Page 34 of The Butcher

FOR THE LOVE OF A DUMBASS

Nash

When I met Bramley Ambrose, I wasn’t in a very good place in my life.

I’d just been released from acorrectionalfacility—if you want to call it that—in Illinois, one I’d been in since I was twelve, and considering I was thrown in there for killing my mother after she drowned my little brother and sister in the bathtub, I didn’t have very many options when it came to what to do next.

My dad shot himself after he found my siblings.

He came home from work—he was a trucker who spent a lot of time on the road—my mom and I were nowhere to be seen, and when he realized there was water running downstairs from the second floor, he went to investigate. My brother and sister were still face down in the tub, their little four and three year old bodies bloated and gray because it had been six days since they died, but despite that, he pulled them out and tried to revive them.

When that was unsuccessful, he went and got his shotgun from the safe, loaded it, and laid my siblings in his lap before he ate the barrel of the gun and blew out the back of his skull.

I found his half-assed note, and all three of them, a few days later when I got home from the boarding school they sent me to, ready to spend Christmas break with my family, totally unaware of what happened.

I tracked down my mother after that, she was hiding out at my uncle’s house, and when that bitch came to the door acting like everything was fine and she was happy to see me, I used the same shotgun on her.

And I reloaded the fucking thing two more times; a shot for each of the people I lost.

My uncle was the one who called the cops, the one who painted me to be the bad guy when my siblings and my father were dead thanks to his piece of shit sister. He went on and on about how my mother wassick, how she’d never been right in the head so she couldn’t be held responsible for what happened, and I was the villain for unjustly persecuting her, and ultimately punishing her.

So, when they set me free at twenty years old, claiming I was young enough when it happened that they didn’t think I’d do anything like that again, that I’d been rehabilitated by the doctors at Blackhurst and could go on to live a relatively normal life, I was actually up shit’s creek without a paddle.

My mother’s family was out of the question. They’d disowned me after I killed her, and they made sure I was put away for it. Dad didn’t have any family left and since he was gone, I was pretty goddamn alone. I decided travel was my only real option, and eventually I found myself in West Virginia, hitchhiking my way along the Appalachians until I came across Obsidian Falls.

That’s when I met Carlisle.

I walked into the diner to grab something to eat, and sat at the counter next to this big fucker who looked like he could snap me in two. Which is no small feat, I’m not exactly what onewould callpetitemyself, but that man could have squashed me like a fucking bug, and the only open seat was right next to him.

He grilled me at first, asking me about where I came from, why I was there, and where I was going. Then something in his features softened and it was like he knew I was wandering around aimlessly or some shit. For some reason, he took me in right away and by the time I was done eating, Carlisle had paid for my meal, given me a job at his farrier shop, and invited me to dinner with his family the next night.

Enter, Bramley Ambrose.

Carlisle was one of his dads, Titus and Tempy’s biological father, and dinner with the family turned out to be a huge ordeal. One that ended with Bram’s dick in my mouth and his bite on my shoulder.

There was something about that shithead’s effortless charm that drew me in, but I knew the stakes.

I knew he was a jackass, same as he knew I was one, too. Twenty minutes of conversation confirmed it, and the night we met was the first of many times Rex has said Bramley and I are a match made in hell. In my opinion, it just meant my alpha is the king of shitheads, and we were destined to duke it out from time to time.

Stoic and broody, stubborn as hell, fucking angry and confrontational.

He doesn’t talk about his feelings, sometimes I question whether or not he has any, and there are still days where if you didn’t know us, you wouldn’t think we were anything more than acquaintances.

You want to talk about layers? Bram has so many I’m pretty surehedoesn’t even know what’s underneath, but I saw the value in peeling them back.

I saw value inBramley, and the rest didn’t matter a whole lot.

None of that shit actually bothered me at all because the longer we were together, the more I got to see a side to him that I knew he didn’t let many see, and that’s where our relationship really grew from.

He’s passionate and surprisingly thoughtful. Loyal to a fault, and he has no problem with commitment. Bram is driven and goal oriented, and he works hard for what he wants, even if he takes it first then does that work later. His heart is so much bigger than he’s comfortable with, and he loves harder than anyone I’ve ever met.

Even with the murderous inclinations, and how frequently he acts on them, Bramley is one of the best men I have ever known.

Seventeen years later and I still feel that way, but fuck, the man pisses me off.

Crossing my arms against my chest, I tip the chair back on two legs, dropping my feet on the porch railing and cross my legs at the ankles.

Yeah, it’s been a few weeks since we’ve said more than a couple words to each other.

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