“I can’t tell you,” he mumbled. When he spoke again, there was no emotion in his voice. “I’d been in a gang most of my life, and after years of trying, I had finally escaped. That was when the FBI came to me. I felt like I couldn’t say no to helping them because I was getting a chance at a new life when I should have been rotting away in a cell or in the ground. Half of my crew made and sold drugs. That’s why they thought I would work.”
His mouth curled into a wry smile, and he gestured to the large tattoo that twisted up his left forearm. “That’s why my tattoos don’t fit with this life, as you said, because they’re from a different life. This one covers the symbol of that gang I was in. And my scars? That’s where they’re all from. I’d been forced into the gang, and I’d been forced to do all the dirty work for my leader for years. I was the one who sent messages to people or other crews if they messed with us. I was the one they were afraid of showing up. I was the one who had to carry out the hits. If I’d refused to kill someone, my leader would’ve killed me. That’s just how it was. But in our crew, we did drugs and passed around women, even if the women didn’t necessarily want to be there. Again, something that had to be done if we wanted to stay in the crew—stay alive.” When a shuddering breath ripped from my lungs, he said, “Before you ask . . . I’m clean. I’ve been tested numerous times, and I haven’t had to use in almost five years.”
My mouth slowly fell open as another wave of denial crashed over me.
Everything he was saying—the man he was explaining—couldn’t be real.
He finally looked up and nodded when he saw the horror on my face.
“They needed someone to take down William—not realizing the extent of what he was involved in—and found a guy who had been perfectly groomed for this world. I’ve been trying to escape it for just as long.” He smiled, but there was no amusement behind it. “Guys like me don’t get second chances, Briar, and I’ve gotten third and fourth and fifth chances. But guys like me also don’t fall in love.” He dipped his head toward me, and said, “It wasn’t that I thought I couldn’t love anyone, it was that I didn’t deserve to, and because I didn’t think I could handle letting myself. Because I knew one day I would break your heart when I was forced to buy the second girl, or it would come down to this, and you would hate me. And because I refused to go through the pain of losing the girl again.”
Through my confusion and horror and heart ache as he slowly, slowly broke it, my chest seized as something new gripped at my heart and refused to let go. It was as if the man in front of me was holding my heart in his hands, shattering it to find and tear out the love and happiness he had given me. Because I was positive I hadn’t heard him wrong, and after the high of finding out that my devil loved me, the low of knowing he had loved someone else was a long fall.
“W-what?”
“I’d been charged with taking a girl hostage. I wanted no part in it, I’d never wanted a part in any of that life, and I swore to protect her because I’d fallen in love with her. Only problem was, we were holding her hostage because her fiancé was an undercover detective who had infiltrated our crew years before. She only ever wanted him and went back to him when we got her out. But she made sure her fiancé and his partner got me into witness protection because of what I’d done to the remaining members of my crew to get her out—that shootout with my brothers. After her, I never wanted to put myself in the position where I could lose the girl again. Then I ended up here, undercover, in another place and life I didn’t want to be with a girl I want more than my next breath. And she’s engaged, and I’m not supposed to want her.” One of his eyebrows ticked up. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
This wasn’t ironic; it was a morbid joke.
It had to be.
But as I pushed myself back until I was pressed against the cabinets and watched as acknowledgment mixed with a pain so great on his face it made the ache in my own chest magnify, I knew it wasn’t.
“As I’ve said, Blackbird. You do not love me.” Each word was laced with pain and seemed to take all of his strength.
I wanted to deny it, but I didn’t know how to. I didn’t know who was sitting in front of me anymore. He’d told me—he’d tried to warn me, but I couldn’t take the stories he’d told me when I’d thought of him as Lucas and connect them to what I’d just heard.
Everything I knew now felt so heavy and hard to handle.
And it was painful . . . so painful knowing I’d been sleeping with a man I didn’t know at all. That I’d fallen in love with a fa?ade. And he’d allowed it.
“How many people have you killed?”
His eyes darkened, and his right hand once again moved to the large tattoo on his forearm while his head moved in the faintest of shakes. “Enough that I refuse to tell you.”
“One would be more than enough, but you said you would answer my questions,” I said tightly as I wrapped my arms around my waist, trying unsuccessfully to calm my churning stomach.
Nearly a minute passed without the devil responding, and I wondered if he was counting or avoiding answering when he suddenly said, “I remember every single person, and I’m haunted by their faces every day. I won’t haunt you with a number.”
I wanted to tell him that I might have preferred a number over the answer he’d given me—because his answer left a chill deep in my bones and my stomach rolling with unease as terrifying images and thoughts filled my mind.
I watched as he trailed his fingers over his arm and wondered about the other person who haunted him. “Do you still love her?”
His hand stopped, and his unnerved gaze met mine. “No, but I still care about her. I always will. Of anything, you have to understand that.”
I did.
Images of Kyle assaulted me. Flashes of a disastrous morning burned behind my eyelids.
A fleeting moment of bliss ruined by agonized cries and pleas and one weighted question . . .
“Do you still love him?”
“Yes.”
A devastating day filled with handwritten notes and misunderstanding. A night mended by the most beautiful connection—and the first time I’d told Lucas I loved him.
And now even that memory felt tainted.
My throat tightened as every emotion overwhelmed me and threatened to suffocate me. My vision blurred, and I hated how weak and pathetic I sounded when I asked, “Did you ever love me?”
Pain tore across his face, and I watched as he struggled to replace it with that infuriating, cold indifference. “If you have to ask, then you won’t hear my answer.”
He was right. It didn’t matter what he said then. I already felt so shattered. If he’d said he hadn’t loved me, my heart couldn’t break any more than it already had. If he told me that he had—that he did—I doubted I would believe him.