Page 9 of The Silence of Monsters

Roan reached across the bar and gave me a consolatory pat on the top of my head. “Didn’t you tell me that when you were younger, you had a crush on Win?” I scowled at the handsome blond man and whipped my head to the side to knock his hand away.

Unfortunately, the movement was too fast, and I was too full of booze. The combination nearly dumped me off the barstool. Roan caught my arm and hauled me upright while he shook his head. He was a bartender at this bar back in the day, and now he owned it. I met him when I came to watch my first ex-husband’s band play here. My first ex was a narcissistic nightmare who had serious control issues. He practically kept me under lock and key while he roamed around the country with his shitty punk band. I couldn’t take a breath without reporting it to him. Meanwhile, he was sleeping with a different person in every city where he was lucky enough to land a gig. Roan was the person who pried me away from the first ex’s clutches when I thought there was no escape. He taught me how to value myself and the love I had to offer. Roan took care of me, even when I was married to someone else. It was no surprise that he was doing the same thing now that I was facing another toxic marriage.

“I never said that. I’ve never liked him.” I shook my head, and the room spun.

Roan chuckled and moved down the bar to take another customer’s order. If he didn’t want me to have another drink, no one would serve me. I begrudgingly sipped the water he put in front of me and tried to remember if I’d ever seen Win as anything other than a demon.

“Before Colette cracked down on her son and your sister dating, the two of you used to make deliveries to their house for all her fancy rich-lady parties. You told me you begged Willow to take you with her because you hoped Win would be home from college. I remember it always made you upset when he wasn’t there. And when he was, you were mad he ignored you.”

I scoffed and traced a trail of water on the surface of my glass with my fingertip. “He’s so manipulative. I can’t believe he wants me to live with the woman who drove my sister to suicide.” I smacked the side of my fist on the top of the bar and then swore as pain radiated up my wrist. “Do you think that’s his plan? Is he hoping for me to do something as drastic to remove me from Winnie’s life permanently?” I started breathing fast and felt my heart race at the thought. “Does he want me to die?”

Roan moved back in front of me and spread out his hands so he could lean on the bar, putting us eye-to-eye. “Men like Win Halliday don’t need to play elaborate games to get rid of someone. If he really wanted to harm you, he wouldn’t have waited this long. And he wouldn’t do it himself. He’s always put Winnie first. If something were to happen to you, there is no telling what that might do to her mental state. He would never risk it after he saw what happened with your mom and sister. My guess is that he knows you’re tough enough to stand up to Colette. From everything you’ve said in between drinks, it sounds like he needs you right now.”

Salome told me nearly the exact same thing when I’d called her to complain. She was more biased in my favor, but she still reminded me that Win would never act so outrageously without a reason. I lifted the back of my hand to rub my nose and blinked back the sudden burn of tears. “I don’t want to get married again if it’s not going to last. I promised myself if I ever committed to marriage again, it would be the real deal. I want to spend my life with someone who wants to keep me forever. I want a man who loves everything about me.”

Roan lifted a hand and pinched my cheek, which made me forget I wanted to cry. I batted his hand away and happily took the bowl of spicy bar mix he slid in front of me. “Channing, you should know by now nothing is certain when it comes to matters of the heart. I wanted to keep you forever. You know I love everything about you. We thought we were going to share our lives until we grew old and gray. Our marriage didn’t work out because we were both so busy pretending to be exactly what the other person wanted, we forgot to be who we really were. Sometimes what we think we want isn’t what’s best for us. You’ve got to get the fantasy of a perfect marriage out of your head. Otherwise, no one is ever going to meet your expectations, and you’ll keep running through losers trying to find an illusion.”

I licked the leftover seasoning from the bar mix off my fingers and tried not to get depressed at his very accurate dissection of why we couldn’t last.

“If no one can meet my expectations, then I should stay single. I’m tired of settling for leftover scraps of love and affection.” And I didn’t want to be in a situation where it felt like my feelings and future were being unmercifully extorted. “I’m not convinced Win even has a heart. I’m pretty sure all the Hallidays are born with a big black hole that sucks away the warmth and care they might have for another person. It’s making me crazy that I can’t tell him to go fuck himself.”

Roan chuckled and pushed away from the edge of the bar. “You can tell him that, but it won’t make a difference. As long as he knows you’re willing to do whatever it takes to keep your mother safe and Winnie in your life, he has you exactly where he wants you. When you have such an obvious weakness, men like Win have no problem using it against you.”

I frowned and leaned back on the barstool. “She’s not a weakness. She’s my mother. She’s family. I’m all she has. Why are you trying to make this situation seem less heinous than it is? If I hadn’t given in to Win’s demands, he would’ve come after you, too, Roan. He could’ve snatched this bar out of your hands in the blink of an eye. Even if the building isn’t for sale, he’ll find a way to get the city to shut it down. There would be no way for you to stop him. He has the power to make sure that you wouldn’t be able to open another establishment or get another liquor license anywhere in the States. He’d ruin you without a second thought. Doesn’t that make you mad? Because it infuriates me.”

Roan shrugged a broad shoulder and turned to pour a beer from the draft tower behind him. He handed it off to one of his servers before turning back to me with a serious look on his face.

“I don’t agree with the way Win bullied you. I think it’s bullshit he hurt the people closest to you to get you to agree to his scheme. I can see the benefits now that he has you over a barrel and you have little choice in the matter. There’s a lot you can do with that kind of money, and you’ve always wanted to be more involved in Winnie’s life. Plus, you work yourself silly to keep your mom in that facility. I know that you’re struggling to make ends meet now that you live on your own. If Win is offering to pay for her care indefinitely and all you have to do is survive in the Halliday mansion for a couple of years, it’s a decent trade. Move into that big ass house and give Colette a taste of her own medicine. Make her life a living hell every single day. If you ever wanted payback for how she treated your sister, the opportunity is right in front of you.” He gave me a small grin and added, “Win is asking you to play doubles with him against his mother, and he’s willing to compensate you accordingly to be his teammate.”

I snorted and finished drinking the glass of water. It made some of the fire in my heart cool down when I thought about Win’s smug face as he handed me the contract.

“Are you trying to tell me he can’t win against his mother on his own?” I couldn’t imagine Win being anything other than victorious.

“Didn’t you once say he wanted to be a violinist when he was younger, but Colette refused to even consider that as a possibility? She would never let him do anything other than take over Halliday Inc. He’s in the same boat as you are. That’s his mother. He’s all she has left. Of course he can’t win when it comes to her. Everything I’ve ever heard about her from anyone who lives in or around the Cove is the stuff of nightmares. No one wants to be on her radar.”

My frown deepened. “How come I never realized I talked about the Hallidays so often?” I couldn’t recall telling Roan half of what he mentioned to me tonight. I thought I had done a decent job of locking that family away in my mind for as long as I could remember.

His little grin turned into a soft smile. “Didn’t you always say that your first husband was over-the-top jealous and felt like he was your second choice? I bet you thought he was talking about me when he gave you a hard time. He wasn’t. He always meant Win. The difference between us is that I know you’re loyal to a fault. You have more love in your heart than you know what to do with.”

I looked at the man whom I thought understood me better than I understood myself in disbelief. “You are not telling me that you think I could ever love Win, are you? If so, you’re as crazy as he is, Roan.”

“What I think is that you’ve always had a lot of feelings for him since you were too young to recognize what they were. Over time, they got muddy and bled together as things went south between your families. Now, they’re all in a big ball, and you can’t separate your emotions where Win is concerned. If you ever take the time to untangle all those threads, you’re going to be shocked to see where they start and end.” He snapped the bar towel that had been hanging from his back pocket and asked me if I wanted to wait for him to close the bar so he could take me back to my apartment.

I waved off the offer and told him I would catch a cab. I couldn’t sit in the bar and drown my sorrows if he wouldn’t serve me anything else to drink. Plus, I was admittedly unnerved that he didn’t seem to think the idea of marrying Win was absolutely absurd. I always told Roan that if I were meant to be married, he and I would have figured things out. We genuinely loved and respected one another. We shared the same values. He understood my history and helped me navigate the grief and subsequent breakdown of my family after my sister’s death. I couldn’t fathom that he honestly believed I felt anything other than absolute revulsion for the Hallidays aside from my niece.

I went outside to wave down a cab. It was drizzling again. I felt like the weather was an exact reflection of all the turmoil I was feeling lately: dark, gloomy, and miserable.

My phone beeped with an incoming message, and I scowled when I saw Win’s information on the screen.

It was late enough he had no business bugging me. I thought the high and mighty went to bed at a reasonable hour so they were fresh to pillage their way through enemy territory bright and early.

~ My assistant sent the revised contract to your email. Did you look it over?

I shook the phone as if the action would transfer to the man on the other side. Of course I’d looked it over. Why else would I be drinking my life away at my ex-husband’s bar in the middle of the week?

~ I looked it over.

~ Are you going to sign it?

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