Page 37 of Scars Run Deep

“That’s not my intent.”

“What about all your talk of wanting her to meet you on your level?”

“The part of her that trades on the dark side, yes.”

I frowned. “You don’t want her succumbing totally then?”

“Like you said, that wouldn’t be her.”

“She’d be a shadow, Ash.”

He dropped his hand from mine. “She’d become me.”

The shock of it, the actual pain in his eyes, the unsteadiness of his voice as he’d spoken the words, had me releasing him and taking a step back.

I scrubbed my hand over my face and took a beat. “Look, who and what you are is what’s kept our heads above water all these years. So, it has its upside.”

“One of us had to become this,” he said, pushing off the wall.

“You’re saying you did it for us?”

“I’m saying that it takes a monster to destroy a monster. If I hadn’t understood that as quickly as I had when we were younger and then made the necessary adjustments, Carson, Samuel and Reed would’ve run right over the three of us long ago.”

“Necessary adjustments being you stripping away your humanity?”

He lifted his good shoulder. “A small price to pay for survival.”

“Jesus Christ, Ash.”

“Are we done here?”

It was less of a question, more of a demand, that shutdown persona coming back now.

Next would come his commanding, king of the manor schtick.

“No.”

“No?” he asked, eyes narrowing.

“Why did you hit back at my father?”

“You needed me to.”

“And that’s it?”

“The situation had become unsustainable.”

“And?”

“And what? Protecting you isn’t enough of a reason?”

“Not with you, no.”

A dry laugh escaped him. “You really don’t think a lot of me these days, do you?”

“There’s always another angle with you. While I know you want us protected and you won’t stand for us being attacked, especially not the way you walked in on my father doing it to me in that locker room, you still wouldn’t deliver such a harsh blow like that just to accomplish that. You could’ve walked in and talked him down, then left it at that. But you took it a lot further.”

“Like I said, the situation had become unsustainable. Not just for you, though.” He discreetly fingered his beaded bracelet. “It was time to destabilize things, to knock the Head Infidels off-kilter. To distract them also. And to remind them who they were dealing with in me.”

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