum softly. We Danced by Brad Paisley flowed from my lips, a melody that reminded me of the times I spent with my mom in the kitchen as a child when I first grew to love baking.

The sound of shattering ceramic cut through the melody. I looked up to find Husk frozen in the doorway, the mug he'd been holding now in pieces at his feet. His face had drained of all color, eyes wide and haunted.

"That song," he whispered, voice barely audible. "Where did you learn that song?"

I stopped humming immediately, heart racing. "I-I'm sorry. It's just something my mother used to sing. I didn't mean to?—"

"She used to hum that," he said, barely above a whisper. "That exact one. Every time she baked."

His eyes were fixed on a point past my shoulder. He gripped the counter, knuckles whitening with the effort.

"It was our song," he continued, each word dragged from somewhere so deep it seemed to physically hurt. "First dance at our wedding." His hand moved to the ring hanging at his chest, gripping it so tightly his knuckles whitened. "I haven't heard it since... since she..."

Heat crawled up my neck as I set down the piping bag with trembling fingers, leaving a smear of pink frosting on the stainless steel. I kept my eyes fixed on the counter, too scared to look up, desperately wishing I could disappear. The weight of his mourning filled the room, making it hard to breathe.

Several unbearable seconds passed in silence. When I finally risked a glance, his haunted eyes were still fixed on me.

"I-I..." My voice failed. I gestured vaguely at the half-finished pastries, unable to find words that wouldn't cause more pain.

Something flickered across his face—a shadow of memory, there and gone too quickly to interpret.

"You're shaking," he said, the accusation absent from his voice, replaced by something softer, more wounded.

His eyes were fixed on my hands. Something softened in his expression.

"Mari used to shake like that, too." His voice gentled, thick with memory. "She'd get overwhelmed easily. Even back in high school, I learned to recognize when it was happening." He looked away, jaw tightening.

I didn't know what to say. My heart still hadn't slowed down.

He pushed away from the wall protectively and crossed the kitchen, retrieving bags from a cabinet and boxes from an upper shelf. When he slammed them down beside me, I flinched, a small sound between a gasp and a whimper escaping my lips. His eyes caught mine, and for the briefest moment, something shifted in his expression. "Mari always kept the kitchen prepared." His voice gentled around his wife's name. I noticed his thumb absently tracing a pattern on the cardboard as he spoke.

His eyes drifted to the small scorch mark on the counter, and something almost like fondness crossed his face. "That burn mark? I made that one night, trying to help her bake. Valentine's Day. I wanted to surprise her with cookies." A ghost of a smile twitched at his lips. "Caught the damn counter on fire. She laughed so hard she cried. Wouldn't let me fix it. Said it was a reminder that I wasn't allowed near the oven without supervision."

I looked at the baking supplies around us, staying silent as he continued. His gaze traveled through me as if I were glass, focusing on something—someone—that existed in a dimension I couldn't access. In the hollows of his eyes, I saw her for a moment: a woman laughing, dusted with flour, eternally preserved in the amber of his memory. His silence told me everything: pack quickly and leave this consecrated ground.

He followed close behind as we entered the common area, his steps falling in a rhythm that seemed coordinated with my heartbeat. Never more than an arm's length away—Mari's supplies, I realized, physically pained him to watch being carried away. He made directly for Victoria, loss hardening back into rage with each footfall. "You know better than to let her use Mari's kitchen," he said, each word emerging like a bone fragment working its way through flesh. His hands gripped the bar, knuckles whitening to reveal old scars from past fights as the wood groaned in protest beneath his grip.

"This is her happy place." The confession emerged as a prayer too broken for God to hear.

"It's been three years, Husk," Victoria whispered, her own eyes wet with a pain she'd carried alongside his—a lesser burden, but a burden nonetheless. She reached toward him, then stopped, her hand suspended in a space that had been mapped and remapped by countless similar aborted gestures. "I miss her too. Marilyn was?—"

"Is." The word burst from him, making me flinch. His fist slammed into the bar. Wood splintered. Blood flowed from his knuckles, but he didn't even notice. "Don't you fucking dare use past tense for my Mari."

Victoria recoiled, her lips parting in shock before pressing into a thin line. Her eyes glistened with tears she wouldn't allow to fall, not in front of him. She understood his rage, had weathered it countless times before, but each outburst reopened wounds that never fully healed. Her gaze darted to me, a silent apology in her eyes before she squared her shoulders and faced the storm of Husk's grief once more.

"She is my best friend. She is my wife. She is my everything." Each statement hammered down with the terrible precision of nails in a coffin—not Mari's, but his own. His speech, always commanding, fractured on the final word, the sound raw with agony. "She's out there somewhere, and that kitchen... that kitchen is waiting for her. Just like I am. Every fuckin’ day." He moved toward Victoria with the inexorable momentum of his brokenness that had nowhere else to go, his body language not threatening but beseeching—begging her to maintain the fiction that kept him breathing.

Victoria's fingers curled around the edge of the bar, knuckles whitening as though bracing against an incoming storm. She drew a careful breath, choosing her words with the precision of someone navigating a minefield. "We all want her back, Husk," she said softly, her voice barely audible above the hum of the air conditioning. Her gaze dropped to the splinters embedded in his bleeding knuckles. "Mari wouldn't want--"

"Don't you dare talk like she's gone." His voice dropped to a ragged whisper more devastating than his shout had been.

Silence descended, broken only by the gentle metronome of his blood dripping onto the floor. No one moved. Even the air seemed to still itself out of respect for a loss so absolute it bent reality around it.

"Okay." Victoria looked at me sympathetically, "Sorry, sugar."

"I-It's okay," I managed, lifting the bag of borrowed supplies. The weight pulled against my shoulder. I clutched the baking supplies, feeling strange taking them. "I-I'll just go to my parents' house."

The clubhouse doors banged open with enough force to rattle the bottles behind the bar. V entered with all the menace I'd spent my life avoiding until my father's secret profession had pulled me into this world against my will. His hair was disheveled, strands escaping the low bun at his nape. The surgical mask clung to his face, crumpled and askew. His dark eyes swept the room with sharp focus, cataloging every detail until landing on me, questioning the bag silently. Then sliding to Husk, standing too close.

His eyes darkened, cold fury crystallizing across his features as the metallic scent of violence rolled off him in waves, mingling with leather and ash. Dark stains marked his black, tight-fitting long-sleeved shirt, smeared across his forearm where his knuckles split open, exposing raw flesh over bone.

Chest heaving, he crossed the room in four deliberate strides, his body immediately positioning between Husk and me. He stopped so close that I felt his body heat even with inches between us. His hands were stained with blood. Then I saw it—the bat hanging from his grip, leaving a scarlet trail on the floor.

"Why the fuck were you with her?" he growled.

Husk's expression hardened, anger giving way to defiance. "Helping her pack up."

V's grip clenched around his bat, tendons in his forearm standing out like cables. "You were alone with her." Not a question—an accusation.

"In Mari's kitchen," Husk clarified, danger edging his voice. "Think I'd dishonor my wife's memory?"

V stepped closer, air compressing with tense possibility. The bat scraped against the floor—like nails on a chalkboard. A promise.

"Don't care about Marilyn." His chin jerked toward me, eyes never leaving Husk.

"Say that again," Husk challenged, eyes narrowing.

V's hand shot out, seizing Husk's throat, pushing him back against the bar. Glasses toppled, shattering on the floor. My breath caught painfully as his grip dug deeper into Husk's flesh, the skin whitening then reddening around each point of contact. The bat in V's other hand twitched, fresh blood dripping rhythmically onto the floor—marking time to something inevitable.

"What are you going to do, V? Kill me?" Despite the pressure on his throat, Husk's eyes locked with V's, something challenging flaring in their depths. "Do it!" The words emerged strangled but distinct. "Death doesn't scare a man who's already dead. You'd be doing me a fucking favor."

His hold shifted, crueler now, each digit pressing in with slow, deliberate force. Behind the mask, V's nostrils flared with each labored breath, the surgical fabric sucking inward then billowing outward. His thumb bore into Husk's throat, digging until a faint cracking sound emerged from beneath the skin.

Only then did Husk's lips spread into a smile—empty and resigned. Dead eyes stared back at V, challenging him to finish it. The veins in his neck bulged against V's crushing grip. A choking sound escaped his lips as his eyes—those hollow, devastated eyes—never wavered.

My legs locked. Run. The command screamed through my brain, but my body wouldn't respond. Crimson. Everywhere. On the bat. On his hands. Soon in Husk's throat. My stomach lurched as acid burned up my esophagus. I stumbled back one step. Then another. The supplies clutched against my chest like a shield that wouldn't save me. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, drowning out everything except the wet, choking sounds from Husk's compressed throat. Oh god, oh god, oh god.

"V," I whispered, but nothing followed. My breath caught on impact.

He didn't hear me—or chose not to. His body shifted closer to Husk as he lifted the other man slightly, feet barely touching the ground. The surgical mask pulsed with each breath. Faster now. Controlled fury.

"V, please," I begged, voice breaking. "Stop."

His head turned just enough—just a fraction—acknowledging my voice without obeying it. He constricted his hold once more, deliberately, a final squeeze that made Husk's eyes bulge slightly. A demonstration. A promise of what he could do.

Husk's eyes darted to me, then back to V. His lips moved, forming words I couldn't make out, his face contorting with the effort to communicate through his crushed airways.

Only then did V fully turn toward me, his eyes finding mine across the charged space between us. Something shifted in them—cold rage faltering for a fraction of a second. The trembling of my hands traveled across the space between us, weakening his grip on the bat.

He squeezed one final time, then released Husk. Husk slid down the bar slightly, coughing, but that terrible smile—that invitation to death—never left his face.

V stepped back, positioning himself between Husk and me, his stance recalibrated but no less dangerous. The bat lowered slightly, crimson droplets forming a constellation of violence at his feet. His free hand extended toward me—a silent offering to lead me away.

I couldn't move. My heart pounded as I gripped the baking supplies, feeling ridiculous holding them while these men threatened to kill each other. Every instinct told me to run.

Yet I stayed. I forced my chin up, meeting V's dark gaze directly.

Husk laughed then—a hollow sound that seemed to rise from deep within. His hand rose to rub at his throat, where a red mark was forming in the shape of V's fingers. V hesitated, his posture stiffening slightly. The bat in his hand lowered further, the weapon suddenly useless against a man who wanted to die.

My heart lurched for all the broken souls that made up this club. Men like Husk who breathed and moved but weren't truly living, who carried their ghosts like physical weights. Men like V, who channeled their demons into actions rather than letting their minds empty them completely.

Despite everything—the blood, the fury—I felt safer near him than I ever had anywhere else.

"C-Can we go home?" I said, my voice less steady than I'd hoped.

He turned to me immediately, the tension in his shoulders shifting, attention completely diverted from Husk to focus entirely on me. His eyes roamed my face, lingering on my parted lips, the pulse visibly throbbing in my neck.

New streaks soaked into older smears along the bat's grain. And God help me, watching him wield that bat made something primal twist inside me. I didn't want to know whose blood it was. But it was like looking at a half-finished recipe—the urge to see the final product nagged at me despite my better judgment.

He moved toward the exit, and I followed, drawn to him like gravity despite the carnage he carried. His broad shoulders blocked my view of the room, his height a shield between me and whatever dangers lurked in the world—dangers that paled in comparison to the violence he embodied.

"Oakley." Husk's voice stopped me. I glanced back to see him rubbing his throat, the red mark darkening where V's fingers had been. His eyes had lost their fury, replaced by something deeper. "Be careful."

V’s stance tightened, the bat creaking under his renewed grip.

I quickly spoke before he could turn back. "Thank you for the supplies," I said to Husk, deliberately vague.

V's free hand found the small of my back, his calloused palm warm and solid through the thin fabric of my shirt, urging me forward, away from Husk, away from the clubhouse, away from the kitchen that housed a dead woman's ghost and the man who refused to let her go.

And then it hit me—I called my apartment our home.