Page 6 of Beyond Reason

I’d always been so sure he could take care of himself.

Even after…

Even when…

Even though one of the wounds on his body hadn’t been from a gun.

For a moment, my eyes unfocused. I wasn’t seeing the rug beneath me—I was seeing skin gone pale and lifeless.

I was seeing the tattoos that littered his body, and how he’d gotten my name across his chest, only to cover it… then get it inked on again.

I shook my head with a low grunt and kicked the white rug.

It had been twenty-two years. I didn’t know why I was still seeing him at the oddest times… but apparently all the things people said about grief lessening with time, memories fading with passing moments?

Well, that was all bullshit, wasn’t it?

If I closed my eyes, I could still see the way his smile was just a little crooked, the way he had a dimple on his left cheek and a sweet little constellation of freckles across the bridge of his nose that he hated.

If I closed my eyes and held my breath, I could still hear the rhythm of his heart, because mine echoed it.

Twenty-two years.

Fuck whoever said time healed all wounds.

And fuck the stupid white rug.

The first thing I was going to do when I got home was burn it.

It was a damn shame that the catharsis of getting rid of it would do nothing for the ache that still echoed hollow and visceral in my heart at the thought of a man I would never see again this side of Hell.

By the time I was finished scrubbing the scene, the location was spotless. You would never know that a messy, unpracticed murder happened behind the four walls—the only person who was going to know that it was amateur was the client, because I’d already sent through an up charge to make sure he knew the extra hours I put in were going to be paid and paid well.

I was exhausted. I wasn’t old, but my forty-year-old body could definitely tell that scrubbing and rearranging for hours was more work than it had been when I was twenty.

Which was why it made perfect sense that as soon as I actually stripped out of my sweaty shirt and made my way toward the shower, there would be a knock at the door. A part of me thought about ignoring it.

A very large part of me thought about finding the gun that I had stashed away and answering with it in hand.

But… I couldn’t really shoot solicitors, and it had been a long, long time since someone had knocked on my door past midnight.

If I was being honest, no one had done it since…

Something twisted in my chest before the name could surface, and I threw my shirt to the side and made my way to the living room against my better judgment.

Whoever it was would have to deal with my state of undress. I wasn’t putting a clean shirt on until I had a shower.

The impatient rap of knuckles on the door played an odd rhythm against my ribs—it made no sense, but the cadence was familiar. Loud and then soft, a trill of impatience that somehow carried me forward when I really should have turned back around and ignored it altogether.

Glancing through the windows didn’t do me any favors. A man stood there, impatient, an expression of irritation on his face. The clothes he wore hung loose from his body, and he looked gaunt. Disheveled.

Desperate.

There was absolutely no reason for me to open my door.

Which was why it made no sense that I moved to flip the lock when he pulled his fist back to pound on it again.

He drew up short before his knuckles landed on my bare chest, and he was already talking before I switched on the living room lights.

---