Like for like.
Screams sounded from outside the room, but they didn’t compare to the blood-curdling cry that came from William. His knee was completely blown out, and he just continued yelling over and over again as I walked slowly up to him.
“It’s a good thing we have drivers to take us everywhere, isn’t it?” I sneered. “Looks like you’ll be needing one for the rest of your life.” I turned and walked over to open the doors and searched the horrified faces of the women who’d been brave enough to stay outside. “Call the driver, get William to a hospital. He’ll probably lose the bottom half of his leg, but he’ll be fine,” I assured them.
“Lucas, what is wrong with you?” one of them cried when I walked past them. “How could you do this to him?”
How could I not?
He’d tried to take Briar from me.
My hand twitched on the shotgun, and I had the urge to go back into the office and aim the next shot at his chest. But in this world, it was like for like. My girl continued to breathe, so the person responsible for her pain would as well.
I gritted my teeth and forced myself to continue moving. “Ask him yourselves.”
I walked through the house to the garage and took the keys to another of William’s cars.
He wouldn’t have use for that one either.
My driver had positioned himself so he could see the front, back, and garage doors, and was standing still as a statue when I walked in from the garage not long after that.
“Briar?”
“Upstairs, Mr. Holt.”
I thought about what that could mean. “And how is she?”
He thought for only a second before saying, “I believe she will be fine. She is strong where it matters.”
That she is. I nodded down the hall and walked in that direction. “Come with me.” Once I was in my office, I went to the large safe in the corner and opened it while I waited for my driver to follow me in. I glanced over my shoulder as I pulled out a thick stack of cash, and smiled at the fear he was trying hard to conceal. “You have a protector, you know.”
“Mr. Holt?”
“I don’t think Briar would ever forgive me if I fired you—never mind hurt you—and I can’t have Briar mad at me,” I explained as I shut the safe and twisted the two-part lock.
Relief washed over his face, and he dipped his head in thanks. “She is a great first.”
She’s a great only.
I handed the cash to him when I reached where he was standing just inside the doorway. “For saving her today.” Reaching into my pocket, I grabbed the keys to William’s car and placed those on top of the cash. “Think of that as an apology from the man who caused all of this.”
The driver’s eyes widened as he took it all in. “Thank you, Mr. Holt . . . thank you.” He was barely hiding his shock when he asked, “You know who was behind this?”
“Yes, and I have no doubt it was the same man behind the messages to her. The threat’s gone . . . at least for now. You can go home for the night; your new car is in the driveway.”
He nodded again as he backed away. “Thank you again. Good night, Mr. Holt.”
I went looking for my blackbird as soon as the driver was gone and the house was locked up and found her walking out of her bathroom.
She was wearing that damn skirt again that made her look so pure and untouchable.
My fingers twitched with the need to touch her. Taste her. The need to hear her scream my name threatened to consume me.
She stopped walking abruptly when she saw me. “Hi,” she said softly, her tone almost reserved.
After the way she’d jumped into my arms earlier, it wasn’t what I’d expected. “How are you doing now that some time has passed?”
“Better,” she said after a second of hesitation. “How are you?” The way she asked was as if she was worried about my answer.
“I’m fine. What’s—?” The question died in my throat, my hands clenched into fists inside my pockets.
I should have asked the driver if any of William’s women had called.
“Why are you standing like that?” she asked suddenly, prompting me to look down at myself.
“I always stand like this.”
Her head was shaking before I finished speaking. “My devil stands like that. You stand with your arms folded over your chest. After today . . .” She trailed off and her shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry but I don’t think I can handle the devil tonight.”
An edgy laugh forced from my chest. “You can’t tell something like that from the way I stand, Briar.”
She smiled sadly and walked closer, but stopped a couple feet away. “I don’t know what happened between the time you left me and came home, but even if you are fighting that side of you, he is winning if you are standing that way. And your darkness will only break my heart after that bliss you gave me this afternoon.” Briar stepped forward and placed a kiss on my chest but moved away from me before I could wrap my arms around her.
I let her walk past me without trying to stop her, continuing to stare in the place where she had been standing.
It was stupid to think that the way I stood said anything about me, but she had come to fear everything about that side of me, and I wondered if she could recognize it better than even I could.
All I had wanted was to get home to her, but it hadn’t been easy to get past the bitterness and hatred that had swirled through me from William’s betrayal. Just like it wasn’t easy to go from carrying out threats to coming back to my blackbird—that was what the calm was for.
“Let it wash over and through you until there is nothing left,” William had always said about that calm.
Like I’d done before I’d arrived home.
I would never trust William again, but the hatred wasn’t pounding through my veins anymore. The adrenaline from smashing his car into a shattered and dented mess had left as though it had never been there, and the thrill of vengeance had long gone. Now there was nothing.
And now Briar didn’t want me near her.
But I needed her. I needed her in my arms. I needed her body pressed against mine.
I was wrong. There was something. My blackbird was there, as she always was, trying to pull me from something I couldn’t see.
I turned and left the room and eventually found her in the kitchen on the main level of the house, looking in the pantry.
Her body tensed and she stopped breathing when I stepped up behind her, but her skin covered in goosebumps when I wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her close.
Lifting her right hand, I passed my lips across her wrist and said, “Darkness can only ever remain that way without light, Blackbird.”
“And what happens when darkness consumes the light?” she asked as she continued to stare straight ahead.
I tilted her head back so she was looking up at me and shook my head. “That will never happen.”
“That side of you is darkness incarnate,” she whispered.
“Then what does that say about how bright you are when you look at how much you’ve changed me? I may have . . . dimmed you, but you still have the ability to change the way I look at life.”