“I know you’re afraid. And I’m not going to fucking sugar coat this shit for you, you should be. My life is not safe. I’m the fucking bad guy, Kelly, and don’t you ever forget that. But you have to fucking know that means that I will do anything, fucking anything, to protect what’s mine. I don’t give a shit about the law or God or whatever else normal fucking people care about. I’ve got a place reserved in hell and I will drag any motherfucker that even considers hurting you down there with me.”
I could feel my chest heaving and my jaw clenching just thinking about someone other than me touching her. There wasn’t a chance in fucking hell that anything would happen to her.
Kelly smiled as she looked up at me.
“So, we’re safe today?” she asked.
“You’re fucking safe, always,” I said as I drove my lips down on hers and slid my hands to her backside and under her skirt. She opened her mouth more and I kissed her harder as she breathed deeper and deeper. She was mine and I wouldn’t let anything come between us. Not my old man, not her fucking small town, nothing.
She slowly took her lips away and sighed as she rested her head on my chest.
“Then let’s just enjoy this. Today, this beautiful property, our time here, just for today let’s not think about anything else. Please?”
She meant it and I suppose it was the least I could do for her. She got dragged into this fucking nightmare of a life and now she was here to stay. Her and everyone she cared about. We were safe for the moment. No one but Deacon and Grace knew we were here and even if the old man was hot on my heels, he wouldn’t be knocking today. Might as well give her a little fantasy before the shithole reality that is my existence really set in for her.
“Sure, darling.”
I put my arm around her neck and pulled her head into my side as we walked toward the barn. Today she could pretend this was our life.
When we got to the barn, she ran in and started goofing around with Lucas. She smiled at me and I lit a cigarette as I sat down on a bale of hay, taking note of every tool or broken piece of wood I could jam into a motherfucker’s throat, should life come calling sooner than I thought.
Chapter 44
Kelly
“KELLY, WATCH THIS.”
Lucas came running from somewhere behind me and launched his body through the air onto a pile of hay, and then lay there laughing. I hadn’t seen him so happy in a long time. Not that he was sad, I just hadn’t really seen him happy. I guess the same went for me as well.
I looked at Hunter, sitting across the barn and had trouble turning away from him. He was hunched over, smoking his ever present cigarette. A single ray of sunshine danced across his face from a hole in the roof. That man, that bad guy, had taken my life and changed it in one day. He had saved me from a life I didn’t even know I’d been living and, even though he brought hell with him, it was exactly where I needed to be.
This moment, this peace wouldn’t last forever. I knew it couldn’t. But as I watched his eyes dart around the barn, I felt more than ever that I was being looked out for, that I could completely let go and he would make sure that I would be just fine. He may be the bad guy, but he was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
“Hey, you,” I called over to him. “What are you thinking about, all serious over there?”
He turned his head back to me and smiled, pointing the two fingers holding his cigarette at me. I knew he had more things on his mind than just me, but I could feel myself blushing because I knew I was a part of whatever was going through his head.
Lucas stood up and continued to throw himself around the barn, squealing with laughter the whole time, and Hunter just sat there, nearly oblivious, staring deeply into the end of his cigarette.
I made my way over to him and put my hand on his shoulder.
“Hunter? What’s wrong? Is it me?”
He looked up at me with an almost furious anger in his eyes.
“Now, what in the fuck would make you think that anything about you was wrong?”
I smiled down at him and put my hands to his cheeks as he stared up at me. His eyes softened.
“Darling, you are about the only thing that is fucking right in my life. The only thing that has ever been right.”
I could feel his hands behind my knees, slowly moving up the backs of my thighs. I gazed down into his beautiful blue eyes and saw all the pain. Both the pain he had caused and the pain that had been brought on him. There was no regret in him, just the look of a man who had seen all the terrible things this world had to offer. A man who had lived. A man who had made an awful world his instead of giving in to it. There was nothing wrong. This was just his life and I was now part of that.
“Hunter? Kelly? Are you watching?” Lucas called from the other side of the barn.
“Fuck no,” Hunter said flatly as he stared up at me.
I slapped his shoulder and turned back to Luke.
“Sure am. Let me see your best jump,” I called out.
With a look of determination in his eyes, Lucas took a few steps back and ran full speed before throwing himself through the air and onto a pile of hay.
“Whoa. Look at you go.”
Lucas stood up, proud of himself, and yelled over to us.
“Hunter, did you see that?”
I looked down at him as he called over.