Greetings from Sugartown (18 page)

For a moment, all the world is quiet, and then the screaming starts. Nicole wails as she crawls over to Scott’s inert body. “Scott, Scotty wake up.” She shakes him. “Wake up.”

His brains are sprayed all over her face, and she’s begging him to wake up like he just turned fucking narcoleptic. Scott Turner is never waking up.

“What the fuck have you done?” I growl.

“He needed to pay for it, Moose,” Kick mutters, but I get the sense he’s no longer talking to me. He’s a million miles away in this moment, and the man he just shot dead in cold blood wasn’t Scott Turner at all. At least, not to him. “They needed to pay.”

“You just handed me a death sentence,” I say, staring down at Scott’s lifeless body.

Kick shakes his head. “They won’t ever find him.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re still gonna be banging down my door the second he’s reported missing.”

Nicole lifts her head from off of Scott’s chest and wipes her hands down over her face. Her eyes are wide as she stares in horror at the blood on her hands.

The screams start up again. This time they don’t stop. Kick snaps out of his daze long enough to aim the gun at her head.

“What are you doing? She’s innocent.”

“She’s seen too much.”

“Kick.” I put up my hands, as if I can placate him without using brute force. Truth is, I have a gun with zero ammo. I’m not idiot enough to believe he won’t hesitate to shoot me if it comes down to it. Which is why I guess I couldn’t let him in again, not really. “She doesn’t need to die. She’s not stupid enough to rat.”

“She was about to spread her legs for a convicted rapist. I’d say that’s pretty fucking stupid, wouldn’t you?”

“Please don’t kill me, please, please?” Nicole launches herself at Kick’s leg. “Please, I’ll do whatever you want. You want me to blow you? I give great head.” She reaches for his belt but he shoves her away. “I’ll let you do whatever you want. I’ll keep my mouth shut, just don’t hurt me, please?”

“Jesus Christ, did she beg you to fuck her like this too?”

I shake my head. “Let her go, man. You and I have done a lot of fucked up shit, but we haven’t ever killed innocent women. That isn’t what
we
do.”

“You were gone a long time, Brother. I had to do a lot of shit that I swore I never would.”

“And now you’re out you can decide for yourself, instead of having the club dictate your every move.”

“Please don’t kill me. Elijah, please don’t let him kill me. Please?” Nicole begs softly.

I close my eyes. And then I offer her a hand up. She places her tiny, trembling fingers in mine, and I think back to the bar, how I wanted to squeeze the life out of someone, something, crush it beneath my hands and quell the rage inside me.

Nicole’s barely on her feet before I grab her around the throat, and slam her up against the side of the car. She shrieks as I press her back to the cold metal, and I lean down in to her face. “Listen to me, whore. You breathe a word of this to anyone and I’ll gut you from navel to nose. You got me?” She cries and nods manically as I tighten my grip on her throat. “You tell anyone about what went on here, and it’ll be the last thing you ever say to anyone. I’ll come after Mummy and Daddy first, and then I’ll put a bullet in everyone you so much as had a conversation with. I’ll pick ’em off like flies, and then I’ll come after you.”

Nicole whimpers. It does absolutely nothing to me. In fact, for the first time in a long time, I feel in control.

But I hate being this guy. The guy who can throw a woman up against a parked car and not feel a hint of remorse. I hate that tapping into this part of me is so fucking easy, and how it’s never very far from the surface.

Later, the blackness will come the way it used to. It’ll twist my stomach and turn me over and spit me out, leaving me worthless, and seeking redemption any place I can find it, but now I’m exactly what my father made me.

“You see me on the street and you had better fucking run the other way, sweetheart, because I will not hesitate to put you to ground right alongside this fucker. We clear?”

She cries, but nods her head vigorously. I release her and step away, giving her the room to slide into the car. She starts the engine, throws it in reverse and flees the laneway as fast as her wheels will drive her.

I stare at the shadowy cane until long after the car is gone.

“Sure hope you’re right about her, Moose.”

“I am.”

“Come help me with the body.”

We work as fast as possible. Our warm breath hits the freezing air and creates smoke clouds, the only sign of life out here in the darkness. On an embankment surrounding the cane field we dig a trench big enough to fit the body in with an abandoned fence paling. It takes us forever, and afterwards we’re dirty and our hands are rubbed raw.

Kick tosses the body in, and pulls a flask from inside his jacket. He pours it over the corpse. I light the cane we’d laid on top. It’s just fuel to the fire, but the saccharine scent turns my stomach so I step back to watch the body burn. I watch the amber flames dance on Kick’s impassive face. I stare at a guy who was more than just a club brother to me—he was a friend, a confidant, a partner in crime, family. I try to find that kid again in his vacant blue eyes, but the flames lick higher, and the ash and smoke sting my eyes until I have to look away.

It’s funny how so much can change while everything else stays the same. I’ve wanted this punk dead since the night he raped Ana. I’d come so close before. I thought I’d never forgive myself for not going through with it. In a way, I guess I never have. I thought I’d changed, thought I’d become the man she deserved. But tonight, Kick showed me how quickly that man was forgotten, and how easily my demons could resurface.

And I’ll never forgive him for it.

A
PAIR
of warm arms surrounds me, pulling me from restless dreams. “You’re home.”

“Sorry.” Elijah presses a kiss to my neck, and squeezes my waist as he settles in behind me. His hair is wet and he smells like soap and leather. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“S’okay,” I murmur. “Did you guys have fun?”

For a long time he doesn’t answer, and just when I think he might’ve fallen asleep, he whispers, “What do you love about me, baby girl?”

“You mean besides the fact that you give great head, and propose marriage during anal sex?” I know we haven’t discussed the ring yet, and it’s probably way too soon to be making jokes, but when he doesn’t respond I turn in his arms. I can’t see so much as
feel
his distress. I cup his large face in my small hands. “Hey, what’s going on with you?”

“I need you to promise me that no matter how bad it gets, no matter how dark my demons are, you’ll never walk away.”

“I promise.”

“Swear it.” The desperation in his voice is killing me. We’ve had our fair share of fights, and we’ve endured a lot more ups and downs than most couples. I’m no stranger to any of his moods, but these rare bouts of panic frighten me more than his fury ever could.

“I can handle your demons, Elijah.” I shower his face in kisses, attempting to heal the hurt with every press of my lips against his skin, though I have no idea what it means. I just want to erase the pain from his voice, from his heart. “I’ll take them and wrap them in light, and then I’ll give them back to you, because you need them to make you whole, and without them you wouldn’t be the man I fell in love with.”

“You shouldn’t love me. Not for what I’m about to ask you to do.”

That gives me pause. My hand falters on his hair. My heart lurches, and my breath catches painfully in my throat. “What are you about to ask me to do?”

“Lie for me,” he whispers. The hairs on my neck stand on end, and my blood feels as though it’s been replaced by ice. “I can’t tell you why. Please don’t ask me to.”

I don’t have to ask. I know already, and I suspect subconsciously that I knew from the second he began speaking. Tears sting my eyes and spill over, coursing down my cheeks unchecked. I suck in a sharp breath. I know the answer, but I need to hear it from his mouth. I need to know with one hundred per cent certainty that he’s dead.

“Scott?” I whisper. My voice cracks over the name. I have so much hate, so much pain and sorrow and anguish crowding my heart. I hate him for what he did to me. I hate what the rape did to my family, what it did to us. I hate the hurt it caused Elijah, and the fact that he had to be the one to do something about it. Most of all, I hate that I feel a sense of loss at not being there to watch him get what he deserved.

“He’s dead.”

I inhale. Hot tears stream down my cheeks. A part of me wants to know every little detail; did he scream? Did he cry? Did the sick son-of-a-bitch beg for his life? Did he feel even one iota of the pain he has caused me? My voice trembles as I ask, “How did you do it?”

Without meeting my gaze, he murmurs, “The less you know, the better.”

Elijah rolls on top of me, cradling my head between his hands, his forearms pushing into the mattress. He kisses the tracks the tears make down my face. “I love you. I don’t deserve you, I never have, especially not now.”

“Don’t say that—” I interrupt, but he quietens me with the press of his lips against mine.

“I tried, baby girl. I tried to lock it all up tight, to push it down and hide it, but I can’t. I wanna be the man you deserve, but I’m not him. I’m broken. Toxic. I’ll always be shit, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.”

“Hey …” Elijah bows his head, and I place my hands on either side of his face and force his gaze up to meet mine. “You are none of those things. You’re good. You have the biggest heart out of anyone I know, and you love with every part of it. Sammy is a different kid because of you. Dad is different, Holly, Jack … I’m different. Yes, we’ve been dragged through a lot of shit, and some of that has been your fault, but you’re the one who pulls us safely through the other side. You’re the one who takes the darkness away, not the one who creates it.”

He laughs, but there is no humour in it.

“Ask me again,” I whisper, pressing light kisses to his neck.

“No.” Elijah shakes his head. “Not now.”

“Fine, then I’ll ask you.”

“Ana,” he warns, but he sounds weary, without his usual fight.

“Elijah Cade …” I stop, shake my head, and use the name he gave me so long ago that he probably thinks I’ve forgotten it. “Ethan Carr, you’re my reason for waking each morning. I love your goodness, but I love the darkness in you, too. It makes me know that I’ll always be safe within your hands, that our babies would always be safe, and I can’t imagine ever waking up and not having it be your face that I want to see hogging the pillow.”

He laughs at that. It’s small and sad, but it’s a laugh all the same.

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Whether we have forty years or forty seconds, I want to spend every one with you. Marry me?”

His lips crashing down upon mine are the only answer I receive, but they’re the only one I need.

O
NE WEEK
after we burned and buried Scott’s body, we fall back into the same rhythm of work, home and drinks. Everything is exactly the same, and yet everything is different.

The police were banging down my door within forty-eight hours of Scott going missing. I accompanied them to the station for questioning. Ana gave me an airtight alibi. She didn’t even flinch. It was unnerving.

I know that it’s coming, and I know it could all blow up in my face. Maybe a part of me wants it to in order to alleviate my guilt. It hasn’t yet, and with each day that passes I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The cops had nothing on me. We burned our clothes, they haven’t found a body, and Nicole looks as if she’s still running scared. A few days after the incident I pulled into the supermarket parking lot just as she was tearing out of it, her car loaded up with belongings. None of us have seen her since. Obviously, she hasn’t talked … yet. Do I believe she never will? I don’t know. I guess we wait, and we cross that bridge when we come to it.

For now, it seems like we got away with it. I can’t understand why I’m not happier. I’m glad that fucker is dead—the world’s a better place with one less rapist in it—but something has shifted with Kick. That night when we pulled into the drive I bailed him up against the side of the house and told him I wanted him gone. Every day I wake up expecting him to have split, and every day it looks like he’s no closer to leaving than the one before. He’s distant, the wisecracks are gone, and now he’s just brooding and temperamental.