Page 23 of Unmasked Anarchy

We don’t say anything.There isn’t anything to say.The only thing that matters is that he’s marked me.For tonight, at least, nobody else gets a fraction of me.

He reaches over, taking a cigarette and lighting it.

I push up on my hands and knees, staring at him.

“Where were you tonight?”

He is asking, but I fear he already knows.

I can’t say it, though.

Can’t admit it.

I’m afraid if I do, he will lose it.

“I found a bar in town.I didn’t want to be here.Not after everything.”

“You don’t ever fuckin’ leave after an attack, you hear me?”

He’s acting like he cares.

We both know he doesn’t.

“Can I ask you something?”

He inhales deeply, not answering me, but not telling me I can’t either.

“Why are you with me, Gage?Why did you come for me all those years ago?It’s clear you don’t love me, so why?”

He considers the words for a long time, then brings the cigarette to his lips and gives me a quiet look.

“Truth?You’re the only person in the world who ever looked me dead in the eyes and told me I was a monster and got in the car with me anyway.You don’t run from the shit in people, even when you should.”

He’s not looking at me when he says it.He flicks the end of the cigarette into a chipped mug on the nightstand, then rubs his jaw.“I’m not a nice man.World burned that out of me before I could spell my own fuckin’ name.But you keep tryin’ to see good in things that got no business having good in them.You see it in me.I hate you for it, and I fuckin’ need you for it.”

I stare at his chest, the tattoo with my name scrawled in black, and all I can think is how little sense any of this makes, how a man could love you so hard and still never be able to say it.

He looks at me, really looks.Then he looks away.“You want cute answers, go to Hallmark.I got nothing for you except alive, and I can only promise to keep you that way until the ride stops.”

“Then why don’t you let me go?”

His eyes pin me.“Because you’re mine, Sabie.That is never going to change.”

That’s what I fear the most.