“Until when?”
“I don’t have an answer for that,” I said honestly. “I don’t know how long I’m here—how long I’m in this life. I’d already been in it for three and a half years before the auction.”
“And then what happens when it’s over? When your job as Lucas Holt is done. What happens to us?”
My heart clenched painfully, then steadily beat faster and faster, each thump more uneven than the last, until it felt like my chest wouldn’t be able to contain it anymore. What happens to us? I wanted to reach inside and tear my heart out just to be done with the pain. “Then you go home. Then, hopefully, all the women go home . . . or somewhere where they can get help.”
“You want me to go back to Atlanta?” Her face gave away nothing, and despite struggling so hard to find the required calm, I knew mine gave away everything.
“I want you to be where you need to be. I want you to be wherever home is.”
She seemed to nod distractedly for a few seconds and continued to, even as the first few words left her lips. “I don’t know why it seemed so much easier to accept the story of Lucas, and to forgive it, but it did. Maybe because I kept seeing you fight the dark and believed, deep down, you never wanted to be this man—be the man who bought stolen women and terrified them the way you did me. Maybe because I believed something about me made you want to not be that man. Only to find out that you had never been that man at all, but someone else entirely. Someone just as awful, just as terrifying . . . someone people turned to in an attempt to tear down this horror-filled world, because you had already lived in a similar darkness. Breathed it in and let it fill your veins until you became darkness, and darkness became you.”
I wanted to deny everything she was saying, tell her that I wasn’t the man she was describing—but I was. I always had been. If Briar knew half the things I’d done in an attempt to keep myself alive, she wouldn’t be sitting at this table with me.
She was too pure. Too unsullied. Too . . . light.
Wives and girlfriends of the men I’d killed had called me a monster as I’d walked from their homes.
Even though my brothers had only ever called me by name, other crews had called me Reaper since death followed in my wake.
The name Devil had summed up my entire life all too well . . . summed up everything about myself I’d hated and hadn’t been able to escape. But being Briar’s devil? It had never felt like something I’d wanted to escape but rather something I’d wanted to cling to. Be redeemed by.
“I told you your darkness scared me,” she said, her tone and expression thoughtful. “But for the first time in so, so long, I was afraid of you. I was terrified just being near you. I felt sick knowing I’d given my heart and body to someone who wasn’t the man I’d thought I’d fallen in love with. I’d given my heart to a man who could so easily slip into the role you’ve been playing, because you’ve done worse.”
My jaw was clenched so tightly it felt like it would break, and my blackbird . . . she studied me like she wasn’t about to annihilate me in a way nothing in my life had ever been able to.
“And then last night I realized I’d fallen in love with a man who should’ve been able to slip into that role like it was second nature . . . and couldn’t.” Briar stood slowly from her chair and took a step toward me, and then another—tears filling those beautiful, beautiful eyes. “And that thought just kept turning over and over in my mind, and I couldn’t figure out why a man like you hadn’t wanted to hurt me. Or why it had clearly killed you to be the devil in those first weeks.” Tears were now slowly slipping down her cheeks as she slid between the table and me and crawled onto my lap.
My heart thundered as I gripped her waist, pulling her closer and trying to memorize the feel of her and praying this wasn’t about to be goodbye.
“And then I understood,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. “I saw the role you tried to play, and I watched as you failed, and from that moment on you never truly hid who you are from me. There are so many things I still don’t know about you—including your name—and who knows if I’ll ever know it all, but there are five things I do know with absolute certainty . . .”
She placed her hands on either side of my head, her fingers gripping at my hair as she pressed her lips to my forehead. “One. You’ve had so much darkness in your life that you’ve become it.” Her lips swept across my forehead, and pressed gently to my temple. “Two. You hate it and what’s in your mind from it.” She lifted one of my hands from her waist, and passed her mouth across my knuckles. “Three. You fight it and fight to keep others from it.” Keeping my hand in hers, she interlaced our fingers and kissed the tips of them before pressing them against my chest. “Four. You are good—”
“Briar, no,” I said softly, cutting her off. “Didn’t you hear anything I told you?”
She slipped her hand out from underneath mine and placed the tips of her fingers over my lips. “Every word,” she said through her tears. “I’ve seen your heart, Devil, and I know who you are. And you are good, even if you can’t see that about yourself.”
“Oh, Blackbird.” I pulled her hand up higher to kiss her wrist and felt the shiver that went through her body like it was my own.
“Five,” she murmured as she leaned forward and paused with her mouth so close to mine that they brushed against each other with each word. “I love every part of yo—”
I captured her mouth with my own, swallowing her surprised whimper, then backed off enough so the kiss was nothing more than a tease until she opened to me. And then I took and took from the girl in my arms and tried to show her with every brush of my lips and sweep of my tongue how she had come to mean everything to me.
“I love you,” I whispered against her mouth.
“You are my home,” she said, stopping my heart with her confession. “If I ever find myself back in Atlanta, it will be to say goodbye to Kyle and those waiting for me.”
Then she was pressing her mouth to mine again and trying to get her body closer just as someone began banging on the door, and didn’t stop.
It took three seconds for my mind to register that the ominous knocking was similar to a beating heart, and another half a second for my body to lock up and my blood to run cold.
“Ignore it,” Briar pled, but I was already moving.
“Get in the closet,” I demanded in a low, urgent tone as I gently pushed her off and reached under the kitchen table. “Lock the door and call the driver. Tell him someone came to the front door with a heartbeat.”
“Wait, what?”
As soon as I had the gun freed from the holster secured under the table, I stood up and cupped Briar’s neck with my free hand.